Instructor: Stephen Greenblatt
Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:30-2:45 pm | Location: Art Museums Deknatel Hall
What is the power of a story? For several thousand years Adam and Eve were the protagonists in the central origin myth of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds. That myth was the arena for ethical reasoning about transgression and innocence, sexuality, gender roles, labor, suffering, and death. Jointly taught by History of Art and Architecture and English, our course focuses on this enigmatic story and its spectacular elaborations in theology, philosophy, literature and art. Above all, looking closely at some of the greatest achievements of European art and literature–from Dürer, Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Milton’s Paradise Lost–we will compare the possibilities of the verbal and visual arts in portraying human being.