Studies in Fiction (313-0-20)

Topic

Love Triangles, Gender, and Desire

Instructors

Jennifer Comerford

Meeting Info

University Hall 112: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Fierce rivalries. Raging jealousies. Misplaced desires. Unequal affections. Love triangles have long been one of the most popular tropes in fiction. In this course, we will explore how triangulated love affairs mediate channels of desire. While love triangles may seem immediately legible as a conventional structure of the heterosexual marriage plot, things are not necessarily what they seem. From cases of mistaken identity to specters of missed opportunities, what happens when desire gets oriented, misdirected, or redirected in different ways? If love triangles seem to position the third person as antagonist, then what happens when the third person instead becomes a vector through which the other two characters may express their mutual desire? We will consider the queer undertones (or, in some cases, overtones) of triangulated relations and the ways in which love triangles often open up alternative narrative trajectories that make us consider what might have been or what could be. By attending to love triangles (and the occasional rectangle or pentagon), we will consider the dynamics of gender, sexuality, and race. Possible texts include Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1602), Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Bronte Wuthering Heights (1847), Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), du Maurier, Rebecca (1938). Possible films and shows include She's the Man (2006), Past Lives (2023), and selected episodes of Bridgerton (2020).

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area