Everyone likes a good love story, right? And everyone hopes, and expects, to have his/her/their own “love story” someday. These stories are everywhere: on TV, in movies and in books we read. This course will explore the idea of love in literature throughout the modern era: how it is part of many of our great narratives, contextualized by its culture and history. In literary history, there are some iconic love stories that we still value, that we still see as universal, and that we still enjoy. So, if we take love seriously, what can we learn from it? Is it a universal human emotion apart from history or politics? Is love contextualized within an historical moment, by heterosexual normativity, by our notions of family and marriage, by race and class? What are we taught by literature about love?
Offered: Every other Spring.
UC: Humanities
