A.B. Comparative Literature

Princeton University

Bachelor's degree

In Princeton (USA)

Price on request

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Description

  • Type

    Bachelor's degree

  • Location

    Princeton (USA)

The Department of Comparative Literature (link is external) invites students to approach literature from a broad, cross-cultural perspective. The curriculum encompasses literatures, languages, and cultures from around the world--including those of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East--as well as interdisciplinary work of many types. While each student in the department is expected to focus his or her studies on a particular foreign language and literature, an interest in the way different literatures illuminate one another, or enter into dialogue with other disciplines, media, or forms of art, is fundamental to our work. Students motivated by a desire to understand literature in the broadest terms, as well as those interested in particular examples of literary comparison, will find an intellectual home in the Department of Comparative Literature.

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Start date

Princeton (USA)
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08544

Start date

On request

About this course

Foreign Language Requirement. To enter the department, students must be sufficiently knowledgeable in one language other than English to take an upper-level course in it in his or her junior year.

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Subjects

  • Plato
  • Shakespeare
  • Prose
  • Poetry
  • Comparative Literature
  • Media
  • Writing
  • Law
  • Cinema
  • Art
  • Perspective
  • Drama
  • English
  • Creative Writing
  • Works
  • Staff
  • IT Law
  • Translation
  • Greek

Course programme

COM 205 The Classical Roots of Western Literature (also

HUM 205

/

HLS 203

) Fall LA An introduction to the methods and some major texts of comparative literary study. It will focus on the Greco-Roman tradition, asking what it means to call a work a "classic": it will consider the outstanding characteristics of this tradition, how it arose and gained influence and attempt to place it in a global context. Readings will be divided into three topics: Epic Heroes (centering on Homer's Odyssey), Tragic Women (in ancient and modern drama), and the "invention" of modernity (Aeneid). Selected additional readings in non-Western literatures and in influential critical essays. Two lectures, one preceptorial. L. Barkan

COM 206 Masterworks of European Literature (also

HUM 206

) Spring LA This course seeks to discover (or rediscover) a series of significant works in the European tradition, and also to ask once again what a tradition is. The focus will be firmly on the close reading of particular texts, but discussions will also range freely over large questions: What is a classic, what difference does language make, can we think both about world literature, in Goethe's phrase, and about the importance of national and local loyalties? No easy answers promised, but astonishing adventures in reading guaranteed. Staff

COM 207 The Bible as Literature (See ENG 390)

COM 209 Thinking Translation: Language Transfer and Cultural Communication (See TRA 200)

COM 215 Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (See CWR 206)

COM 220 Introduction to Literary Theory Not offered this year LA An introductory course in the history of European literary theory. Readings include Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Boccaccio, Dryden, Corneille, Schiller, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Derrida. Theories will be related to selected literary texts in an effort to explore how theory illuminates literature while shedding light upon larger human questions. One lecture, one two-hour seminar. S. Bermann

COM 233 East Asian Humanities I: The Classical Foundations (See HUM 233)

COM 234 East Asian Humanities II: Traditions and Transformations (See HUM 234)

COM 300 Junior Seminar: Introduction to Comparative Literature Fall LA Introduction to Comparative Literature for departmental concentrators. What is it to read comparatively across languages, disciplines, and media? How does Comparative Literature relate to a globalized world with its many cultures, languages, and literatures? What is the place of translation in this picture? We will address these questions by both looking at Comparative Literature as a historical institution and as a site at which disciplines, methods, and positions blend and clash. Readings from a wide variety of texts: fiction, poetry, travel writing, theory, history; consideration of other media such as visual culture and music. A. Alliston

COM 301 Theory and Methods of Comparative Literature: Critical and Literary Theory Spring LA A course in the formative issues of contemporary critical theory. Questions of the relationships between literature, philosophy, aesthetics, and linguistics will be treated with regard to the rise of modern philology, new criticism, hermeneutics, speech act theory, semiotics, structuralism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and poststructuralism. Readings in Auerbach, Spitzer, Brooks, Wimsatt, Schleiermacher, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Austin, Burke, Frye, Propp, Saussure, Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Jameson, Adorno, Derrida, de Man. One three-hour seminar. Staff

COM 303 Comparative History of Literary Theory (also

ENG 302

) Not offered this year LA A historical introduction to literary theory from Plato to the present. By reading philosophers, critics, and creative writers, students consider issues such as mimesis, imagination, religion, sexuality, and ethics, noting how each casts light on our understanding of literature and its cultural roles. Past terms and current problems are related to an inquiry into the nature--and the power--of literature through the ages. Students will read critical works from Plato and Aristotle, through Nietzsche, Beauvoir, Benjamin, Derrida, and Achebe, as well as poetry and plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Eliot, and Brecht. One three-hour seminar. S. Bermann

