Episodes in Literary Cultures

How similar should we expect the portrait of a slave in an ancient Roman comedy to be to the portrait of a household servant in a nineteeth-century British novel?  What parallels might we see between an ex-slave’s account of her own escape and a philosopher’s use of slavery as a metaphor for political powerlessness? What special features of slaves and servants might authors be drawn to when they make them narrators or use them to move the plot along?

This course offers a case study in the complex interplay between literature and social structure by focusing on the roles that slaves and servants play in texts from several literary cultures and periods. We will be reading literary texts with an eye to what they tell us about the social assumptions that govern relations between people of different status, but also exploring the ways that texts use images of slaves and servants to express themes such as individual autonomy, intimacy and attitudes toward the body. The required readings will come primarily from three broad historical periods (classical Greece and Rome, Renaissance Europe and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. and Britain) and will include plays, novels, poems, films and philosophical essays. We will work on close textual analysis and also on understanding literary texts in light of their historical contexts. Students will be graded on writing assignments of varying lengths, productive participation in section meetings and a final exam.