Seminar in Golden-Age Literature: The Politics of Reading and the Dangers of the Text

Although in open societies we tend not to view the writing and reading of fiction as an activity potentially fraught with danger, other ages and places have. In fact, since the time of Plato, literature has often been considered to be one of the most potentially dangerous media of communication. At the same time, examples and parables have, over the centuries, offered models of behavior that are overtly instructive, projecting the values of the official culture in which they were produced. This course explores these key aspects of Premodern literature.