Graduate Courses Fall 2007
Comparative Literature 351 - Lyric and Poetry's Dialogue
Lecture: TR 1:00-2:15 / 14 Ingraham
Disc: R 2:25 / 591 Van Hise
Instructor: Professor Irene Santos
Focusing on the poetry and poetics of Portuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa, this course aims at rethinking modern lyric poetry and some of its problems. Primary texts (whether in their entirety or in excerpts) will be such self-interruptive "epics of the modern consciousness" as Crane's The Bridge (1930), Pessoa's Mensagem (1934), Neruda's Canto general (1950), Stevens's Notes toward a Supreme Fiction (1942) Langston Hughes's Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), H. D.'s Helen in Egypt (1960), and Próspero Saíz's "Chants of Nezahualcoyotl" (1996). The Book of Disquiet(ude) , by Pessoa's "semi-heteronym" Bernardo Soares (first published posthumously in 1982), will guide us throughout.
Texts:
Hart Crane, Complete Poems and Selected Letters . Ed. by Langdom Hammer (Library of America)
H. D., Helen in Egypt (New Directions)
Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems . Ed. Arnold Rampersad (Vintage)
Pablo Neruda, Canto General . Trans. by Jack Schmitt (U of California P)
Fernando Pessoa, Always Astonished. Selected Prose .Ed. and trans. by Edwin Honig (City Lights)
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet . Ed. and trans. by Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics)
Fernando Pessoa, Poems . Ed. and trans. by Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown (City Lights)
Fernando Pessoa, Selected Prose . Ed. and trans. by Richard Zenith (Grove)
Próspero Saíz, Chants of Nezahualcoyotl & Obsidian Glyph (Ghost Pony Press)
Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America)
Some critical and theoretical material will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Comparative Literature 358 / Meets with Scandinavian 450
Scandinavian Decadence in its European Context
MW 2:30-3:45 / 483 Van Hise
Professor Susan Brantly -
1366 Van Hise - 262-9637
MW 2:30-3:45 / 483 Van Hise
And Niels Graff spoke--about that which is dying. Niels Graff said: "I am a Darwinist and a decadent. I believe that the brutal will live and the beautiful will die. In the battle for existence, waged between those social organisms which are called states, those will triumph whose crudity is greatest and those will fall whose soul is refined, and whose striving is directed toward the highest goal. I believe that societies develop as animals and plants do. The earth is filled with the crudest and roughest sorts, while the beautiful and the fine ones become rarer and rarer, and are destroyed.
Johannes Jørgensen, The Tree of Life , 1893
Nuts and Bolts: This course meets three times per week. We will often enjoy guest lectures in this class, and students are urged not to miss any classes. Comparative Literature students should read the texts in their target languages in the original. Scandinavian Studies majors should plan to read all Scandinavian texts in the original. Literature in Translation students may read all the texts in translation.
Comparative Literature 372 / Meets with Classics 373: Ancient Novel and its Influence
M. Goldman-
MW 2:30-3:45 / 201 Van Hise
This course is an examination of the ancient novels and their influence on later fiction, focusing on the representation of love and sexuality, social life, and narrative technique. Ancient texts: Xenehon of Ephesus, Chariton, Archilles Tatius, Longus, Heliodorus, Petronius, Apuleius; Later Fiction" Lazarillo de Thormes, Sidney's 'new' Arcadia, Walpole's Castle of Otranto.
Comparative Literature 475 - Poetics and Literary Theory-The Problem of Metaphor
MW 2:30-3:45 / 583 Van Hise
Professor Max Statkiewicz -
Ph (608) 262-7862 - 958 Van Hise
Metaphor-a major poetical and rhetorical figure, sometimes emblematic of figurative language in general-has become recently an object of intensive research and philosophical questioning. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and de Man, for example, associate metaphor with the
representational mode of metaphysical thinking. In America, Lakoff, Johnson, Turner and others see metaphor as a function of the basic cognitive function of the human mind, susceptible of empirical inquiry. Ricoeur attempts to defend metaphor against the critique of Heidegger
and Derrida in a synthesis of continental and analytical thought.
In this course we shall survey the traditional theories of metaphor and then introduce the current debate over its metaphysical, poetical, rhetorical, cognitive, political, etc., status. Throughout our course of study we shall test the proposed theories against some famous examples
of "poetic" metaphors.
Tentative Reading:
Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor
Lakoff and Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor
Course Reader (including literary texts and theoretical essays)
CL 702: Problems in Comparative Studies
The Problem* of the Comparative
R @ 3:30-6:00 - 951 Van Hise
Professor Max Statkiewicz -
Ph (608) 262-7862 - 958 Van Hise
An Introduction to the Discipline of Comparative Literature:
The Problem* of the Comparative
What is and was the comparative? How was it defined in the classical Greek context so dear to the hearts of the 19th century construction engineers of the European field of "comparative literature"? How was it defined by those 19th century constructors and by their heirs? And what is it--the question or the problematic of the comparative--in the 21st century?
Of course the comparative is–but not only–the adjectival modifier of “literature” in the discipline under the sign of which we write, study, and teach. But, the questions above can stand as an initial approach to the comparative that is not neatly or exclusively captured under the rubric of "comparative literature."
We will inquire into the history and the present of the discipline of comparative literature as well as into the poiesis (the ‘making and doing’) of comparative analysis and theory. And we will look and listen to texts, images, that take up and enact the problem of the comparative.
Likely readings:
• ACLA Reports on the Discipline
• Etel Adnan, Of Cities & Women, Sitt Marie Rose
• Aeschylus: The Persians, The Suppliants
• Aristophanes: Clouds
• Aristotle: The Poetics
• Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: Representations of Reality in Western Literature
• Euripides: Medea
• Freud: Dora
• Hayashi Fumiko, selected short stories
• Herodotus: The Persian Wars (selections)
• Marx: The 18th Brumaire, The German Ideology & letters on ‘the Russian Road’ (from Teodor Shanin, ed. Late Marx and the Russian Road)
• Montaigne: "On Cannibals," "On the Education of Children," "On Books," "On Experience"
• Plato: The Republic, Phaedrus
• Tayeb Saleh: Season of Migration to the North
• Sappho: selected poems
• Sophocles: Antigone
• Gayatri Spivak: Death of a Discipline
• the Bible: “Genesis,” “Book of Ruth,” “Book of Job”; Gospels of John & Luke, letters of Paul
• Selections from the Koran
• Selections from the Manyoshu, Sei Shonagon’s Makura no soshi, Basho’s Oku no hosomichi
* Problem: from the classical Greek, προβάλλειν, to throw out or before. And, problematic: from πρόβλημα/προβάλλειν - a situation, practical or theoretical, for which there is no adequate automatic or habitual response and therefore one which calls up the process of reflection and which considers what might be or is capable of occurring as opposed to the actual or the necessary. Louis Althusser, as per your 2nd Year Exam Reading List, notes the object of inquiry of a problematic as ‘the theoretical framework of system determining the significance of a particular concept, the central propositions and omissions of that framework or system.’
CL771 Literary Criticism: State of Theory
T @ 3:30-6:00 - 367 Van Hise
Professor Mary Layoun
Ph. (608) 262-9767 - 938 VanHise