ENGL3026: Mediterranean Wanderings: Literature and History on the Borders of Three Continents

Situated between three continents and at the intersection of numerous ethnic and national cultures, the Mediterranean is like no other place on earth. A place of diverse languages, religions, economies, governments, and ways of daily life, it serves as a microcosm for the world itself imagined as an integrated global system. This course explores the history of the Mediterranean with particular emphasis on the literatures it has produced over the last three millennia. As the protagonists of these epic poems, religious texts, and novels travel from one shore to another, they experience the Mediterranean as a place of violence, cultural accommodation, hope, ethnic and linguistic bewilderment, and endless moral challenge. This course will place as much emphasis on the region's history as its cultural productions. With that in mind, reading may include David Abulafia's The Great Sea in addition to The Odyssey, The Aeneid, the biblical books of Joshua and Acts, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (an epic set during the first crusade), Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Antony and Cleopatra, Flaubert's Salammbo, Akli Tadjer's Les ANI du Tassali, A.b. Yehoshua's Mr. Mani, and Pamuk's The White Castle.

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