Comparative Literature
451 College, Rm 202, 432.2760
www.yale.edu/complit/
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Haun Saussy (Acting)
Director of Graduate Studies
Pericles Lewis
Professors
Dudley Andrew, Peter Brooks, Katerina Clark, Roberto González Echevarría, Benjamin Harshav, Carol Jacobs, Pericles Lewis, Rainer Nägele, David Quint, Haun Saussy, Katie Trumpener
Associate Professors
Ala Alryyes, Catherine Labio
Assistant Professors
Alexander Beecroft, Moira Fradinger, Barry McCrea
Senior Lecturer
Richard Maxwell
Lecturers
Eric Bulson, Barbara Harshav, Na’ama Rokem
Fields of Study
The Department of Comparative Literature introduces students to the study and understanding of literature beyond linguistic or national boundaries; the theory, interpretation, and criticism of literature; and its interactions with adjacent fields like visual and material culture, linguistics, film, psychology, law, and philosophy. The comparative perspective invites the exploration of such transnational phenomena as literary or cultural periods and trends (Renaissance, Romanticism, Modernism, postcolonialism) or genres and modes of discourse. Students may specialize in any cultures or languages, to the extent that they are sufficiently covered at Yale. The Ph.D. degree qualifies the candidate to teach Comparative Literature as well as the national literature(s) of her or his specialization.
Special Admissions Requirements
Applicants must hold a B.A. or equivalent degree and should normally have majored in comparative literature, English, a classical or foreign literature, or in an interdepartmental major that includes literature. They must be ready to take advanced courses in two foreign literatures in addition to English upon admission. The GRE General Test is required. A ten- to twenty-page writing sample, written in English, should be submitted with the application.
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Students must successfully complete fourteen term courses, including at least seven listed under the departmental heading. The student’s overall schedule must fulfill the following requirements: (1) at least one course in medieval or classical European literature, philology, or linguistics (or their equivalents in other cultures); one course in the Renaissance or Baroque (or equivalents); and one course in the modern period; (2) three courses in literary theory or methodology; (3) course work dealing with texts from three literatures, one of which may be English or American. Any course may be counted for several requirements simultaneously.
Languages: Literary proficiency in four languages (including English, at least one other modern language, and one classical or ancient language, such as Latin, Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Classical Chinese, Provençal). The fulfillment of this requirement will be demonstrated by a written exam consisting of a translation of a literary or critical text, to be held by the end of the sixth term; or by an equivalent level in the student’s course work.
Orals: An oral examination to be taken in the third year of studies, demonstrating both the breadth and specialization as well as the comparative scope of the student’s acquired knowledge. The examination consists of seven topics that include texts from at least three national literatures and several historical periods (at least one modern and one before the Renaissance). The texts discussed should also include representatives of the three traditional literary genres (poetry, drama, narrative fiction).
The Ph.D. dissertation, supervised by a dissertation director (or directors) and approved by the departmental faculty, completes the degree. Its initial step is a dissertation prospectus, to be submitted and approved by the dissertation director and a standing faculty committee no later than halfway through the seventh term of study. Admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. is granted after six terms of residence and the completion of all requirements (courses, languages, orals, prospectus) except the dissertation.
Teaching: Training in teaching, through teaching fellowships, is an important part of every student’s program. Normally students will teach in their third and fourth years.
Combined Ph.D. Programs
Comparative Literature and Classics
The Department of Comparative Literature also offers, in conjunction with the Department of Classical Languages and Literatures, a combined Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Classics. For further details, see Classics.
Comparative Literature and Film Studies
The Department of Comparative Literature also offers, in conjunction with the Program in Film Studies, a joint Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Film Studies. For further details, see Film Studies. Applicants to the joint program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to Film Studies and to Comparative Literature. All documentation within the application should include this information.
Comparative Literature and Renaissance Studies
The Department of Comparative Literature also offers, in conjunction with the Renaissance Studies program, a combined Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Renaissance Studies. For further details, see Renaissance Studies.
Master’s Degrees
M.Phil. See Degree Requirements. Additionally, students in Comparative Literature are eligible to pursue a supplemental M.Phil. degree in Medieval Studies. For further details, see Medieval Studies.
