Comparative Literature (M.Phil.) website - Options
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The Russian Avant Garde
Coordinators : Justin Doherty (Russian & Slavonic Studies)
The aim of this course is to acquaint students with the history of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20 th century, to examine the textual and visual practices of leading participants in the movement, and to study the theoretical basis for major strands of this movement. The course will follow a standard lecture-seminar format. Each week students will be required to familiarize themselves with a set topic or body of work, as well as to complete reading assignments; students will be required to present their own work individually in the form of seminar papers, to be delivered in the second (seminar) hour on a weekly basis. Knowledge of Russian is not a formal requirement for this course, but will be an advantage; for students who do not know Russian, familiarity with the Cyrillic alphabet will be essential.
After completing the course students should be able to
- Appreciate and analyse critically literary works and artwork produced by leading members of the Russian avant-garde
- Have a detailed understanding of the theoretical writings underpinning Russian avant-garde practices
- Have an understanding of the international impact of the Russian avant-garde as well as an appreciation of its enduring importance in Russian culture
Dantean Echoes
Coordinator: Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Italian)
We examine the influence of Dante on subsequent writers, and some aspects of Dante's own influences. Intertextual, semiotic, and broadly cultural approaches are offered, allowing wide scope for a variety of comparative approaches. Various lecturers present authors from different national cultures and historical periods - drawn from writers such as Spenser, Milton, Pound, Pasolini, Beckett, Heaney, Carson and Ross Macdonald.
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Cultures of Memory and Identity in Central Europe
Coordinator: Clemens Ruthner (Germanic Studies)
The dual aim of this course is to bring together selected chapters of Central European area studies with central notions of cultural theory such as space, memory, nation and identity, transformation/transition, etc. This should lead to a better knowledge of the CEE countries on the one hand, and, on the other, provide an introduction to some crucial approaches in cultural studies to inform future projects of the student. The course will be team-taught by members of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures as well as by some outside contributors, who have the expertise in the required fields. It will be a mixture of lecture and seminar, leading to student self-study (class preparation/reading assignments every week) and research projects given the postgraduate nature of this class. This is achieved in a way that a theory class introducing each section is confronted with comparative case studies from the region. A reader of selected excerpts from the bibliography will be provided. Students should learn to identify and analyze the complexity of meanings attached to the concept of Central Europe and its cultural heritage. They will come to a critical understanding of core terms of cultural theory, which are used to illuminate the diversity of the region that could be described as Europe's "laboratory of transformation" throughout the last 100 years.
Literature and Exile
Coordinator : Peter Arnds (Germanic Studies)
This option examines literary representations of exile, to be understood not only in the usual sense of enforced or voluntary physical displacement, but also in the sense of cultural and linguistic displacement, or other representations of deracination. Texts from a variety of sources will be used: from Homer and Ovid, Dante, Milton and the Bible, to aspects of German, Spanish and Latin American exile literature of 1930s and 1940s, to Beckett, Brodsky and Borges. Other areas may be Native American literature, American expatriate writers, evacuees/refugees in children's literature. Theoretical and biographical writings on exile will also be encompassed.
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Utopia and Science Fiction
Coordinator : Roberto Bertoni (Italian)
This option examines some aspects of utopia and science fiction, including a number of texts from antiquity to the present day. Textual, sociological and intercultural approaches are adopted by different lecturers, so that wide scope for a variety of comparative approaches is offered. Authors belong to various national cultures.
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Aesthetics of Response: Ekphrasis and the Sublime
Coordinator : Nicola Creighton
Textual and visual experiences and studies involve seeing, reading, remembering, imagining and creating: making sense. But what happens when we fail to make sense? And what happens if we try to make sense of an intense experience by rendering it in another medium? These are questions raised by the concepts of the sublime and ekphrasis. At one level, they address everyday experiences. We sometimes encounter things or indeed people that we say baffle us, exceed our comprehension, terrify and thrill us at the same time, and we often put words on something we first encountered as an image (or moving image) that was made to be looked at, not read.
The sublime as a moment of experience is characterised by terror and delight. The history of this concept gives access to the drama of the emergence of a particular kind of human subject, the emergence of concepts, perception at its limits, the encounter with the ‘other’ and all the ambivalence of affect such an encounter can bring (feelings of terror, anxiety, threat, excitement, curiosity, desire, lust), and the displacement of the subject of Reason.
Ekphrasis typically refers to a piece of writing about a visual representation, e.g. a piece of prose or a poem conveying a painting. Like the sublime, ekphrasis serves as a stage for playing out the dramas of the human encounter with all things other to it, which can of course include its own alienated self.
The dynamics of power and desire circulating among texts (in various media), individual and culture will be explored.
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