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Fall 2005
CLT 294-01, Naguib Mahfouz and the Modern Arabic Novel,
Professor Sasson Somekh (Visiting Professor), W 1:10-3:40
Representative fiction in English translations of Arabic literature since the Middle Ages, culminating in the works of Nobel laureate (1988) Naguib Mahfouz and in the crafting of new languages for fiction in major Arab cultural centers.
CLT 330-01, Enlightenment Literary Connection
Professor John McCarthy, T 12:30-3:00
Spring 2005
CLT 225-01, European Realism
Professor Robert Barsky, TR 2:35-3:50, S05
This course will trace the rise and development of realism in European fiction of the nineteenth century by examining texts from a range of national traditions including Hungarian, Czech, Irish, French, English and Russian. Particular attention will be given to the theoretical issues that realism, and nineteenth-century realism in particular, pose for literary criticism and cultural studies. We will discuss the history of realism, its rise in the novel form, and also the different ways in which it comes to be manifested in different traditions and texts.
All readings will be in English, however if students have working knowledge of any of the languages in which texts were originally written, they are welcome to work in the original text.
Books:
Gyorgy Konrad, The Case Worker, Penguin
Franz Kafka, The Trial, Schocken
James Joyce, The Dubliners, Penguin
Emile Zola, La Bete humaine, Penguin
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Penguin
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Penguin
Fyodor Doestoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Penguin
Anasis Nin, A Spy in the House of Love, Penguin
CLT 294-01, Evil in Film and Literature
Professor John McCarthy, TR 2:35-3:50, S05
Evil can be found everywhere: in the religious fanaticism evident in the events of September 11,2001, in the atrocities of the Shoa and tribal genocides in Rwanda or in the Balkans. Whether in historical event, cultic practices, religious extremism, or on the movie screen, evil continues to fascinate and terrorize us. Yet not a fixed Manichean or Thomistic dualism is my point of orientation, but rather the elusive periodic centers derivative of contemporary chaos and complexity theory. My intent is to shift the focus in asking after the nature of evil from the simple to the complex, that is, I wish to locate evil in its broader, interactive context. In particular I am interested in efforts since the Copernican Turn to situate evil ontologically in a world filled with motion. That, I suggest, is the ultimate meaning behind Adam and Eve's expulsion from the mythic Garden of Eden. Hence we shall ask: What place does evil occupy in the total scheme of a universe which has been transformed by scientific inquiry since the 17th century? Thus, we will seek to fathom the nature of evil from various vantage points: theologically (e.g. Martin Buber's Images of Good and Evil), philosophically (e.g., Spinoza's Ethics, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil), ecologically (e.g., Lyall Watson's Dark Nature, Edward O. Wilson's Consilience), cinematically (e.g., John Oppenheimer's Evil and the Demonic: A New Theory of Monstrous Behavior), and literarily (e.g., Voltaire's Candide, Goethe's Faust, Buchner's Woyzeck, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger, Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray). While our focus will be on the philosophico-theological and its echoes in literature, attention will be accorded popular renditions of evil in such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Alien, or Silence of the Lambs. The choices are broad, but the discussion will emphasize essential components of evil in an altered view of the universe and of its relationship to the Good (Substitutions to the above works are possible).
CLT 360 -01 Philosophy and Literature
Professor William Franke, M 2:10-4:00, Spring 05
Throughout history, and not least in the modern period, where genres and disciplines have become blurred, poets and philosophers have inspired one another reciprocally. Sometimes the philosophers reveal how their most essential insights could never have been reached without the suggestions envisioned by some - at least for them - elect poet. Furthermore, in some cases, powerful philosophical interpretations of poetic masterpieces have founded new modes of thinking and experiencing or shaped entire epochs of culture, defining their distinctive outlooks. We will study a selection of the most provocative and seminal couplings between poets and philosophers in Western intellectual history by reading the poets along with the readings of the philosophers that have contributed significantly to making them what they have become in this tradition.
