ENGLISH 279: Traveling through Eternity: Literary Pilgrimage from Dante to Blake

Course Description

What might it mean to travel through eternity? This course will consider the question through the literary and visual lenses of allegorical pilgrimage, symbolic pilgrims, and schematic pilgriming. Perspectives on allegory, symbol, figura, and diagram from Eric Auerbach, Samuel T. Coleridge, Stephen W. Hawking, David Bohm, and John M. Sullivan of The Optiverse. Supplementary material from the Bible, Dante, Chaucer, and a short video, Outside In: How to Turn a Sphere Inside Out. We will focus on the paintings, poems, and illuminated books of William Blake, from ballads and The Gates of Paradise to A Vision of the Last Judgment, The Book of Thel, The Book of Urizen, and Jerusalem.