Trials and Tribulations: Tormenting Literature

Instructor: Professor Leonard S. Goldberg
                 Department of English

A familiar literary motif is that of the test. A hero-Odysseus, Adam, or Gawain, say-undergoes an ordeal as part of a process of self-discovery, or at least as a way of ascertaining whether humans can stand up to an angry Cyclops, temptation, or a likely beheading. A closely allied motif is one in which a protagonist's tribulation is matched by, or takes the form of, a formal judicial trial, with all its possibilities for strenuous examination of motives, tense drama, and serial lying and excuse-making. In this Seminar, we will read five works in which this pattern is either roughly discernible, significantly modified, or part of the essential background: Aeschylus's Orestiad, Dickens's Great Expectations, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Kafka's The Trial, and a Shakespeare play.

This Seminar will require frequent writing, will allow students to develop their skills as analysts of demanding literary texts, and will entail class discussion as a predictable constant. While the works are daunting, by restricting the number of texts on the syllabus, we will be able to spend considerable time on each.