CLT 341 - Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism: Classic Texts and Traditions
Professor William Franke, M 2:10-4:00, Fall 04
A broad selection of classic works of literary theory and criticism from antiquity through the 19th century will be read in an effort to furnish basic conceptual paradigms and grounding in cultural history for students training to work as literary critics and theorists. Perennial issues revolving around figurative language and narrative representation, the social function of literature, and the tensions between tradition and innovation will be studied in the founding texts of critical theory from Plato and Aristotle, Horace and Quitilian, Augustine and Macrobius, Dante and Boccaccio, Du Bellay and Corneille, Sidney, Dryden and Pope, Kant and Hegel, Schiller and Goethe, Madame de Sta'l, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley, Emerson, Poe, Baudelaire, Arnold, Pater, Nietzsche, and Wilde.
CLT 351 - Comparative Methodology
Professor Earl Fitz, T 3:10-5:30, Fall 04
The nature and definition of Comparative Liteature as an academic discipline, including its historical development and its current praxis. How one organizes and writes a successful comparative study. Specific issues to be examined in detail: genre and form; theme and motif; periods and movements; influence and reception; literature and other disciplines and forms of artistic expression; theory and criticism; and translation. The importance of foreign language training; Comparative Literature and its relationship to national literature departments and to other areas of humanistic scholarship and endeavor. The rationale behind a cohesive graduate program in Comparative Literature or in one to which the comparative method is essential (as in the case of the combined Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese). Required of all graduate students.
CLT 380 Literary Theory
Professor Robert Barsky, W 3:30-6:00, Fall 04
The goal of this course is to ask some of the basic questions about literary theory, language theory and linguistics, and then to discuss them through reference to both theoretical and (wherever possible) literary texts. What is literary/language theory? What are we doing when we are doing language studies? What is the relationship between the 'literary', the 'language' and the 'theory'? What is the "red thread" that connects various theories of literature? Students will be encouraged to think through these questions with reference to some excerpts from fundamental precursory work and, moreover, with reference to the basic texts of literary theory from this century. The goal is to provide the student with a basic grounding in major theoretical approaches, including formalism, Marxist literary theory, dialogism, structuralism and semiotics, narratology, New Criticism, reception theory, feminist literary theory, psychocriticism, deconstruction and sociocriticism, but we will also survey work in other fields, such as anthropoligy and linguistics, to demonstrate the "literary theory" doesn't operate, or shouldn't operate, in its own rarefied realm. We will apply theories to a range of (short!) literary excerpts from texts by authors including H. de Balzac, C. Baudelaire, N. Brossard, C. Dickens, F. Dostoyevsky, U. Eco, A. Ginsberg, R. Gruyden, A. Jarry, F. Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, D. Lodge, G. de Maupassant, R. Mistry, A. Pushkin, Sophocles, E. Sue, J. Winterson, and W. B. Yeats.
202. Themes in World Literature
Analysis and discussion of major themes in a selected number of the great works of literature, philosophy, and the arts that have been important to civilizations both Western and Eastern from antiquity to 1600. S05 , Claudia Schlee, MWF 11:10-12:00
203. Themes in World Literature
Analysis and discussion of major themes in a selected number of the great works of literature, philosophy and the arts that have been important to civilization both Western and Eastern from 1600 to the present. (not currently offered)
237. Medieval Women in their Own Words.
European writers from the late classical period through the Middle Ages. Autobiographies, hymns, fictions in poetry and prose with attention paid to ethnic and linguistic difference, cultural background, religious and philosophical ideas. Focus on political influence, personal relations, health and other life concerns, conditions in society, and self-perception as writers. (not curretly offered) Barrett
240. Literatures of Africa
Literatures of Africa, including works originally composed in Arabic and in French, English, or other European languages as well as in various African languages. Cultural variations are emphasized, including differences in linguistic backgrounds and religious beliefs (Islamic, Christian, and indigenous). Texts taught in translation. Authors typically included: Mafouz, Achebe, Ngugi, Soyinka, Djebar, Sembene. (not currently offered)
Nzabatsinda
271. Women's Writing in the Renaissance.
Writing by women in England, Europe, and the Americas from 1500 to 1680. The emergence of women's literature in the age of courtly centralization and foundation of colonies. Women's entry into the public domain is seen in diverse areas of the world affected by conflict between old and new customs and beliefs, and by vision of new geographies outlining unusual spaces. Authors typically included: Maria de Zayas, Ann Bradstreet, Lady Mary Wroth, Sor Juana de la Cruz. (not currently offered)
278. Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature.
