LITERATURE
SEQUENCE COURSES: Historical
studies in the Comparative, English and American literature traditions are
organized into sequences. Please notify
the instructor if you need a sequence course in order to moderate in the fall
of 2015.
91583 |
LIT 204A Comparative Literature I |
Karen Sullivan |
. T . Th . |
10:10 am -11:30 am |
OLIN 303 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Medieval
Studies It was over the course
of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance that the concept of the author, as we
now conceive of it, first emerged. When a literary work is composed, who is it
who composes it? To what extent does such a work represent the general culture
out of which it emerged, and to what extent does it reflect an individual
consciousness? How does our assumption of who the author is affect how our
reading of the text? We will be keeping these questions in mind as we examine
the shift in medieval and Renaissance literature from epic to lyric and
romance; from orally-based literature to written texts; and from anonymous
poets to professional writers. Texts to be read will include The Song of
Roland, troubadour lyrics, Arthurian romances, The Romance of the Rose,
Dante's Inferno, Petrarch’s sonnets, Boccaccio’s Decameron,
Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies,
and Francois Villon's Testament. Class size: 20
91755 |
LIT 204B Comparative Literature II: Baroque,
Enlightenment, and the Age of Sensibility |
Joseph Luzzi |
. T . Th . |
10:10 am -11:30 am |
OLIN 301 |
ELIT |
We
will study the major theoretical and practical literary issues in the period
1600 to 1800. Our discussions will begin by examining the dialogue between
poetry and the other arts of the Baroque, especially
the music of Bach and the sculpture of Bernini. Then our focus will be on how
principal literary debates (e.g., the quarrel of the ancients and moderns, the
aesthetic attitudes of the New Science, the Encyclopedia project, and the
emergence of modern feminism) shaped some of the profound historical and
cultural changes of the age. As part of our sustained reflection on the role
and reach and poetry, we will also examine the critique of Enlightenment
rationality and rhetoric in the Age of Sensibility and Storm and Stress
movements. A final goal will be to consider how the idea of
"literature" itself underwent changes in the 17th and 18th centuries
that reflected the complex attitudes toward modernity in this period of
scientific, cultural, and political revolution. Authors will include Descartes,
Vico, Voltaire, Mme de Graffigny, Rousseau, Goethe, and Wollstonecraft; as well as
their recent critics Adorno, Culler, Eagleton, Habermas,
and Said. Class size: 22
91759 |
LIT 250 English Literature I |
Noor Desai |
M . W . . |
1:30 pm -2:50 pm |
OLIN 310 |
ELIT |
How did
91761 |
LIT 252 English Literature III |
Cole Heinowitz |
. T . Th . |
11:50 am -1:10 pm |
OLIN 303 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Victorian Studies This course
explores developments in British literature from the late eighteenth century to
the twentieth century—a period marked by the effects of the French and American
Revolutions, rapid industrialization, the rise and decline of empire, two world
wars, the development of regional identities within Britain, and growing
uncertainty about the meaning of "Britishness" in a global context.
Beginning with the "Romantics" and ending with avant
garde English poetry of the 1970s and 1980s, we will
discuss such issues as the construction of tradition, the imagining of Britain,
conservatism versus radicalism, the empire, and the usefulness (or not) of
periodization. The centerpiece of the course is close reading—of poetry, prose,
essays, and plays. There will also be a strong emphasis on the historical and
social contexts of the works we are reading, and on the specific ways in which
historical forces and social changes shape and are at times shaped by the
formal features of literary texts. Class size: 15
91762 |
LIT 257 American Literature I |
Alexandre Benson |
. T . Th . |
1:30 pm -2:50 pm |
ASP 302 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: American Studies This course will look at early and
antebellum American writing (17th to mid-19th century) through questions of
colonization and indigeneity; race, gender, and authorship; religion and the
state; and aesthetic tradition and innovation. Our attention will focus
primarily on the formal peculiarities through which individual texts develop
their responses to these questions. These texts will include poems, novels,
short stories, captivity narratives, and more by authors including Rowlandson,
Edwards, Equiano, Wheatley, Jefferson, Schoolcraft, Irving, Brown, Apess, Hawthorne, Poe, and Douglass. Class size: 22
91763 |
LIT 259 American Literature III |
Matthew Mutter |
. T . Th . |
11:50 am -1:10 pm |
HEG 102 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: American Studies This course tracks the development of American
literature from the late nineteenth century to World War II. We will explore new literary movements such
as regionalism and naturalism; we will be particularly concerned with modernism
in its various manifestations. Along the
way we will attend to a number of political and social developments (westward
expansion, U.S. imperialism, WWI, Jim Crow, first-wave feminism, urbanization)
as well as certain cultural and intellectual revolutions (the rise of the
social sciences, the proliferation of mass media and the commodification of
culture, secularization, Social Darwinism) that the literature of the time both
absorbed and engaged. Writers likely to be covered include Twain, Crane, James,
Cather, Larsen, Toomer, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Stevens, Moore,
Hughes, Frost, Pound, and Eliot. Class size: 20