DIFFICULT LOVE

In Difficult Love, we trace the tangled, ungovernable connections that have captivated and complicated literature’s most intense relationships. This course explores the depths of literary fiction’s portrayals of love that defies easy definition, pushing beyond romantic ideals into spaces of obsession, betrayal, transgression, and profound vulnerability. Through the lenses of authors like Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and Marguerite Duras, we’ll study characters caught in the magnetic pull of love that is as challenging as it is transformative.

This course draws from Miller and Nin’s complex entanglement of eroticism and intellect, Duras’s poetic yet ferocious look at forbidden passion, and the explorations of self-destructive love in works by Jean Rhys and Fyodor Dostoevsky. These narratives are uncompromising and intense, offering portraits of love that reveal the intricate layers of desire, autonomy, and the depths of human connection that often unsettle as much as they captivate.

For those intrigued by the darker facets of love’s impact on identity, artistry, and obsession, this course invites you to engage deeply with characters and themes that defy convention. Through in-depth readings, discussions, and reflective exercises, we’ll examine how these relationships reveal the resilience, desperation, and ultimate transformation found in love’s most difficult forms. Join us as we delve into literature where love is not simply a comfort, but a force of personal undoing and, sometimes, renewal.