Dark Academia: The Books Behind the Aesthetic

For curious readers and fans of the aesthetic. The course teaches the ideas inside the five works Dark Academia keeps returning to, Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and the film Dead Poets Society, and why each turns the romance of knowledge into tragedy.

7 sections ยท 11 lessons

Course outline

The Aesthetic

  1. Why Dark Academia Begins With a Murder

The Secret History

  1. Beauty Is Terror
  2. A Morbid Longing for the Picturesque
  3. Was Julian Responsible?

Dorian Gray

  1. All Art Is Quite Useless
  2. The Portrait as Conscience

Crime and Punishment

  1. The Extraordinary Man
  2. I Murdered Myself, Not Her

Beyond Good and Evil

  1. Master Morality and Slave Morality
  2. What Beyond Good and Evil Means
  3. Does Raskolnikov Pass Nietzsche's Test?

Dead Poets Society

  1. Carpe Diem Against the Four Pillars

The Pattern

  1. The Teacher, the Circle, and the Fall
  2. Shelving a New Dark Academia Novel

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