Sappho, Plato, Proust: The Aesthetics of Desire

Seminar. Beauty and desire as represented in the poetry of Sappho, in Plato's philosophy, and in the modernist novel of Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Differences in the social and historical context within which these works were generated. Focus is on the similar ways erotic desire is approached and aestheticized in these three major and influential authors. All texts in translation.