ML1203 Reading Texts: Criticism for Comparative Literature

Terms 1 and 2 (30 credits)

Convenor: Dr Danielle Sands

Tutors: Dr Danielle Sands and Dr Ruth Cruickshank

Assessment

Formative Task (0%)

Portfolio of Exercises: 50%, 3000-3500 words

Essay 1: 25%, 1200-1500 words

Essay 2: 25%, 1500-2000 words 

Overview

In this course, students will be introduced to the theory, history, and practice of Comparative Literature. We will read a variety of historically, geographically, culturally, and stylistically diverse texts, asking questions such as:  

- How should we read? 

- Which texts are worth reading? 

- What is an author? 

- How can we compare texts from different time periods and cultures? 

- Should we read texts in translation? 

- What is genre and does it help or hinder our reading? 

We will read a selection of extracts and whole texts. These will be drawn widely from authors such as Homer, Valmiki, Elizabth Cook, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edward Said, and Emily Apter, so that students will develop a capacity for comparative literary appreciation by identifying, reflecting on, comparing and contrasting the strategies used across genres, cultures, and time periods. All passages from non-English-language works will be given in translation.  

Key Texts

-        Homer, The Iliad, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson: 2011)

-        Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales, trans. by Roger Whitehouse (London: Penguin, 2005)

-        Assia Djebar, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, trans. by Marjolijn de Jager (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 1992)

-        Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, trans. by Edith Grossman (London: Penguin, 2016)