ENMC 3800 Concepts of the Modern—Nietzsche and Modern Literature

In order to understand the notion of modernity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we’ll study the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who wrote in literary  ways—dramatic, poetic, fictional.   We’ll also read works by Franz Kafka, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Vladimir Nabokov, considering them in light of Nietzsche’s methods and ideas.  Nietzsche and these writers wondered about such questions as: What is an ethical life? How does religion function?  How do we know what we know? How do people communicate with one another?  In a world filled with what we might summarize as "bad behavior," what are the roles of art and beauty? This is a lecture and discussion course, and there will be a take-home midterm, a final, and a paper.