Love Stories: A Historical Handbook to Happily Ever After
Course #: ITAL 374L
Description:
What is love? Or rather, what do we think love is? From the Beatles' ''all you need is love'' to Shakespeare's ''whoever loved that loved not at first sight?'' we are bombarded in our culture with preconceived notions about the nature of amorous affection. This course takes a transhistorical view of Western civilization, from the Middle Ages to the present, in order to trace and interrogate societal constructs about love. Our goal is to figure out how love stories work, so that we understand better how they work on us. As part of this work, we will explore how people have historically disrupted heteronormative and patriarchal narratives of love, forming alternative models of domestic bliss. We will consider society and history through literature, so texts like sonnets, love letters, and excerpts from novels will make up the bulk of our reading. However, assignments will be drawn from multiple disciplines, as well as popular culture, including song lyrics, reality television, and film.FRENCH 374L and ITAL 374L and GERMAN 374L and MLLC 374L are the same course.
Pre Requisites: Pre-requisite: ENGL 102