Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

((63LE175)) -  Dr. Christina Dokou

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

Since the dawn of human culture, animals have been significant not just as physical, but as metaphysical, philosophical, and aesthetic presences as well. Predators or food, totemic avatars of the self or embodiments of Otherness, rivals or companions, innocents or beasts, living beings with a capacity for feeling, suffering and conscience or stock representations of abstract values, subjects of scientific study and metaphorical conduits for knowledge, nonhuman living beings are inextricably and diachronically involved in the multifaceted game of human self-awareness and the episteme of our world. This relationship—and the wide, and often extremely powerful—scope of emotions and thoughts it generates in human consciousness are depicted in art and literature of all nations and eras, revealing each time not only the particularities of specific cultural schemata, but also basic parameters of human nature.

The course focuses on representations of animals in Anglophone fiction, in an attempt to investigate, with the help of theoretical texts and notable examples from the history, literature and philosophy of the past, the multiple and multileveled meanings and uses of animality in the creation and identification of the human self. Students will become deeply familiar with quality texts of literature (all genres) and will analyze how animals in them mediate characteristic facets of anglophone (and broader human) cultures and histories.

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Παρασκευή 14 Φεβρουαρίου 2025