M.A. (en route to the PH.D.). Students enrolled in the Ph.D. program may receive the M.A. upon completion of ten courses with at least two grades of Honors and a maximum of three grades of Pass, and the demonstration of proficiency in two of the languages, ancient or modern, through course work or departmental examinations.
No student is admitted to a terminal M.A.
Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University, PO Box 208299, New Haven CT 06520-8299.
Courses
CPLT 511b, Introduction to Theory of Literature. Paul Fry.
TTh 11.35–12.25
An examination of concepts and assumptions active in contemporary views of literature, with their history. Shifting definitions of “literary theory”; accounts of meaning, interpretation, and representation; examinations of historicist, formalist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, structuralist, post-structuralist, feminist, and media-centered approaches to theory and literature.
CPLT 515a, Proseminar in Comparative Literature. Haun Saussy.
T 9.25–11.15
Introductory proseminar for all first-year graduate students in Comparative Literature (and other interested persons). Critical readings of formative texts in the theory and practice of the discipline, from the late eighteenth century to the present. Topics to be covered include the nature of literature; translation; national identities and identities beyond the nation; interpretation and evaluation; the humanities and the human; media. The course is taken for a grade of Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
CPLT 527b, Art and Ideology. Katerina Clark.
W 9.25–11.15, screenings 7 p.m.
Examination of texts identified as ideological art, focusing on the relationship between the conventions they use and the ideology they seek to advance. Theoretical readings include works by Benjamin, Jameson, Lukacs, Bakhtin, Marx, Althusser, and Judith Butler; literary works by Brecht, Tretiakov, Ostrovsky, Orwell, Koestler, and others; films by Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, and others. Also FILM 828b, RUSS 746b.
CPLT 531a, Poetics of Representation: Sebald, Rilke, Yeats. Carol Jacobs.
Th 1.30–3.20
Readings of the works of three twentieth-century authors who, in very different ways, challenge conventional modes in which to consider the relationship between literature and what we tend to call reality. Inevitably we have to take into account on the one hand Sebald’s and Yeats’s difficult stances toward what we tend to call the political, as well as Rilke’s apparent withdrawal from the realm of such worldly concerns. We necessarily also ask how to think the performance of art and its implicit theorizations as crucial to these questions. Also GMAN 560au.
CPLT 538b, The Galaxy of Modernism: Ideologies and Poetics. Benjamin Harshav.
M 1.30–3.20
An interdisciplinary seminar on the ideologies and principles of poetics of the major trends in twentieth-century literature and the arts. Italian and Russian Futurism, Expressionism, Acmeism, Imagism, Dada, Surrealism, Postmodernism—in German, Italian, Russian, French, English, Hebrew, and other cultures. The discourse of Modernist trends, their similarities and divergences. Readings of manifestos and recent scholarly books. Emphasis on art and literature, with several trends in film theory (Eisenstein) and architecture (Bauhaus vs. Postmodernism).
CPLT 541a, Poetics I: Theory of the Work of Literature. Benjamin Harshav.
M 1.30–3.20
The course presents a comprehensive theory of works of literature as the highest sign-complexes in human culture. From rhythm and sound patterns through metaphor and fictional world to genre and representation, a work of literature combines elements of structure with a network of necessary and possible or contradictory constructs. The seminar develops a conceptual network for the descriptive analysis of individual works of poetry and fiction. The theory focuses on questions of fictionality and art in language, yet goes beyond linguistics and philosophy of language, on the one hand, and narratology, on the other. It is grounded in close readings of poems and narrative texts by Kafka, Eliot, Dostoevsky, and others. Also PHIL 709a.
CPLT 542b, Readings in Early Chinese Thought. Haun Saussy.
T 9.25–11.15
Readings from major thinkers of early China, with attention to literary form, reciprocal influence, and textual history as well as to the ideas that are transmitted. Texts are chosen from major authors such as Confucius, Laozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Fei, the Huainan zi, and the Lüshi chunqiu. Also CHNS 615bu.
CPLT 543a, Sanskrit Classics in Translation. Stanley Insler.
