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Cervantes is known chiefly for DON QUIXOTE, often described as the first modern novel and fountainhead of one of the great modern myths. In fact, besides the chivalric novel he reinvented virtually every fashionable genre of his time: verse, theater, novella, and the pastoral and Hellenistic adventure novels. In this course we will pay particular attention to the many works (particularly his less-well known plays, novellas, and final novel) that take as their chief subject the representation of outsiders: Turks, North African Arabs, Northern European "Goths", gypsies, Romans in Celtiberian Spain, unconventional women, recent Christian converts, renegades, fools or lunatics, poets, thieves, and prostitutes. We will examine how these texts are positioned with respect to what they represent. Do they suggest subversive or contestatory responses to the normative codes and practices of the official culture? Characteristic themes: social "reality" as artifact or fiction, the counterintuitive or paradoxical nature of truths, the irreducible diversity of taste and perception, the call for consent in politics and love. We will read, discuss, and write about the entire range of his work, along with a sampling of narrative, critical and philosophical responses it has inspired.
COURSE FORMAT: Seminar
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA FIST Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE
Last Updated on MAR-19-2004
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459