COM 304 The East European Novel of the 20th Century Not offered this year LA Caught between Russia and the West, traded off among European empires, the peoples of Eastern Europe are again independent in the postcommunist era. For them, surviving the 20th century became, literally, an art. After a geopolitical introduction to the region, students will read modern proseworks from the Polish, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian traditions, including novels cast as national epics during times of total war, as fantasy or science fiction, and as the tragicomedy of everyday life. Five films built off these novels will be screened during the course. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Staff

COM 305 The European Novel: Cervantes to Tolstoy Not offered this year LA The emergence and development of the major forms of the novel as seen in the works of Cervantes, Mme. de Lafayette, Diderot, Laclos, Goethe, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, Turgenev, Flaubert, and Tolstoy. Emphasis is placed on the novel as the expression of human relationships with individuals and with society. Two lectures, one preceptorial. M. Wood

COM 306 The Modern European Novel (also

ENG 317

) Not offered this year LA Using Flaubert's Madame Bovary as a paradigm of the major thematic and technical preoccupations of the novel, lectures offer detailed interpretations of Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, Swann's Way, and theoretical speculations on symbolism, stream-of-consciousness, linguistic structures, psychoanalysis. Two lectures, one preceptorial. M. DiBattista

COM 309 The Lyric (also

ENG 420

/

SPA 349

) Not offered this year LA The lyric as a form of literary art, as distinct from narrative or drama. Readings encompass a variety of lyrical forms and a number of different cultures. Translations will be used. One lecture, one two-hour seminar. S. Bermann

COM 310 The Literature of Medieval Europe (also

MED 308

) Not offered this year LA An introductory survey of major representative Latin and vernacular texts in modern English versions, including hagiography, romance, lyric and philosophical poetry, allegory, religious and secular prose, and drama. Special attention will be paid to Christian transformations of classical traditions and to the emergence of the Continental vernaculars of the late Middle Ages. Lecture and preceptorials. D. Heller-Roazen

COM 311 Special Topics in Performance History and Theory (See THR 331)

COM 314 The Renaissance (also

ART 334

) Not offered this year LA An introduction to the literature of the Renaissance in Europe and in England. Emphasis upon major genres--lyric, drama, pastoral, and prose-fiction--as they arise in Italy, France, Spain, and England. Readings from Boccaccio, Castiglione, Lope de Vega, Sidney, Shakespeare, Erasmus, Rabelais, and Cervantes. Two 90-minute seminars. L. Barkan

COM 315 Cervantes and His Age (See SPA 306)

COM 317 Communication and the Arts (See ECS 331)

COM 318 The Modern Period (also

ECS 319

) Not offered this year LA Modern Western literature in the perspective of its development since the Industrial Revolution. The peculiarity of "modernist'' style exemplified by various genres. Significant philosophical trends that define the parallel development of modern art and thought. Texts from English, German, French, and other literatures. Two lectures, one preceptorial. S. Draper

COM 320 Masterworks of European Literature: The Romantic Quest (See GER 320)

COM 321 Modern Drama I (See ENG 364)

COM 323 Self and Society in Classical Greek Drama (See CLA 323)

COM 324 The Classical Tradition (also

HLS 324

) Spring LA Classical mythology in the arts from Ovid to Shakespeare, from Zeuxis to Titian, with a particular emphasis on the subject of love. Introductory discussions on the nature of myth in its relation to the literary and visual arts. Readings will include major literary works from antiquity to the Renaissance integrated with the study of mythological painting, principally from 15th- and 16th-century Italy, including the works of Botticelli, Correggio, and Titian. One three-hour seminar. L. Barkan

COM 325 Experimental Fiction (also

ENG 342

) Not offered this year LA A study of the more experimental, self-conscious narratives in modernist literature with emphasis on the major formal and stylistic innovations of representative modern texts. M. DiBattista

COM 326 Tragedy (also

HLS 326

) Not offered this year LA The tragic vision as expressed by Greek, Renaissance, and modern writers who dramatize the relationship between human suffering and human achievement. Readings in Aeschylus, Sophocles, the Old Testament, Shakespeare, Milton, Chekhov, Ibsen, Sartre, Brecht, Beckett, and T. S. Eliot. One lecture, one two-hour seminar. Staff

