Comparative Literature

This course explores the 19th- and 20th-century development of crime fiction, with a double focus on the subgenres of detective fiction and of the psychological thriller, which flourished in relation to the relevance psychoanalysis acquired as an interpretative paradigm of the human. Its aim is to illustrate the complexity of a genre that was reductively considered in the past as structurally formulaic and critically uninteresting, but which has recently obtained increasing attention and recognition as a significant literary phenomenon.

This cross-media genre is explored as a ‘field of tension’ in order to study the changing status of both detection/detectives (due to the development of forensic science) and of crime/criminals (due to the continuous reshaping of laws and social norms). The course investigates the interplay between aspects of the detective such as mind and body (thinking machines versus vulnerable detectives), intellect and emotions (how do these apparently opposed dimensions concur to the personality of fallible and infallible detectives?). Students also utilize the critical category of gender to investigate authorial issues and characterization.

Upon completing this course, students acquire an in-depth knowledge of the history of English literature. They obtain critical insight into a selection of literary works and can evaluate their literary qualities, analyzing them with the help of precise critical metholodogies. They acquire the theoretical tools needed to recognize the formal, thematic and stylistic components of the works included in the syllabus, relating them to their historical and cultural contexts. Students discuss, translate, and relate the contents of these works from a linguistic, historical, and philological viewpoint.

This course introduces scholarship, debates, methods, and professional trends in the field of literary studies, considering questions of theory, application, interdisciplinary, and textuality. It trains students in the methods used to conduct literary research in their papers and theses, giving careful attention to library resources and academic style. Thie seminar explores questions of who Indigenous peoples are, what Indigeneity is, and where Indigenous nations exist. It addresses these questions by reading a wide range of theory in the field of Indigenous Studies from around the world and also taking a look at some creative work. The course develops a comprehensive understanding of colonization and decolonization and incorporates that understanding into individual areas of study. 

This course is designed to acquaint students with the concepts and values underlying the rhetorical traditions in China and the West (esp. rhetorical traditions which affect how native speakers of Chinese and English communicate). Students are expected to better understand the differences and similarities which affect the key concepts and values in rhetorical practice across cultures. Materials that will be studied and discussed include the Analects (Chinese and English bilingual version) by Confucius and Aristotle’s On Rhetoric (English translation), and important literature on comparative rhetoric with a focus on Chinese and Western (mainly Greco-Roman) rhetorical traditions.

In order to approach the Feminine/Masculine dichotomy or its complementarity, it is worth taking a diachronic approach that embraces different literary genres and philosophical arguments. From the earliest texts of Antiquity to contemporary novels, it's important to note the clichés and canons of the two genres in order to better reopen representations of binarity. Starting with Plato's myth of the androgyne, which proposes the invention of the sexes, the course works on the definitions of masculine and feminine, as well as their relationships. It then studies extracts from medieval literature to analyze the implementation of a codified image of masculine behavior and feminine posture. This highlights works less frequently found in school anthologies, and discovers original voices that sing of the links between men and women. The Renaissance period is explored through a painting by a man depicting a woman: starting from this banal subject, it sees the stakes, both poetic and aesthetic, in the figuration of the symbols chosen. Crossing the Grand siècle, with its coquettes, inconstants and honest men, the course moves on to the Age of Enlightenment, where the question of gender becomes pressing, with the proposals of Poulain de la Barre, for example. The poetics of uncertain or metamorphosed genders is explored using texts from the 19th and 20th centuries: the castrato, the hermaphrodite, and transvestites are studied. The course looks at new ways of referring to these figures as they find their representation in literature. Intersexuality will thus be examined in the light of works chosen for their literary interest and the philosophical reflection they generate. Finally, it takes a closer look at representations of male and female bodies in contemporary literature, focusing on the poetics of weakness, injury and ageing, with particular reference to the motif of the gaze of a third party and that of the mirror to which one speaks of one's own body.

This course examines the configuration of space, place, and identity in relation to languages, gender, and social class in Sinophone literature and culture. Engaging the issues of multiculturalism, linguistic plurality, narrative heteroglossia, and transnational im/mobility. This class probes the concept of the Sinophone and how it relates to, complicates, and challenges China and Chineseness. What is the Sinophone? How does it inform our readings of texts produced outside and on the margin of China and Chineseness? In challenging existing centers of power and hegemony, does the Sinophone form new centers? How does migration during different time periods and across different space shape the cultures of these Sinophone sites? Building on recent scholarship on Sinophone studies, this course draws on postcolonial and postmodern theories to examine a culturally and geographically diverse body of contemporary Sinophone fiction and film.

This advanced course on postcolonial literature situates the representative texts of postcolonial literature in broader intellectual and historical contexts, exploring not only the works of literature under this category but also the important issues often associated with postcolonial studies in general by means of comparative, historical, and theoretical approaches.

This course examines what is a sonnet, what does it do with language, what does it do to and for us? It starts with Shakespeare’s Sonnets, with how they took life from their Italian precursors, especially Petrarch, and from a number of English innovators, and how they grew larger in a kind of dialogue with sonnet- writers such as Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. The early modern literary field is foundational (including Donne and Milton for example), but it is not by any means the end. 

This course offers a study of the structural, formal, and thematic characteristics of literary texts. Topics include: literature as a communicative language-- text and context; textual cohesion and textual pragmatics; the literary text-- nature, properties, and study methods; theory and praxis of text analysis and its typologies-- narrative, essayistic, lyrical, and dramatic.

The course introduces students to 20th century Persian-language literary texts available in translation as a means of understanding the efforts of an ever-expanding Iranian intellectual class to address issues surrounding the rise of the modern nation-state in the Middle East generally and Iran in particular over this period via use of both the short story and the novel. The course can intersect with other departmental courses on modern Middle Eastern Studies, allowing students to explore their particular interests generally. But, it also intersects in particular with a course in modern Persian history which considers the political and socio-economic history of Iran since the 16th century.