That's the Way Love Goes
- Summer 2016
Additional Details:
What is the thing we call ‘love’? George Bernard Shaw, for one, describes it as the most violent, insane, delusive and transient of passions, and he appears to be on the right side of critical opinion on the matter. In this course we will discover how writers from the past to our own times have written about love and related ideas such as passion, sex and that institution called marriage in which two individuals pledge to remain awfully wedded till death do them part. We will read erotic poems by Ovid, idealistic tales of chivalric love by Chretien de Troyes, hilarious tales of marriage misfires by Chaucer, sonnets and a play by Shakespeare, poems celebrating companionate love, seduction, despair and bliss, a case study on hysteria, a play from ancient India and many more. Two 5-7 critical papers and regular written assignments and home works.