COM 327 Modernism in Fiction (also

LAS 327

) Not offered this year LA A study of early to mid-20th century fiction, focusing on the question of modernity both as a literary and a historical-philosophical problem. Attention will be given especially to experimentation with literary form and the relation of narrative forms to specific cultural practices. Authors read in the course include Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Proust, Beckett, Borges. Students will also study essays reflecting the debates of the period (Brecht, Adorno, Lukács, Benjamin). One three-hour seminar. Staff

COM 328 Modernism in Poetry Not offered this year LA A study of the relation between the writing of poetry and the question of modernity as a theoretical and cultural problem. The course will take into account the various experimental movements that opted for poetry as their primary medium (imagism, dadaism, surrealism, futurism), as well as the work of certain poets who have indelibly marked the 20th century's poetic landscape (Yeats, Brecht, Neruda, Cavafy, and others). Students are expected to know at least one of the foreign languages involved well enough to read the original texts. One three-hour seminar. M. Wood

COM 329 Topics in German Culture and Society (See GER 307)

COM 330 Literature and Law Not offered this year LA An introduction to literature as a vehicle of thought about law, morality, and the tensions between them. Readings include ancient legal codes, selected biblical texts, Greek tragedies, Norse sagas, medieval satirical epics, Renaissance drama, 18th-century drama, and modern fiction. Emphasis on revenge codes, the shift from prelegal to legal societies, the Christianization of Germanic law, equity, contract, critiques of law and legal systems. One three-hour seminar. Staff

COM 333 The Chinese Novel (See EAS 333)

COM 334 Modern Transformations of Classical Themes (See CLA 334)

COM 337 Really Fantastic Fiction Not offered this year LA Fiction by writers of a fundamentally realist persuasion who nevertheless depict in their work the intrusion of the supernatural and the fantastic into everyday life. Gogol, Kleist, James, Olesha, Nabokov, Bradbury, García Márquez, and Calvino are among the authors read. One lecture, one two-hour seminar. E. Reeves

COM 338 Forms of Short Fiction Not offered this year LA The short story and other forms of brief imaginative prose as they have developed in English and the European languages during the 19th and 20th centuries. The seminar discussions will examine selected works of such authors as Chekhov, Lawrence, Kafka, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, Borges, Nabokov, W. C. Williams, Welty, Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Tournier, and Barthelme. One lecture, one two-hour seminar. D. Bellos

COM 339 New Diasporas (See ENG 397)

COM 340 Literature and Photography (See ECS 340)

COM 341 What is Vernacular Filmmaking? - Rhetoric for Cinema Studies (also

ECS 341

/

HUM 341

) LA In this course we will study films that address global audiences yet ground themselves in particular, local, vernacular sources of artistic creation. Our focus will be on three exciting postwar cinematic movements (Italian Neorealism, Iranian New Wave, the Danish Dogma 95), but we will also discuss parallels in American filmmaking. Familiarity with Homer's Ulysses, Virgil's Aeneid and Shakespeare's Hamlet will be helpful since they serve as the frame of reference for many of the examined films. E. Kiss

COM 344 Postwar Japanese Narrative: Modern to Postmodern (See EAS 344)

COM 346 Modern Latin American Fiction in Translation (See SPA 346)

COM 349 Texts and Images of the Holocaust (also

JDS 349

) Not offered this year EM In an effort to encompass the variety of responses to what is arguably the most traumatic event of modern Western experience, the Holocaust is explored as transmitted through documents, testimony, memoirs, creative writing, historiography, and cinema. In this study of works, reflecting diverse languages, cultures, genres, and points of view, the course focuses on issues of bearing witness, collective vs. individual memory, and the nature of radical evil. One three-hour seminar, plus weekly film showings. Staff

COM 354 Topics in Gender and Representation (See SPA 353)

COM 355 Advanced Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (See CWR 305)

COM 356 Advanced Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (See CWR 306)

COM 357 Tales of Hospitality: France, North Africa, and the Mediterranean (See FRE 327)

COM 359 Acting, Being, Doing, and Making: Introduction to Performance Studies (See THR 300)

COM 361 The Cinema from World War II until the Present (See VIS 342)

COM 363 Philosophy of Art (See PHI 326)

COM 368 Topics in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Culture (See SPA 301)

COM 370 Topics in Comparative Literature (also

HUM 371

/

ECS 377

/

ART 361

) Not offered this year LA . Study of a selected theme or topic in comparative literature

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A.B. Comparative Literature

Price on request

The best Literature courses

See all

See all