GRMN 234-401 (COML 232)
Literature & Revolution

Bethany Wiggin profile
bwiggin@sas.upenn.edu

TR 1:30 - 3:00 pm

Benjamin Franklin Seminar

Common parlance proclaims the pen mightier than the sword. Peaceniks demand books not bombs. The tools of literacy are usually considered to be in opposition to the tools of war. But are they? Our seminar troubles this binary as we consider literature across space and time as an agent of social change at its most radical: revolution.

Central to the class are the varied and creative answers to the long question about how to write a progressive literature. Is the concept of a revolutionary literature useful today? We begin by turning to the legacy of Plato’s banishment of poets from the good state as well as Aristotle's spirited defense of poets Writers and readings may also include: pamphlets by Martin Luther, essays by Thomas Paine and Friedrich Schiller; Buechner's drama Woyzeck, Marz and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution, Mariano Azuela's novel of the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs, plays by Bert Brecht (Mother Courage and Her Children), and others.

updated 03-2009