Studies in the Relations Between Literature and the Other Arts (Combined with Film 240)

The seminar will examine Brazilian Concrete poetry in its international, intermedial, and historical contexts. We will analyze the “verbivocovisual” poems of the “Noigandres” group and their theoretical foundations as elaborated primarily by Décio Pignatari and the brothers Haroldo and Augusto de Campos.  The particular characteristics of these poems will be determined by comparing them with those produced by the other leading figures of the international Concrete Poetry movement of the 1950s and 60s. Immediate models (texts by Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Pound, Cummings and others) as well as the proto-Concrete scene of the early 1900s and the tradition of pattern poetry going back to Greek technopaignia will provide the literary background. Models in other media include the work of Mondrian, Malevich, Albers, and Max Bill as well as Eisenstein, Webern, and Cage. Joint exhibits with Brazilian Concrete visual artists, musical settings by avant-garde composers, and the impact of Concrete poetry on Brazilian popular music will provide aspects of the immediate intermedial contexts. — Grades will be based on brief analytical exercises, a bibliography project, and a term paper.