T 9.25–11.15
A close reading and discussion of secular works in Sanskrit set against the cultural history of Old India. Texts included are novellas from the Maha¯bha¯rata Epic, fable literature, lyrical narratives, plays, lyric and didactic poetry, the first Indian novels. The course is designed as a seminar with student participation.
CPLT 580a, Topics in Literary Theory. Paul Fry.
W 1.30–3.20
Readings in twentieth-century literary theory that set the terms for its recurrent structures of argument, the premise being that the theoretical moment in thinking about literature can be reconsidered as a coherent tradition from Saussure to Butler. Some attention also to critics of this tradition such as Searle, Knapp and Michaels, and Guillory. Also ENGL 978a.
CPLT 588a, Medieval Songs of Love and War. William Whobrey.
TTh 11.35–12.50
An examination of love poetry from around 1150 to 1250 traditionally associated with Middle High German Minnesang. Readings juxtapose this corpus with contemporary expressions of crusading warfare and imperial politics, providing an appreciation of the medieval poet as warrior, courtier, and artist. Readings in the original Middle High German as well as in translation, to include works by Provençal, French, Arabic, and Italian poets. Also GMAN 609a.
CPLT 592a, Urban Phantasmagoria: Berlin, Vienna, and Paris. Henry Sussman.
MW 11.35–12.50
Grounding itself in Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades project, a print-medium Web site of the rise of modernity, malls, advertising, gambling, amusement parks, and urban cruising in nineteenth-century Paris, this course pursues these developments as they revolutionize the environment of the major German-speaking cities and as they are documented in literary and cultural criticism. Also GMAN 645au.
CPLT 598b, Moderns, 1914–1926. Pericles Lewis.
Th 1.30–3.20
An intensive research-oriented course on British literature, 1914–1926, with some attention to European, Irish, and American influences. Major figures to be considered include Joyce, Lawrence, Shaw, O’Casey, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Strachey, Woolf, and Forster. Students pursue group research projects on poetry, drama, the novel, or intellectual history. The final syllabus depends on student interests. Also ENGL 971b.
CPLT 700b, Heidegger: The Origin of the Work of Art. Karsten Harries.
T 9.25–11.15
A critical reading of this central text. Special emphasis is placed on its relationship to Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Also PHIL 707b.
CPLT 711a, Hölderlin’s Translations of Sophocles. Rainer Nägele.
Th 3.30–5.20
A close reading of Hölderlin’s translation of the two Sophoclean tragedies Oedipus and Antigone and his commentaries on these plays. Also CLSS 637au, GMAN 667au.
CPLT 712b, Modern Poetry: Brecht and Benn. Rainer Nägele.
W 1.30–3.20
Close readings of Bertolt Brecht’s and Gottfried Benn’s poetry as two paradigms of modern German poetry. Also GMAN 668bu.
CPLT 725a, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature. Christopher L. Miller.
Th 9.25–11.15
A survey of theories relevant to colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. The course focuses on theoretical models (Orientalism, hybridity, métissage, créolité, “minor literature”), but also gives attention to the literary texts from which they are derived (francophone and anglophone). Readings from Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Mbembe, Amselle, Glissant, Deleuze, Guattari. Taught in English. Also AFAM 846a, AFST 746a, FREN 946a.
CPLT 727a, Postcolonialism and Its Discontents. Sara Suleri Goodyear.
Th 1.30–3.20
A reading of theoretical and fictional texts from the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, and the Middle East to raise questions of cultural, religious, and racial identities. Also ENGL 935a, WGSS 714a.
CPLT 761b, Literature and Economics in the Eighteenth Century. Catherine Labio.
T 1.30-3.20
The role played by literature in the formation of a new economic and moral subject as well as the key role played by modern economic thought and new economic realities in the emergence of modern literary forms and of literature as an academic discipline. Works by such authors as Defoe, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith. Also ENGL 739b, FREN 762b.
CPLT 817b, Faust and the German Tradition. Cyrus Hamlin.
TTh 1–2.15
The Legend of Faust and his pact with the devil are studied as a model for modern tragedy. Three major works are considered in their historical context: the original Chapbook (1587) and Marlowe’s drama of Dr. Faustus; Goethe’s Faust, Parts One and Two (1770–1832); and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1948). Texts available in German or English; discussion in English. Also GMAN 662bu.
