This course will explore the biblical tradition in modern literature beyond the dichotomy of East and West. We will focus on close readings of selections from the Hebrew Bible in English translation in conjunction with a series of poems written in different languages that make central use of these biblical sources, from William Blake to Leonard Cohen, from Itzik Manger to Yehuda Amichai, and from Rilke to Else Lasker-Schuler. One underlying concern of the course will be the function of various types of biblical intertextuality (allusion, parody, translation, etc).

This course examines forms of Modern Greek writing (prose, poetry, drama) and the reading of literary texts as auxiliary to the acquisition of compositional skills.

Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor.

A reader for the course is prepared by the instructor.

What does literature do in the digital age? How have literature and art confronted their relationship with mass media or broader cultural and historical trends? How do media forms condition our relationship with time, and with identity? How are the literary and critical writing about it “media practices” in themselves, and how do they relate to other kinds of “media acts”?

In many genres and periods, marriage has been the privileged choice for marking a text’s “happy ending.” Why should this one social institution have come to stand as the symbol of the plot’s resolution? What assumptions about both marriage and narrative does this choice imply? In this class, we will examine not only texts in which the marriage plot plays its predictable role but also texts in which it is thwarted, parodied or inverted. We will approach these texts both from the viewpoint of narrative structure and from the viewpoint of social or ideological frames of meaning.

20:101, Mon 10-11:11, 210 Dwinelle, A. Gadberry
20:102, Tu 11-12:00, 189 Dwinelle, K. Crim
20:103, Wed 10-11:00 214 Haviland, K. Crim
20:104, Wed 2-3:00, 204 Dwinelle, A. Gadberry

In many ways Shakespeare is the literary inventor of modernity. His plays depict the psychological, political, economic, and social upheavals that mark the transition from the pre-modern world to a world that is recognizably our own. But he is also the most international of all writers.

We will focus on the short fiction, parables, and letters of Kafka – as well as The Trial –  in addition to theoretical discussions of Kafka’s works by Theodor Adorno , Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Georg Lukács, Gershom Scholem, and Jacques Derrida.  We will ask in what way Kafka’s work poses philosophical questions for his time, focusing on historical progress, authority, and the bodily form of human life.  We will engage in close readings of Kafka’s work to find out in what ways philosophical questions are posed in his writing, and how fiction becomes part of philosophical inquiry.

This course focuses on the examination of female deviance from the accepted standards of society in terms of attitude and behavior. This course examines representations of deviance and the violation of the norms (social, cultural, gender, biological) by central female characters in 19thand 20th century Modern Greek fiction. By accepting these literary texts as cultural texts, and by placing them in their historical context, this course also examines how these powerful, polysemic characters are associated not only with literal but also with mythological levels of meaning.

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.

A study of Indo-European mythology as it is preserved in some of the earliest myth texts in Celtic, Norse, and Greek literatures.  The meaning of myth will be examined and compared from culture to culture to see how this meaning may shed light on the ethos of each society as it is reflected in its literary works.  The role of oral tradition in the preservation of early myth will also be explored.  The Celtic texts that will be read are the IrishSecond Battle of Mag Tuired and The Táin, and in Welsh, the tales of Lludd and Llefelys and Math; the Norse text

The literary and artistic avant-garde of the early twentieth century was the most radical expression of European modernism in literature and art. We will be focusing on the four most forceful and creative of the literary movements to have swept through Europe between the 1910’s and the 1930’s: Italian and Russian futurism, dada in Zurich and Paris, Soviet constructivism, and French surrealism. We will be reading (and sometimes performing!) avant-garde poetry, literary manifestoes, short performance texts, experimental fiction and memoirs.