Description:
In recent years, scholars have questioned, critiqued, revised, and collapsed the very notion of “world literature.” The concept of a “masterpiece” has undergone similar scholarly renovations. The first question that this course asks, then, and one to which we shall return all year long, is a reflexive one: What does the “world literature” in its title refer to? What is world literature? Is the definition based on language, geography, influence, translation? How does a course like this understand the “world”? Second, and no less important, we will consider the idea of literature. Over the course of the year, we will read novels, plays, and poetry; we will also watch films, hear music, and look at paintings. Moving fluidly across generic boundaries will lead us through porous temporal and geographic boundaries as well, revealing passageways between England and Japan; between the fourteenth century and the twenty first; between the ancient and the modern. We shall set sail on our imaginative voyage armed with a rigorous critical sensibility, an energetic engagement with the texts at hand, and an eye to their contemporary relevance.
Assignments:
50% Writing
You will write three essays over the course of this semester. The first is a 2-3 page reaction paper (10/50); the second is a 3-4 page close reading (15/50); and the third is a 4-5 page comparative paper (25/50). The comparative paper will require close examination of two different texts and the integration of peer-review comments. Your grades for all three papers will be based on clarity (including grammar and style); the originality of your ideas; the persuasiveness of your arguments; and the level of your engagement with the texts at hand.
50% Participation (25% vigorous participation in discussion; 25% oral presentation)
This course aims not only to expose you to great texts and to encourage you to think critically and analytically about them, but also to teach you to interact and engage with one another intellectually. You will present your own thoughts and ideas and, in turn, hear others that may confirm, enrich, or challenge your own. You will question, agree, disagree, disown, disprove, critique, adapt, revise, and rethink your own interpretations in light of our class discussion. You will learn to think of thinking as a dynamic force, of ideas not only as pearls of solitary labors but also of exchange and dialogue. This is especially critical as we shape our understanding of “truth” as itself plural and ever shifting. Energetic participation in and contribution to class discussion is integral (25% of course grade). The second component of the participation grade (25% of course grade) consists of an oral presentation by pairs of students on the cultural and historical context of a given text. The topic will provide relevant background to the texts at hand, and, ideally, will lead the class into a fertile class discussion via a brief subsequent question and answer session. Students are strongly encouraged to use multimedia for their presentations.
Texts:
Homer, The Odyssey, (Harper; trans. Lattimore)
Sophocles, Sophocles I (U of Chicago Press; trans. Grene)
Virgil, The Aeneid (Penguin; trans. Fagles)
Sturluson, The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology (Penguin; trans. Byock)
Dante, Inferno (Anchor; trans. Hollander)
Goethe, Faust (Part I) (Oxford UP; trans. Luke)
Shakespeare, Macbeth (Bedford)
Shakespeare, King Lear (Arden)
Films - on reserve at the Fine Arts Library (FAL)
About the Professor:
Karen Grumberg earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA in 2004. She specializes in modern Hebrew literature but also studied twentieth-century American literature and French. Her first book, Place and Ideology in Contemporary Hebrew Literature, was published in 2011 by Syracuse University Press. Currently she is writing a book on Gothic tropes in Hebrew literature, and is happy to have a legitimate excuse to spend time thinking, reading, and writing about vampires and melancholic castles.
