How information is presented affects the meanings it conveys; a poem is fundamentally different from a play, a movie, a novel, and an opera, even if all of them tell the same “story.” In this class, we will think closely, talk energetically, and write critically about the complicated relationship between form and content. Our case studies will be a wide range of works that grapple with big themes: love and society, treachery and death, good and evil. Readings will include most and perhaps all of the following: poems (by William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Bishop), a play (Sheridan, The School for Scandal), an opera (Mozart, Cosi Fan Tutte), several cultures’ versions of a fairy tale (“Sleeping Beauty”), a few movies (Sleeping Beauty, Dangerous Liaisons, Cruel Intentions), and two short novels (Austen, Lady Susan; Waugh, The Loved One).
