A Brief History of Evil – What we learn from the great villains of literature

This seminar starts with a chronological tour of the ways in which the existence of evil has been perceived through the ages. From the Greeks and Romans to recent developments in modern neuroscience we take a historical journey through the problem of evil and its interpretations, considering how perceptions of the existence of evil have ranged from its role as an instrument of the divine to a factor of internal neurological disorder. As this is a primarily literary discussion, we turn to the expressions of evil in literature and assess some of the greatest literary villains – from Raskolnikov to Goldinger and find out what we learn both about the nature of evil and about humanity itself from the depiction of villainy from the pens of the world’s most striking writers. Finally, we learn why we need literature and why stories really do matter.