Special Topics in Comparative Literature

Enrollment in this seminar is limited exclusively to Comparative Literature students who will be writing an Honors Thesis during the 2012-2013 academic year. Although this seminar is optional rather than required for Comparative Literature Honors Thesis students (i.e., students who will be taking Comparative Literature CL H195 in 2012-2013, in which they will write an Honors Thesis under the direction of a faculty advisor), the seminar is nonetheless designed to help provide students with a strong background and training in what their Honors Thesis will entail.  The seminar will offer readings, discussions, and a sense of the trajectory across time and circumstance of some of the most influential texts in literary theory, criticism, and aesthetics from Plato and Aristotle until today. We will also attempt to apply these theoretical traditions to the actual practice of literary criticism by engaging (in essay assignments as well as in class discussions) the various theories and methodologies we’re studying with particular literary texts that students will likely be writing about in their Honors Theses. We’ll thus likewise consider some of the nuts and bolts involved in undertaking the sustained critical essay of forty or more pages that the Honors Thesis involves. The theory and criticism we’ll read and apply will include aspects of Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Neo-Classical, Enlightenment, Romantic and post-Romantic traditions, although we will emphasize the study of modern and recent trends (including New Criticism, Reader-Response, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction, New Historicism, Marxism, Feminism, and Race, Gender, and Sexuality-focused criticism). Our double-focus throughout the seminar will be on how literary theory and criticism have historically helped­-or hindered­-understandings of literature and literary/cultural works, and of how students can make literary theory and criticism help them as they think and work towards their upcoming H195 Honors Thesis projects (in terms of interpretation, analysis, methodology, and the practical tasks involved in writing a sustained critical essay).