Intro to Genres: Evil Incarnate

Undergraduate / Graduate

Some of the most compelling pieces of writing across all genres deal with, and often feature, the concept of Evil at their center. Whether they address it directly through a character, like Bulgakov's Professor Woland in Master and Margarita, or as a concept in Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. Whether the narratives are anchored in the concreteness of real crime, like in Capote's In Cold Blood, and sometimes they revel in the abstraction of sin, as in Milton's Paradise Lost, they always dare to ask, "What and why is evil?" Why might character cower at the thought of that which awaits us in the dark, like in HP Lovecraft's Dagon, and why might a real 19-year-old woman in Bute, Montana anticipate it with bated breath, like in Mary MacLane's I Await the Devil's Coming. This course is designed to explore this question alongside authors who devoted their lives to understanding the role of evil in literature and life, to contemplating its necessity, its appeal, its frivolity, and its betrayal. The course will be divided into three sections, each section devoted to a specific genre during which two to three texts will be explored, discussed, and analyzed in class, and at the end of which one analysis paper will be due, culminating in a final analytical and creative piece.