Comparative Literature

This course explores the wide range of functions and representations of illness and disease in a variety of European literary and theoretical texts, primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries, but drawing on works from earlier periods for contextual framing. It considers how the metaphorical employment of illness can reflect changing beliefs related to individual identity, socio-cultural codes, narrative construction, and the possibilities and limitations of language itself. Students start with a series of approaches to illness and literature, including a brief theoretical overview of modern canonical writings on illness by Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, which provide an introduction to common tropes of mythologizing and metaphorizing illness as well as the linguistic challenges to its representation; the field of disability studies; and the representation of plague through time. They then move on to focused thematic explorations of disease via close comparative readings of texts, considering both what literature can tell us about illness, and what the use and representation of illness can tell us about literature.

Through reading world literary masterpieces, this course examines the composition of various literary elements, meaning of classic literature, and relationship between literature and our life and times. This course selects world literary masterpieces from different periods and regions, and analyzes the themes, characters, structure, style, and language of the works.

This course is a continuation of the survey of European literature from the cusp of Romanticism through Modernism, focusing on key literary texts, supplemented with other cultural material (from philosophy, the sister arts, etc.). The aim of this course is to familiarize DFLL students with key non-Anglophone European literary texts from the "long" 19th century as crucial to an understanding of the contemporary British and American texts in their other courses, and as recent prehistory of the present.

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) has become recognized as one of the leading figures in world literature. Perhaps more than any other major author, Kafka is associated with one geographical location: the city of Prague. Kafka's works themselves are not explicitly about Prague, nor are they set in Prague. But we cannot say that Prague is irrelevant to Kafka's works, for Kafka spent almost all of his life in the city. Therefore, we cannot “read” Prague through or into Kafka's works, but comparing the two is surely fruitful. The most obvious connection between Kafka's works and the city of Prague is Franz Kafka the historical person. While one always wants to be cautious about biographizing creative work, this course will take into consideration Kafka's life and times in reading and analyzing his fiction. Such an adventure is best undertaken in the city of Prague itself. Kafka's fiction that will be read in the course are organized in a chronological manner, along with relevant critical material for each work. However, less time-bound thematic issues will also be addressed in a less linear fashion, such as the cultural and historical interaction with the fiction, Kafka's development as a writer, the impact of Kafka's biographical story on his stories, Kafka's use of animal characters, and the narrative innovations that Kafka implemented. The course will focus on a selection from Kafka's many well-known short stories and one of his three novels. Kafka's works will be studied in English translation; they were originally written in German.

In the Meiji period, many predicted that the traditional genre of the haiku would rapidly disappear as Japan transformed into a modern society. Contrary to this prediction, the haiku has proved to be widely popular, not only in modern Japan, but also outside the country, especially in North America. This phenomenon raises many questions. Are modern haiku the same as traditional haiku? Are haiku written in English the same as those written in Japanese? How far can a form of poetry change and yet still be regarded as the same form? This course answers these questions by surveying the historical development of the haiku from its roots in the medieval poetic form of the renga to contemporary haiku being written in Japan and abroad. 

This course teaches the major conventions of the haiku form; the differences between classical hokku and modern haiku; the representative works of the major poets through the centuries and the ways in which haiku were understood and misunderstood when they were introduced to Western countries. 

This course examines the history of Asian immigrants in America and their literary and visual representation in American popular culture. It covers the early Asian immigration and discusses the cultural representation of Asians through watching several historical documentaries and reading literary texts. The course analyzes Asian American plays in order to see how each playwright uses different strategies and styles in order to communicate his or her political messages and ideologies to the audience. Considerable attention is given to understanding how diasporic experience and diasporic sensibility may be differ in terms of gender, ethnicity, and generation. For the first few weeks, the course provides an overview of the history of Asian American immigrants and European/American representation of Asians on stage, starting from the late nineteenth century. Next the course examines first generation of Asian American writers' major plays, essays, and critical writings in theatre and drama since the 1960s to 1980s, together with critical issues in Asian American communities. And finally, the course explores various themes, dramatic strategies, and aesthetics of contemporary Asian American playwrights including Korean American writers.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on women's popular culture with specific reference to travel literature and critical utopias, within a gender perspective. This course explores the multi-layered meanings that utopia as a literary genre and utopianism as a form of thought acquire for women’s access to writing and to the public and contemporary debates. Starting from the analysis of some emblematic texts written by male authors, for example UTOPIA (1516) by Thomas More and NEW ATLANTIS (1628) by Francis Bacon, the course investigates the way in which this hybrid genre initiates a dialogue with classical utopianism and the great tradition as well as intertwining it with other contemporary emergent literary genres (travel writing, romance, novel, closet drama, theater and scientific treatises). The course then explores female forms of utopia from the 17th century to the 20th century and examines the ways in which female writers read the utopian paradigm and interpret it as a possible space for female agency and empowerment. The course also questions how women used the utopian paradigm to discuss the obstacles and possibilities in women’s private and public life and to propose social and political changes.