Fall 2013


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The Adultery Novel

Term: 
Spring 2012
Online: 
No
Subject Area: 
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE (COML)
Course Number: 
COML 127 601
Schedule: 
Tuesday 6:00pm-9:00pm
Day(s): 
Tuesday
Fulfills: 
Arts & Letters Sector (All Classes)
Instructor: 

PAGAN-MATTOS, MARLA I

Crosslistings: 
CINE125601, GSWS125601, RUSS125601
Prerequisite(s): 
none
Co-requisite(s): 
none
Primary Program: 
LPS Undergraduate & Post-Baccalaureate
Secondary Program: 
The Young Scholars Program
Course Description: 

This course examines a series of 19th- and 20th-century novels and short stories about adultery, film adaptations of several of these novels, and several original adultery films.  Through the readings we will examine novelistic traditions of the period in question, as well as film adaptations and the implications of filmic vs. literary representation.   Course readings may include: Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, or other works.  Films may include: Frear's Dangerous Liaisons, Vadim's Dangerous Liaison, Nichols' The Graduate, Mikhalkov's Dark Eyes, and others. 

Students will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution, Freudian/Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and transgressive sexuality, and Feminist work on the construction of gender.