بسم اللة الرحمن الرحيم

Elham Al_Bassam                        SYLLABUS            193  Introduction to Comparative Literature

Office Hours:9:00-10:00 on Sunday,Tuesday and Thursday at the Lounge ( Room 107)

(telephone 484110 ext.2411)or at my Office, Telephone 4982945 or Kaifan Campus :  ext 2945                             

www.geocities.com/elmbsm193

2^nd  Semester 2007/2008      Contact email:              [email protected]

This course aims to introduce students to Comparative Literature through the discussion of a range

 of different authors, literary genres and themes,

 through a selection of cultural texts and criticism. Special attention will be given to the wide range

 of topics possible for comparative study

 including languages, cultures, geographies, genres, disciplines, media, histories, etc. Readings may

 include Goethe, Wellek and Warren, Said, and Bernheimer, Bhabha, Fanon, among others

Exams:

Quiz 1                                   Tuesday    March 31 , 2009                10%

Mid-term Exam No.1          Tuesday    April 14 , 2009                   18%

Mid-term Exam No.2           Tuesday   May 26 , 2009                   20%

Presentation and projects                                                                 12%         

                                                                        

Final Exam   As Scheduled by the University                                  40%

 

Syllabus : classes start on Sunday, March 1 , 2009 and end on  Thursday June 11, 2009.

Week 1 Definitions of  Comparative literature Today and a brief overview of

the discipline’s historical development will take us from Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur to some recent debates about literature and globalization.

Weeks 2-3 Comparative Schools in the 1990s  and Comparative Literature and Cultural, translation and Regional Studies .

Week 4   Comparative Literature through the Imperial perspective and the

Post- Colonial Approaches :Edward Fitzgerald’s ‘low opinion’ of Oriental Literature- translator of

Rubaiyat of Omar  Khayyam ,a classic poem, Cultural Colonialism as Shakespeare was imported

to the Arab World or India, among Others and Chinua Achebe’s view of Comparative Literature

 in the Post- Colonial Era as a ‘ synonym for the narrow, self-serving parochialism of Europe’

Week 5     Student Presentations and Discussion of Quiz 1

 Week 6           Quiz 1 includes objective questions and short answers.

                           Edward Said’s Chapter on’ Narrative and Social Space’

Week 7    Jane’s Austen’s Mansfield’s Park and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

as representative of overseas possessions and a  West Indian Character

Week 8                Midterm Exam 1  (short essay answers)

                           Edward Said’s ‘Camus and the French Imperial Experience’

 

Week 9   Nationalism in Ireland and Egypt and Palestine: James Joyce’s 

A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Yeats ’s Poetry on Ireland : Edward Said’s ‘ Yeats and

Decolonization’ Mahfouz’s The Cairo Trilogy and Darwish’s poetry on Palestine: S. Bassnett’s ‘ Gender and Themantics’

 

Week 10        Antony and Cleopatra : S. Bassnett’s ‘Constructing Cultures : The

Politics of Travelers’ Tales’

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 11       Othello : S. Bassnett’s ‘Constructing Cultures: the Politics of

Traveller’s Tales’

Week 12      Oral  Presentations

Week 13      : Midterm 2 ( short essay answers)

                        Oral presentations of Students’ Reports or critical Responses

Week 14      Comparative Literature and Translation Studies

Week 15     Revision and Student Presentations

Final Exam   As Scheduled by the University                            40%

 

Textbooks :

Bassnett, Susan. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

        Said, Edward W.  Culture and Imperialism. New York:  Vintage, 1994.

 

Further Readings

Apter, Emily, The Translation Zone. A New Comparative Literature, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005.

Bernheimer, Charles (ed.), Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Casanova, Pascale, La république mondiale des lettres, Paris, Édition du Seuil, 1999.

Guillén, Claudio, The Challenge of Comparative Literature, transl. by C. Franzen, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1993.

Koelb, Clayton and Susan Noakes (eds.), Comparative Perspective on Literature: Approaches to Theory and Practice, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1988.

Kushner, Eva, The Living Prism. Itineraries in Comparative Literature, Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.

Miller, J. Hillis, On Literature, London, Routledge, 2002.

Prendergast, Christopher (ed.), Debating World Literature, London, Verso, 2004.

Saussy, Haun (ed), Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Death of a Discipline, New York, Columbia University Press, 2003.

Weininger, Robert (ed), Comparative Literature at a Crossroads?, Special Issue of Comparative Critical Studies, 3.1-2, 2006.

 

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