ENG 333 - Literary Satans

In the first chapter of Job, God asks Satan, “Whence comest thou?” And Satan responds, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” This course follows Satan’s travels through literary works such as Job, the Gospels, Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Goethe’s Faust, short fiction by Hawthorne and Poe, Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, “Satan” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X; films such as The Exorcist, accompanied by James Baldwin’s analysis in his book The Devil Finds Work, and The Witch; TV shows such Fargo, American Gods, and Lucifer. Secondary readings and guest faculty will help contextualize these varied Satans and the cultures that produced them.

Before there were humans or texts composed by humans, according to Abrahamic traditions, Satan was the first being to plot his own path, the first to want something new and different. In that sense, Satan is the driving energy of innovative courses. ENG 333 accordingly satisfies the Innovation requirement of the English major. The course is innovative in scope and in its assignments. It requires not only students’ participation but also their leadership in class meetings; five brief projects in response to the course’s texts and topics; and a presentation on a representation of Satan omitted from the current syllabus. The course culminates in a collaborative digital mapping project, through which students will document some important appearances of Satan across millennia and across the globe where he has walked up and down.

Satisfies the Innovation requirement of the English major.

Satisfies the LTRQ Ways of Knowing requirement.