College of Creative Studies

Current Course Offerings
Spring 2007

This class will focus on the literature and art of the important 18^th-century movement of Sensibility/Sensibilite. We will discuss sensibility as a reaction to the age of reason, that instead presents an emotional alternative to the increasingly rationalistic and scientific view of the world. First, we will look briefly at the writings of Newton, Bacon and Locke to better understand what the movement of extreme rationality which sensibility was reacting against.

In the next unit, "Sympathetic Bodies," we will read sections of Rousseau's Julie: or the New Heloise as well as all of Samuel Richardson's Pamela. We will couple our study of these great novels of sensibility, one English and one French, with an examination of paintings by Greuze and Gainsborough and other artists of the long 18^th century. We will interrogate these paintings of women as sympathetic bodies and consider the ways in which they complement the depiction of the heroines of Rousseau's and Richardson's novel and well as in Austen's Sense and Sensibility. We will also read poetry and prose selections both espousing and mocking the cult of sensibility in order to deepen our understanding of this movement.

In our final unit, we will turn from narratives of women in sensibility to men, specifically Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling. This will open up a dialogue about masculinity and how it is reinterpreted through the Sensibility movement. The pedagogical aim of the course is to have students reach a point of familiarity with Sensibility in both 18^th century England and France and the literary and artistic movements associated with it. By the end of the quarter students will be able to critically address three major questions: 1) What is Sensibility? What does it look like? 2) How does Sensibility in England compare/contrast to Sensibilite in France?