COML 3255

Sacred, Holy, Divine

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

These are names of an existential dimension commonly taken to have gone missing in our time. The flight of the gods and the death of God have supposedly left a disenchanted world with little room for the sacred. However, in this class we will study modern European writers, artists, and philosophers who rejected conventional religion but held fast to a concept of the divine or the holy. In particular, we will trace the desire for a "new mythology" and examine critically the transition from religious art to art as religion, in which the artistic genius is deified. Were these currents radical or reactionary? Are enchantment and enthusiasm compatible with atheism and materialism? What is the price of Enlightenment and what are the risks of resisting it? Helping us answer these questions will be authors like Blake, Hölderlin, Wackenroder, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Yeats, George, Rilke, and Mann. We will also read philosophy by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Eliade, Blumenberg, Girard, and Derrida. In addition, we will experience Wagner's Parsifal and look at a wealth of visual art.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

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