Topics in Modern Literature

This course will examine selected topics in modern literature and their relationship to nineteenth-and twentieth-century models of thought, society, and culture. We will consider, for instance, the influence of the naturalist Buffon on Balzac, of experimental medicine on Zola, of the philosopher Bergson on Proust, of technology on H. G. Wells, of physics on Pynchon, and of Freud on Kafka.