ENG 6364 Liberty in Literature
Human beings may be distinguished as species by their capacity for exercising freedom. Yet the nature of this liberty has been variously defined and by some thinkers dismissed as illusory. Imaginative literature often depicts actions that pose the question whether human beings are free agents and, if so, what is the nature of their liberty, what is its extent, conditions and limits. This course inquires into such issues as they appear in narratives and dramas, ancient, Renaissance, nineteenth century. Typical readings: the Book of Genesis, plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Richard II, Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,
Hawthorne's short stories, Melville's Billy Budd.