Literature's Seven Deadly Sins

Because sin is the indispensable engine of most stories worth telling, this seminar will introduce students to the critical analysis of poetry, drama, and fiction through an encounter with literary representations of each of the Seven Deadly Sins. While our main business will be to investigate how literature invites us to understand—and perhaps even love—the sinner, we will also take time to consider both the traditional (religious, moral, philosophical) and modern (psychological, political) understanding of these moral lapses, and to speculate about why different observers perceive one or the other of them as being especially heinous or, conversely and perversely, a virtue in disguise. Readings will include Dickinson, Yeats, Shakespeare, Pinter, Coetzee, and Dickens.