2020-21 Pomona College Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
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ENGL073 PO - The Literature of Gambling

When Offered: Spring 2021.
Instructor(s): S. Raff
Credit: 1

Narratives of gambling-in which the arc of a life may seem to depend on a roll of the dice-in comparative perspective, with an emphasis on various concepts for thinking about an unknown future, including fate, divine intervention, luck, hazard, chance, speculation, risk, and accident. Some attention to recent scholarship linking the rise of the English novel-and of “probable” or likely stories-to the development of the mathematics of probability. Primary readings may include Plutarch, Herodotus, Rabelais, Cervantes, Pascal, Defoe, Pope, Boswell, Byron, Pushkin, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Chekhov, David Mamet, Hunter S. Thompson, and Jonathan Lethem. We will discuss a few films as well. No prior experience in gambling or literary studies required.
Satisfies the following General Education Requirement(s), subject to conditions explained in the Degree Requirements section of this Catalog:
Area 1



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