Additional Information

In this seminar, we’ll read poetry and fiction with attention to aspects that recount or impart the experience of pleasure. We might venture into Epicurean philosophy, “happiness studies,” the aesthetics of complexity theory. How do emergent structures contribute to a reader’s satisfaction? How do difficult works create a vertiginous sublime or resonant ambiguity? Why do elegies or stories of suffering afford pleasure? When reading poetry, we’ll consider the immanence created by excess, near non sequitur, emotional valances. Reading fiction, we’ll think about tension, characterization, language, closure, cultural relevance. Though pleasure is a variable, we’ll explore elements that create it. In addition to assigned texts, students will offer works that give them joy.