Literature from countries colonized by Europe from eighteenth to twentieth century. Examines implications of colonial encounter, and formation of idea "post-colonial" culture. Subjects include language, freedom and agency, gender roles, representation of space, relation between power and narrative. Such authors as: Foster, Coetzee, Okri, Tagore, Chatterjee, Kincaid, Rushdie, Soyinda. (not currently offered)
285. Inter-American Literature: The Pre-Columbian Period through the Eighteenth Century.
Orality vs. the written tradition; the legacy of Native American literature; the literature of conquest, resistance, and colonization; colonial letters in North, Central, and South America; the origins of Inter-American cultural relations; the eighteenth century in the Americas. Authors may include: Galeano, Bernal Diaz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Brian Moore, Conde, and Naipaul. (not currently offered)
286. Inter-American Literature: The Nineteenth Century.
The coming of age of New World literature; the impact of Romanticism on cultural formation and independence; Native Americans in this process; New World nation-states and national literatures; slavery and race relations; the theme of miscegenation; issues of influence and reception; the rise of the New World novel; Naturalism in the Americas. Readings may include the following authors; Alencar, Henry James, Whitman, Machado de Assis, and Stowe. (offered 2005/2006)
287. Inter-American Literature: The Twentieth Century to the Present
Rodo and the United States; Modernism in the Americas; Depression era literature; the impact of Faulkner; the 1960s and the rise of the "new novel"' "realismo magico" and its impact in Brazil, the United States, and Canada; the politics and aesthetics of translation; the emergence of inter-American literature as an academic discipline. Readings may include Machado de Assis, Borges, Barth, Marquez, Fuentes, and Brossard. (offered 2005/2006)
290. Seminar in Methods in Comparative Literature and Theories of Reading and Interpretation.
Reading methods, critical approaches including reception, aesthetic, formalism(s), and symbolic, psychological, and structure approaches. Interdisciplinary study and the methodologies of the disciplines; problems of setting side by side works of different cultures; uses and abuses of translation. Limited to seniors and graduuate students. Prerequisite: 140-141 and one upper-division course, which may be taken concurrently. (not currently offered)
294a-294b. Special Topics in Comparative Literature
Topics of special interest, as announced in the Schedule of Courses.
311. The Figure of Greece in European Romanticism
The impact of Greece on the Romantics, especially their rethinking of history. (not currently offered)
312. Varieties of Twentieth Century Poetics
Text-based, rather than contextual approaches to literary works; New Criticism, Chicago neo-Aristotelianism, symbolic criticism of Northrop Frye, Russian formalism, Prague structuralism, Soviet semiotics, romance philology, French structuralism and poststructuralism. (not currently offered)
313. Literary Analysis and Theory
Methods of literary analysis for the teaching of literature. The systematic application of contemporary theories--structuralist and post-structuralist--in the analysis of poetry and narrative.
314. Anatomy of Criticism
Close analysis of the seminal theoretical texts of Northrop Frye, principally The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Words of Power: Being a Second Study of "The Bible and Literature" and the Anatomy of Criticism itself. (not currently offered)
315. Science and Literature: Creativity and Metaphor.
Creative mirrorings of innovative reconfigurations in science and literature. Authors include Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Borges, Kafka, Wiesel, Koyre, Prigogine. (not currently offered)
318. The Boundaries of Genre
Essay, aphorism, letter, maxim, preface, review. The ethics of reading and writing with examples from philosophy, history, and cutural criticism. Montaigne, Bacon, Lessing, Goethe, Diderot, Sainte-Beuve, Lamb, Emerson, Freud, Salvador de Madariaga. (not currently offered)
325. Renaissance Wit and Humor
Theory and practice of laughter in Renaissance Italy, France, England, and Germany. (not currently offered)
326. Introduction to Literary Modernism
Some acquaintance with French is virtually prerequisite for the course.
