This course will offer an introduction to literary study through the lens of the fantastical, strange and marvelous. We will begin with Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and progress rapidly through centuries, genres and critical approaches, ending with Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. Learning to engage closely with the texts of predominantly nineteenth-century authors, we will explore questions of perception, imagination, permanence, and memory, in addition to how these texts envision what it means to read rightly and see clearly.