Folly

Semester: Spring

Professor Paul Du Quenoy.

Class Time: TR 17:00-18:15. Room 324 Nicely.

Contact: Tel: 4189.

E-mail: pd05@aub.edu.lb

Course Description

This course counts as a CVSP Sequence II.

 

The purpose of the course is to introduce students to an important trope in the world literary tradition from the High Renaissance to the near present, which I have called “Folly.” “Folly” may be opposed to such headier, more serious, and “more respectable” concepts as “Reason,” “Rationality,” “Purposefulness,” “Determination,” “Industriousness,” “Professionalism,” and similar valuations that the Enlightenment and subsequent intellectual movements have conventionally taught us to accept as inherently good and praiseworthy.

 

Following the philosophical bases elaborated by Erasmus of Rotterdam in Praise of Folly, “Folly” can be defined for our purposes as the use of humor, satire, sarcasm, irony, and other forms of irreverence to critique, challenge, and resist authority – broadly defined – as well as the structures and assumptions upon which it relies.  Reading selected texts from the time of Erasmus to the near present, this course will introduce textual analysis through the lens of selected works that rely upon these techniques to deliver messages and themes critical of dominant paradigms in the societies of their authors.