Visuality and Literature

“In the beginning was the Word,” or so begins one of the most famous texts in world literature. This course will question the primacy of the word and the word worshipping that has dominated much of Western thought by looking at how the image and image-thinking has informed both literature and critical theory. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which the visual arts—specifically, painting, sculpture, photography, and film—have influenced both literature and critical theory. We will read theoretical writings by Agamben, Barthes, Bazin, Benjamin, Freud, Jakobson, Johnson, Mitchell, Sontag, and Spitzer alongside literary works by Auden, Brodsky, Gautier, Gorky, Keats, Khodasevich, Nabokov, Ovid, Plath, Pushkin, Sebald, Sexton, Stevens, and Williams. And along the way, we will examine relevant artistic and cinematic texts.