Instructor: Nikolas Kakkoufa
This course takes C. P. Cavafy’s oeuvre as a departure point in order to discuss desire and the ways it is tied with a variety of topics. We will employ a number of methodological tools to examine key topics in Cavafy’s work such as eros, power, history, and gender. How can we define desire and how is desire staged, thematized, or transmitted through poetry? How does a gay poet write about desired bodies at the beginning of the previous century? What is Cavafy’s contribution to the formation of gay identities in the twentieth century? How do we understand the poet’s desire for an archive? How important is the city for activating desire? How do we trace a poet’s afterlife and how does the desire poetry transmits to readers transform through time? How does literature of the past address present concerns? These are some of the questions that we will examine during this course.
