This course explores the city as a theme in such
literary genres as the novel, drama,
autobiography, and poetry, as well as film.
From the ancient polis as a political unit to the
twenty-first century metropolis, the city has
emerged in literature as the antithesis to
state of nature, the birthplace of modernity, the
stage for social change and conflict, the locus
of transition from empire to nation-state, and the meeting
point of "the East" and "the West."
With its inclusions, exclusions, periphery, subcultures,
underground, public and private spheres, and
fragmentations, the city is a symbolic system exploited
widely in literature. The course may include such
literary representations of the city as Balzac or
Baudelaire's Paris, Joyce's Dublin, and Mahfouz's
Cairo, as well as contemporary, utopian
or dystopian works in world literature.
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