CPLT 858a, Readings in Critical Theory. Catherine Labio.
T 1.30–3.20
Key contributions to late twentieth-century French/francophone thought. Topics include the role of art and literature in the post-World War II era; aesthetics and ideology; economics and the postmodern subject. Taught in French. Also FREN 763a.
CPLT 869b, Reading and Interpretation in Law and the Humanities. Peter Brooks, Robert Post.
T 4–6
This seminar addresses questions of interpretation in the law and in the humanities, particularly literary studies. Law and literature are both highly textual and depend on consistent and convincing interpretations of their materials. Yet practices of reading, including “rules” for the construal of meaning, seem to diverge widely from one field to the other. Why is this? Upon examination, are these rules as fixed as they might at first seem? Do the different fields have insights to offer each other? Can and should they be maintained in separate compartments, or is that a vain effort? The seminar addresses such issues through a series of juxtapositions of legal and literary texts and includes discussion of writers and readers; textual and statutory interpretation; rhetoric; narrative; evidence; law and its cultural study. Active class participation, including oral presentations, and a term paper required. The final grade is based on both the paper and!
class participation. Also LAW 21537.
CPLT 894a, First Person Singular. Peter Brooks.
W 9.25–11.15
The problem with first-person narration, said Henry James, is its “terrible fluidity.” James points here to a lack of formal limits in “stream of consciousness” narration; he may refer also to the deceptive, and self-deceptive, potential of first-person discourse, even at (especially at?) its most self-analytic. The seminar studies the workings of first-person narratives, particularly characteristic of the confessional (and also the false confessional) mode of much Romantic and post-Romantic fiction. Readings include works by James, Mary Shelley, Balzac, Poe, Charlotte Brontë, Benjamin Constant, Joyce, and Proust. Also ENGL 822a.
CPLT 900a, Directed Reading. Faculty.
CPLT 900b, Directed Reading. Faculty.
CPLT 901a, Individual Research. Faculty.
CPLT 901b, Individual Research. Faculty.
CPLT 917a, Films and Their Study. Dudley Andrew.
T 1.30–3.20, screenings Su 7 p.m.
Films and Their Study sets in place some undergirding for graduate students who want to anchor their film interest to something like the “professional discourse” of this field. A coordinated set of topics in film theory is interrupted first by the often discordant voice of history and second by the obtuseness of the films examined each week. As the title of this seminar is meant to convey, films themselves take the lead in our discussions. Also FILM 601a.
CPLT 919a, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov. John MacKay.
Th 7–9 p.m., screenings HTBA
An examination of all the major cinematic and theoretical works of Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, centering on the period 1925–1945. We consider the films in light of the theories, the film makers in light of one another, and the Soviet film and theory in light of contemporary developments. Attention is also paid to the international legacy of these film makers, and particularly their reception during the 1960s and 1970s (Godard, Marker, Barthes). No knowledge of Russian required. Also FILM 822a, RUSS 747a.
CPLT 931b, French Film: History, Theory, Pedagogy. Thomas Kavanagh.
M 9.25–11.15
This seminar focuses on three related topics: the history of French cinema, how film theory conceptualizes and inflects that history, and the role of film studies in a French Studies curriculum. Neither strictly historical nor strictly theoretical, this course approaches the films we study through groupings of secondary texts (criticism, theory, literary works) that raise issues concerning the use of film in the broader study of French culture. We look at films by such directors as Lumière, Méliès, Vigo, Buñuel, Léger, Carné, Duvivier, Renoir, Resnais, Godard, Truffaut, Marker, Varda, Tavernier, Leconte, and Teno as well as at critical and theoretical positions taken by Arnheim, Bazin, Andrew, Burch, Benjamin, Eisenstein, Robbe-Grillet, Barthes, Metz, Lacan, Kavanagh, Rodowick, Baudry, Deleuze, Ukadite, and Thackway. The course is conducted in French. Also FILM 621b, FREN 753b.
CPLT 942b, The Borges Effect. Roberto González Echevarría.