327. Theories of Poetic Language
Literary theories in relation to poetry. Theorists such as Rousseau, Schlegel, Heidegger, Derrida, and Kristeva will be studied in relation to poets such as Wordsworth, Poe, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Eliot. (not currently offered)
330. Seminar in the Enlightenment and its Literary Connection.
(not currently offered)
331. Nouvelle, Novella, Short Story: From Kleist to Maupassant
Focus on the nineteenth century, and in particular on the works of Kleist, Hoffman, Poe, Merimee, and Maupassant, with a view to identifying structures common to their narratives. (not currently offered)
332. Studies in Twentieth-Century Drama
The representation of power and history in drama. Functions of theater in relation to censorship and dogmatism.
(not currently offered)
333. Don Juan: Myth and Ideology
Dramatic structures of the two foundational texts of the Don Juan myth: Tirso's El Burlador de Seville and Moliere's Don Juan. (not currently offered)
334. The Bourgeois Novel
The role of the bourgeoisie and its social and aesthetic reflection in the dominant literary form of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England, Europe, and the Americas. Authors typically include: Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, Henry James, Macado de Assis. (not currently offered)
336.Concepts of Realism: The Impact of Marxist Literary Theory
Twentieth-century theories of literary realism, with special emphasis on the development of Marxist theory and practice and its critics. (not currently offered)
340. Beyond Good and Evil
Emergence of and complexity in literature against the backdrop of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (1886), E. O. Wilson's Consilience (1998), P. Cillier's Complexity and Postmodernism (1998); "beyond good and evil" as a catch phrase of modern decenteredness in such works as Notes from Underground, Mysterious Stranger, The Tin Drum. (not currently offered)
341. Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism: Classics Texts and Traditions
Broad selection of classic works of literary theory and criticism from antiquity through the nineteenth century will be read in an effort to furnish basic conceptual paradigms and grounding in cultural history for students training to work as literary critics and theorists. Perennial issues revolving around figurative language and narrative representation, the social function of literature, and the tensions between tradition and innovation will be studied in the founding texts of critical theory from Plato and Aristotle, Horace and Quintillian, Augustine and Macrobius, Dante and Boccaccio, Du Bellay and Corneille, Sidney, Dryden and Pope, Kant and Hegel, Schiller and Goethe, Madame de Sta'l, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley, Emerson, Poe, Baudelaire, Arnold, Pater, Nietzsche, and Wilde. Fall 04 Franke
342. Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism: From the Nineteenth Century to the Present.
Recent and canonical texts of criticism and theory will be compared so as to illustrate the range of purposes and cross-purposes to which contemporary critical discourse is put in relation to literary works and traditions. This will serve as a basic literacy course in theory, as well as making students conversant with a variety of the most provocative types of critical discourse emerging on the scene today. Currents to be covered include: Formalism and Structuralism, Prostructuralism, New Historical and Postcolonial Criticism, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies and Queer Theory, Hermeneutics and Phenomenology, Reader-Response, Cultural Studies. (not currently offered)
345. Hermeneutics
Study the idea of interpretation, including the Bible in the Middle Ages and Homer in Antiquity. Modern philosophical and critical theories; Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Fish, Dilthey. (not currently offered)
350. Emergences and Application of Literary Theories
Various literary theories throughout history, in various theorists from ancient to modern, and in fictional and poetic works that create or redefine what we call theory. Course emphasizes diversity in the experience of encountering theory. May be repeated. (not currently offered)
35l. Comparative Methodology
Comparative Literature as an academic discipline; definition, scholarly and theoretical distinctions, methodologies, applications, relationship to national literature units and humanities programs. Required of all gaduate students in Comparative Literature. Fitz, Fall 04
355. Seminar in Comparative Literature.
Topics to be announced in the Schedule of Courses
360. Philosophy and Literature
Problems and methodological issues inherent to the study of these two disciplines. Fall 05, Franke
369. Master's Thesis Research
380. Literary Theory
Fall 04, Barsky
385a-385b. Special Problems in Comparative Literature
390a-390b. Independent Study
399. PhD Dissertation Research
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