Voices from the Underground: The Alienated Self in Modern Literature

This course will explore the alienation and fragmentation of the modern self as it is presented in four darkly fascinating works of fiction: Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories, and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. The novels and stories studied in this course depict a diverse collection of outsiders whose narratives and voices-originating from both the margins of society and the depths and divisions of the human psyche-emerge from underground: an ingenious rant against the rise of reason produced by the conflicted mind of a mad Russian narrator; a young Japanese monk's pathological, destructive, and all-consuming obsession with the beauty of a Zen Buddhist Temple; a young man's sudden and alienating transformation into a monstrous insect; and, finally, the disturbing machinations of the now popularized psychopath and killer, Tom Ripley. These works of art represent the self as it is pushed to extreme limits-to the brink of destruction, transformation, and possibly redemption-and are revelatory of both the conditions of modern existence and the nature of the self more generally. The theme of alienation will be examined in a variety of modes, with a focus on the relationship of self-alienation and interior conflict to social alienation and its causes (i.e. race, class, sexuality, religion).