Syllabus
1) Introduction 2) Walter Benjamin, Surrealism: the Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia Surrealism: the Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia (monoskop.org); W. Benjamin, The Author as Producer The Author as Producer by Walter Benjamin 1970 (marxists.org). 3) Georg Lukács, Narrate or Describe? A Preliminary Discussion of Naturalism and Formalism, Writer and Critic: and other Essays, iUniverse 2005. 4) Ernest Bloch, Discussing Expressionism; G.
Lukács, Realism in the Balance, Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, London 1977. 5) Bertolt Brecht, Against Georg Lukács, ibid. 6) Theodor W. Adorno, Reconciliation under Duress ibid. 7) Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Writing? (Ch.
I) What is Literature? Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2008. 8) J.-P. Sartre, Why Write? (Ch.
II), ibid. 9) J.-P. Sartre, For Whom Does One Write? (Ch.
III – 1), ibid. 10) J.-P. Sartre, For Whom Does One Write? (Ch.
III - 2), ibid. 11) J.-P. Sartre, Writing for One’s Age (Ch.
V), ibid. Introducing Les Temps Modernes, ibid. 12) T.
W. Adorno, Commitment, Aesthetics and Politics, Verso 1977. 13) Concluding Discussion
Annotation
The course is going to survey a debate that took place among the Leftist European intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s. It concerned the way in which literature (and, more generally, art) can contribute to the project of human emancipation.
Although all the participants in the debate agreed that literature should be “committed” (engagée) to the struggle for a better world they strongly disagreed which kind of literature was able to fulfil this role. The main fault-line ran between those who conjured up an alliance between revolutionary movements and literary (and artistic) modernism and those who either conceived of modernism as a decadent phenomenon of the declining bourgeoisie or had, at least, doubts about its capacity to help emancipation and, therefore, preferred literature which instead of formal experimentation concentrated on ideological contents.
Our selection of readings includes Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertold Brecht, Georg Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno and Jean-Paul Sartre.