About the Art
The artwork on the main page of this site represents a range of time periods and topics that the literature we read in this course will cover. The left side of the graphic excerpts a fourteenth-century illustration of Lancelot and Guinevere kissing, with the illicit kiss being observed by Galeholt. Click on the following to see a full view of the illustration. Although the illustration predates the Arthurian legends recorded by Sir Thomas Malory that we will read in this class, the illustration offers a medieval "snapshot" of one of a plethora of representations of Arthur from which Malory drew.
The middle of the graphic on the main page is excerpted from Henry Fuseli's eighteenth-century painting of Titania and Bottom the Weaver embracing in Act III of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The lovers--Bottom, transformed into a monster with a human body and an ass's head, and Titania, the Queen of the Fairies who has been bewitched by her jealous husband into falling in love with Bottom--represent the topsy-turvy world of the comedy, at least until Oberon and others set things right. Fuseli's painting, one in a series on Titania and Bottom's union, communicates the nightmarish, as well as the comic qualities of such a scene. Click on the following to see an annotation of the Fuseli painting.
The right-hand side of the main page's graphic features an intentionally blurred photograph of the Vietnam Wall Memorial in Washington, D.C. The image resonates with the Vietnam war accounts of Tim O'Brien, which we will read at the beginning of the semester, and whose burring of what constitutes truth, together with the works of Julia Alvarez and others, constitute some of the most contemporary works we will read.