Comparative Literature - MA

This module investigates modernism as a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary phenomenon via close readings of a selection of literary and essayistic texts written in the early decades of the 20th century by a range of key European authors. After an exploration of the socio-cultural and historical contexts from which these texts emerge, we study the specificities of modernist literature by paying close attention to the formal and stylistic innovations which accompany typically modernist thematic preoccupations, such as deviant sexuality, the workings of the unconscious, self-reflexive thematizations of the specificities of the medium, new technological developments, the city, time, decay and a sense of metaphysical despair. Stylistic techniques such as multi-perspectivity, free indirect discourse, stream-of-consciousness, montage and fragmentation are explored not just as tools for rendering a dramatically altered conception of experience, but as formal expressions of the plight of the peripatetic modernist subject in their own right.

The course will be taught in English. Relevant texts may be studied in English translation, but students with proficiency in European languages are encouraged to read texts in the original language.

Our contemporary world has been shaped decisively by the histories of colonialism and imperialism and, concomitantly, of postcolonialism. Nationhood, hybridity and identity, globalism and regionalism, diasporas, the politics of gender and cultural diversity and difference have emerged as topics central not only to postcolonial studies but also to the interplay of regional and global societies and their cultural practices. However, when reviewing the engagement with postcolonial issues in Anglo-American academia, it is striking that there is a pronounced bias towards Anglophone postcolonial artistic, literary, and cinematic production. This obviously is a distorted perspective since not only do essential theoretical texts on colonialism and postcolonialism originate in other linguistic and cultural contexts (and have, like the writings of Frantz Fanon or Albert Memmi made their mark at least to a degree in postcolonial studies), but the cultural practices of other postcolonial spheres are no less versatile and varied.

While it is not practicable, nor even desirable or possible, to include 'all' postcolonial contexts, this module still aims at developing a distinctly comparative perspective on the various developments and interactions between the Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic spheres of postcolonial cultures, all of which originate from the confrontation with European colonialisms and imperialisms. It will highlight contexts, histories and locations of postcolonial cultures, it will investigate theorisations of postcolonial literatures and cultures and it will situate postcolonial cultural practices and theoretical writings within the complex, diverse histories and cultures which make up the 'postcolonial' world. To knit the various, linguistically defined, sections of this module together, texts have been chosen to allow the discussion of four central topics as they occur in different postcolonial cultures: language, identity, gender and nationhood. With Shakespeare's The Tempest and the essays by Rodó ("Ariel") and Retamar ("Calibán"), a frame is provided which introduces, encompasses and concludes the module's thematic concerns.

The notion of autobiography as a documentary genre, in which the writer unproblematically records the facts of his or her life, has been called into question by modern critical studies of the genre, many of the most important theorists of autobiographical writing insisting upon its central place in the literary canon, alongside plays, novels, and poems, with which it would share a certain ‘literariness’. Focusing on a wide range of modern autobiographical texts from different national and linguistic cultures, this module will treat questions of generic definition, form, motivation, and rhetorical strategy. Among the specific questions to be considered are: Can autobiography be strictly defined? How does autobiography relate to other literary genres such as the diary or the first-person novel? Is autobiography a particular kind of narrative? Is there an identifiable rhetoric of autobiography? Is sincerity a meaningful criterion when considering autobiography? What kinds of relationship do autobiographers attempt to establish with their readers? We shall also consider some of the recurring themes in autobiographical writing since the Romantic period, including the representation of childhood, the family, sexuality, gender, ethics, mortality, and politics.

This module is designed to familiarize students with the history of Comparative Literature as an academic discipline, to develop their ability to analyse critically the major conceptions of Comparative Literature that have emerged over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and to enable them to apply theories of Comparative Literature in the analysis of literary movements, literary genres, literary topoi (such as the ‘fallen woman’), and literary figures who recur at different moments in literary history (such as Odysseus, Oedipus, Antigone, and Faust). Students will begin by studying a range of major conceptions of Comparative Literature, and will consider the implications for the discipline of Comparative Literature of theories of globalization, multiculturalism, translation studies, and world literature. They will then proceed to analyse selected literary works within the framework of these conceptions of Comparative Literature. The module will therefore combine a theoretical with a practical literary-critical dimension, encouraging close reading and an appreciation of historical context in the analysis of theoretical and literary texts.

The nineteenth-century novel has traditionally been seen in terms of categories or movements such as romanticism, realism, and naturalism. This module, rather than viewing novels in terms of their supposed adherence to the principles of particular aesthetic movements, reads a selection of nineteenth-century French novels as documentary fictions: fictions which document the modernity that makes them possible, and which are underpinned by incorporative documentary practices for which that modernity is also a condition of possibility. Of particular interest will be the ways in which contemporary discourses from various fields (medicine, science, historiography, social thought) are incorporated into these fictions. Rather than identifying ‘sources’, however, the emphasis will be on situating fictional texts in their wider discursive and epistemological contexts, and identifying points of commonality between literary and extraliterary discourses.

This module examines a selection of French novels from the post-war period to the present day. Each of these novels employs the tropes of detective fiction as part of a wider literary project. The module invites students to analyse the ways in which the hermeneutic imperative of detective fiction is deployed within literary (and often experimental) fiction from this period. The corpus will include nouveaux romans, works by the Oulipo writer Georges Perec, the postmodern detective fictions of Pennac and Echenoz, and Amélie Nothomb’s autofiction. Students will be encouraged to explore questions of genre fiction, the productive interplay between genre fiction and literary fiction during this period, and the ways in which the tropes of detective fiction are used during the postmodern period to explore questions of knowledge, truth and identity.

This module will introduce students to a wide range of theoretical positions with the aim of enriching their understanding and appreciation of literature and critical practice. We will begin with the thinking of Nietzsche and Freud, before examining that of Saussure, Benjamin, Lévi-Strauss, Genette, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva, Cixous, and Irigaray. As well as encouraging a critical engagement with the claims of the theories themselves the module will examine a number of representative theoretical readings of literary works. Students will learn to evaluate these various thinkers and use their ideas, as appropriate, in their own writing.

This module examines a selection of pre-eminent texts in modern French art theory and philosophy. It invites students to analyse and to chart intersections and developments in French writing on the image across shifting critical landscapes, including those marked by phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism. Students will be encouraged to explore French theories of art with due attention to historical precedents, and to reflect on the aesthetic, political and technological significance of the visual arts for a wide range of French thinkers.

The topic of the dissertation will usually be based on, and develop from, work undertaken on one or more of the four coursework modules undertaken in the course of the MA. The dissertation must be comparative in nature, including an analysis of more than one work, from more than one national/linguistic tradition.