W 4–6
Since the publication of Ficciones in 1944 and especially since achieving worldwide acclaim after receiving ex-aequo with Samuel Beckett the Formentor Prize in 1961, Jorge Luis Borges has become one of the most influential modern writers. His is a recognizable and often acknowledged presence in the work of novelists and short-story writers, as well as in that of philosophers and literary theorists. There is a Borges “effect,” which can be perceived in John Barth, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco; and in Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Gerard Genette, and Jacques Derrida, among others. That effect is also projected retrospectively in Borges’s particular way of reading classics like Homer, Dante, and Cervantes. An elegant, playfully ironic skepticism, together with a fondness for aporias, enigmas, puzzles, labyrinths as well as for minor genres such as the detective story!
are the most recognizable components of Borges’s style and thought. Taken together these components suggest theories about writing and reading. We read closely Borges’s most influential stories, such as “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote,” and “The Garden of Forking Paths,” as well as his essays on Homer, Dante, and Cervantes. We then follow his track in the writers mentioned. Class discussions in English and readings in English or the French, Spanish, or Italian originals. Also SPAN 912b.
CPLT 944b, Teleology, Epistemology, Ontology in the Screen Arts. Thomas Elsaesser.
W 1.30–3.20
One of the lasting legacies of André Bazin’s question “What is cinema?” is to have put forward a teleology of cinema, while at the same time calling it into question, on both historical and ontological grounds. Subsequent generations of film scholars have been more concerned with epistemological issues (of knowledge/ideology and truth/illusion) than with the cinema’s ontology, which has once more come to prominence in the writings of Gilles Deleuze, as well as through the revival of phenomenology. The seminar examines the various philosophical options arising from such “turns,” asking whether, fifty years after Bazin, we can sketch a similarly nuanced account for the screen arts in the digital age. Also FILM 850b.
CPLT 949a, Caribbean Diasporic Intellectuals. Hazel Carby.
W 1.30–3.20
This course examines work by writers of Caribbean descent from different regions of the transatlantic world. In response to contemporary interest in issues of globalization, the premise of the course is that in the world maps of these black intellectuals we can see the intertwined and interdependent histories and relations of the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Thinking globally is not a new experience for black peoples and we need to understand the ways in which what we have come to understand and represent as “Caribbeanness” is a condition of movement. Literature is most frequently taught within the boundaries of a particular nation, but this course focuses on the work of writers who shape the Caribbean identities of their characters as traveling black subjects and refuse to restrain their fiction within the limits of any one national identity. We practice a new and global type of cognitive mapping as we read and explore the meanings of terms like bl!
ack trans-nationalism, migrancy, globalization, and empire. Diasporic writing embraces and represents the geopolitical realities of the modern, modernizing, and postmodern worlds in which multiple racialized histories are inscribed on modern bodies. Also AFAM 723a, AMST 645a.
CPLT 951b, Venus and Adonis: Beauty in Art and the Cult of the Beautiful Body. Winfried Menninghaus.
M 3.30–5.20
Taking the myth of Venus and Adonis as well as of Orpheus and Eurydice as its point of departure, the seminar offers a multifaceted approach to dealing with the power and failures of beauty and art. Readings include the extant versions of the Greek myths, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and other versions of the myth by Ronsard, Friedrich Schlegel, Georges Bataille, and others; philosophical accounts of beauty (Plato, Baumgarten, Burke, Kant, and Nietzsche); as well as the “theories” of beauty in evolutionary biology, psychoanalysis (Freud), and recent empirical psychology. The pertinent texts are available in both German and English versions; discussion in German. Also GMAN 707bu.
CPLT 989b, Creole Identities and Fictions. Christopher L. Miller.
Th 9.15–11.15
Focusing on the French and English Caribbean, this course analyzes the quintessential but ambiguous American condition: that of the “Creole.” Encompassing all nonnative cultures, this term is inseparable from issues of race and slavery. Readings of historical and literary texts: Moreau de Saint-Méry, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Madame de Staël, Charlotte Brontë (and reinventions of Wuthering Heights by Jean Rhys and Maryse Condé), the Créolistes of Martinique. Attention to Louisiana and to the Haitian Revolution. Reading knowledge of French required. Also AFAM 851b, FREN 943b.
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