Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (BOLLI)

Hopes and Hazards of the Bourgeois Society as Seen Through Stendhal’s The Red and The Black

Course Number

LIT14-10-Wed1

Study Group Leader (SGL)

Yiyang Zhuge

Location

This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email.

10-Week Course

March 12 - May 21 (No Class April 16)

Description

This class will explore one of the greatest and most influential French novels, set in the Restoration after the defeat of Napoleon. We will read The Red and The Black from cover-to-cover following Julien Sorel, a French Provincial, as he makes his way into Parisian society, a society riddled with corruption and greed. At the same time, we will try to understand it through the lens of political thought, considering Stendhal’s similarities with thinkers such as Rousseau, Jane Austen, and Nietzsche. Stendhal is the most cynical artist and novelist who has commented on the rise of bourgeois commercial society, a world that we still in many ways inhabit. Does the bourgeois world maim or tranquilize our souls? Is there a place for vaulting ambition, heroic aspiration and genuine faith in such society? This novel explores the dimensions of the individual soul torn between middle-class concerns and the grandeur of Napoleonic ambition, between sincerity and hypocrisy, between pious respect and disdainful narcissism, between modern individuality and classical virtues. Further, what does the victory of the bourgeoisie mean for the redemptive power of love? What are the sources of his hero’s deep sense of alienation, self-deception and longings to transcend the mundane world, despite his deep trappings in this world? By the end of this course, students will not only gain an appreciation of the moral and philosophical dimensions in Stendhal’s novels,  but will also be able to apply the insights gained from reading this novel to questions of moral and political theory in today's world.

Group Leadership Style

Roughly the same amount of lecture and discussion.

Course Materials

The Red and The Black  by Stendhal (Modern Library Classics)

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812972074

Preparation Time

1-2 hours per week.

Biography

Yiyang Zhuge is a Political Philosophy PhD Candidate at Boston College working on 19th century liberalism. She has taught classes on classical and modern political philosophy at Boston College. At BOLLI, she has taught classes on Jane Austen’s Emma and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. She is a public intellectual in China and hosts a mandarin-language podcast that comments on contemporary Chinese philosophical and political issues.