PHIL 4364: Philosophical Themes in Literature

Philosophical reflection on themes of good and evil, sin and grace; suffering and fortitutde; personal identity and authenticity; the human and the divine; time and eternity; love and death; fidelity and betrayal; the tragic and the comic. Exploration of these themes is carried out with the aid of enduring works of the imagination: novels, short stories and poetry. Close reading and discussion of texts such as The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky); Til We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis); Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot); The End of the Affair (Graham Greene); Wise Blood and selected short stories (Flannery O'Connor); Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh); The Moviegoer (Walker Percy); Go Down, Moses (William Faulkner) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn). Prerequisite: PHIL 2314 or 2316/3316