Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life. André Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924) Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse. With this foundation, no one need wonder at the existence of a literature of cosmic fear. It has always existed, and will always exist. H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927) Beginning with the aesthetic and psychological fixations of Edgar Allan Poe, Sigmund Freud, H.P. Lovecraft, Salvador Dalí, André Breton, and Jeff VanderMeer, our course explores some of the stranger detours of modern fiction and poetry. We will consider the ways that Poe’s “perverse,” Freud’s “uncanny,” Lovecraft’s “cosmic horror,” Dalí’s “paranoid critical method,” and VanderMeer’s “weird,”have manifested and metastasized across a geographical spectrum of literature from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America. Our reading includes work by some of the world’s great literary necromancers of the past century. We shall keep their names hidden until they emerge from the shadows in the coming weeks. Take care. Once you know them, their writing will infect your consciousness and permanently warp your sense of the world, until you remain a hollow shell of your former self, struggling to maintain your sanity under the weight of your newfound and horrific literary knowledge.

Student Outcomes

In writing-intensive (W) courses, the content becomes a medium for developing your intellectual abilities through writing. The course will help you (1) to order and to derive deeper meaning from the thoughts and impressions that constitute our basic response to experience, including reading literature; (2) to understand the surrealist sensibility in world literature and its relation to contemporary horror in fiction and film; (3) to draw connections between surrealist and horror writing produced by different writers, in different periods, in different parts of the world; and (4) to write critically and creatively about what we find.

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