Department: English
Description: Formal, aesthetic, and cultural relationships among literature, art, music, drama, film, and other related arts.
Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisites: A minimum of 45 hours completed
Dates: 08/19/2024 - 12/07/2024
Location: Adlai E. Stevenson Hall 211 (STV 211)
Instructor: William Thomas McBride
Class Notes: Description: Formal, aesthetic, and cultural relationships among literature, art, music, drama, film, and other related arts. Credit Hours: 3 In this course we’ll explore aesthetic relations between “literature” and other such modalities of the arts as theatre, painting, music, and cinema. We’ll juxtapose the genre-linked features of literary narrative with the constitutive elements of other creative arts to examine what results when they are cross-pollinated, all the time considering what role non-representational art can play in this process. Among works being considered for the semester are samples of novels by Cormac McCarthy, J.K. Rowling, and Stephen King, plays by Beckett, Kushner, and Albee, Hebrew Bible and New Testament narratives, films by Hitchcock, Gerwig, and Murnau, soundtracks by Guðnadóttir, North, and Herrmann, operas by Dvorák and Wagner, programmatic compositions by Vaughan Williams and Debussy, paintings by O’Keefe, Bacon, Scharf, and Klimt, a selection of songs by classic and contemporary pop artists and some ads and DYI films streaming on social media. I’m looking to schedule a visit to the permanent collection of ISU’s University Galleries and to attend performances by the Schools of Music and of Theatre. The goal of our comparative study is to generate insight into the ontological status of art to better support our interpretations of a work’s ideology, and to deepen our pleasure, broadly conceived. Writings will be assigned with creative and presentational options.
Textbook Special Instructions: Select titles are available online.