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Feature 17
Internationally acclaimed author Sarah Dunant joined Washington University as Visiting Lecturer in Fall, 2009. Author of a trilogy of novels about the Italian Renaissance (The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and the new Sacred Hearts), Ms. Dunant taught three weeks of CL 115 (AH 109), The Birth of Venus, a course dedicated to the art, politics, and history of Renaissance Florence, Venice, and Rome. Team-taught by Prof. Harriet Stone, Chair, Comparative Literature, and Prof. William Wallace, Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor and Chair, Art History, the course explored how in these cities love, beauty, religion, and politics were intertwined. The class studied the flourishing of the arts that occurred along with the oppressive rule of the Church; marriages that were arranged or otherwise "forced"; and the rise of courtesan culture and pornography. Prof. Stone presented Sarah Dunant's novels as windows onto Renaissance culture. Prof. Wallace presented the art of each city, including works by Donatello, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Titian, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. Guest lecturer Prof. Craig Monson, Dept. of Music, explored connections between nuns who make both music and magic. And Ms. Dunant introduced the class to historical documents, including both visual and textual sources, that she used in creating her novels.
Since its founding as a discipline in the nineteenth century, Comparative Literature has provided a geographically and chronologically broader perspective on the literary and cultural achievements of humankind than is possible from within the national or area literature department alone. Just as, historically speaking, Comparative Literature arose from the emergence of nationalism (borders can’t be crossed if none exist) the field today cannot prosper without strong national literature departments.