Early Modern treatises on English rhetoric attribute the invention of this art to poets. According to Thomas Wilson, the art of remembrance was first invented by the Greek poet Simonides, who was able to call by name the disfigured carcasses of the dead because he remembered the sitting place of each and every one of them. Hence, trauma, memory, and language as the art of naming the dead are deeply interrelated.
In this course we will explore the interrelations between language and death through Early Modern poetry and theorizations of rhetoric, and Freud's writings on war, trauma, mourning, and melancholy. We will examine these interrelations in contemporary representations of trauma, in cinematic visions of the Holocaust, as is Claude Lanzmann's Shoah.
Reading Material: excerpts from Early Modern treatises on rhetoric, poems by Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and others. Excerpts from Freud's writings.
Requirements: Attendance, participation, reading the required texts and watch the films (be advised, some of the materials are difficult to watch). Two quizzes in class, and a final paper.