Courses

Dark and Stormy Nights: Monsters and Machines in Modernist Art, Literature, and Music


From the literature of the late 18th to early 19th century emerged the Gothic novel genre, which recalled bygone medieal days when landscapes were inhabited with ruined castles, foggy moors and damsels in distress.  Faced with an age focused on science and reason, writers could explore a simpler world in which forces of good and evil, supernatural powers, and mysterious occurrences could once more be considered legitmate.  Writers were free to imagine the effects that an untethered, Enlightenment-era scientific revolution might have had on the course of humanity.  Works by Burke, Radcliffe, Shelley, Stokes, Poe and others will be considered, as well as perspectives on contemporaneous art and musical performances.

Instructor: Richard Friswell

Thursdays: September 19, 26; October 3, 10, 17
6:30-8:30 p.m.
$175
Richard Friswell
RICHARD FRISWELL received his MPhil from Wesleyan in 2014, where he was awarded the Rulewater Prize for interdisciplinary scholarship. He is a cultural historian and associate director of the WILL program and managing editor of ARTES, a fine arts e-magazine. He is an elected member of the International Art Critics Association and author of a collection of autobiographical short stories, Balancing Act: Postcards from the Edge of Risk and Reward. He lectures and speaks widely on topics related to modernism, its art, literature, and history.