Comparative Literature
451 College, Rm 202, 432.2760
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Michael Holquist
Director of Graduate Studies
Cyrus Hamlin (cyrus.hamlin@yale.edu)
Professors
Dudley Andrew, Peter Brooks, Katerina Clark, Shoshana Felman, Roberto González Echevarría, Cyrus Hamlin, Benjamin Harshav, Michael Holquist, Carol Jacobs, David Quint, Katie Trumpener
Associate Professors
Ann Gaylin, Pericles Lewis
Assistant Professors
Ala Alryyes, Vilashini Cooppan, Catherine Labio
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 history, culture, language, 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 upon admission. The GRE General Test is required. A ten- to twenty-page writing sample 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, Sanskrit, Provençal, or Biblical Hebrew). 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 in two parts, 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 first part consists of six topics that include texts from three national literatures and several historical periods (at least one modern and one before the Renaissance). The topics should also include representatives of the three traditional literary genres (poetry, drama, narrative fiction) and one question on theory or criticism. The second part consists of the student's presentation of a topic based on his or her original work.
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 the faculty in the course of 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 Graduate School requirements. Alternatively, the Department of Comparative Literature offers, in conjunction with the Medieval Studies program, a joint M.Phil. degree. 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.
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 511bu, Introduction to the Theory of Literature. Pericles Lewis. MW 11.30–12.20, 1 HTBA
An examination of concepts and assumptions present in contemporary views of literature. Theory of meaning, interpretation, and representation. Critical analysis of formalist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, Marxist, and feminist approaches to theory and literature.
CPLT 541a, Complexity: Theory of Meaning and the Literary Text. Benjamin Harshav. M 1.30–3.20
The course presents a comprehensive and systematic theory of works of literature as the highest sign-complexes in human culture. Departing from the basic concepts of meaning and reference in linguistics and philosophy of language, a theory of semantic integration is developed. Departing from the basic assumptions of narratology and the philosophy of fictional worlds, a theory of works of literature as complex and open-ended constructs is offered. The theoretical framework includes all their aspects: from metaphor to ideology, and from verse and style to the interaction between internal and external fields of reference. Illustrations from modern fiction, poetry, drama, and film. Also PHIL 704a.
CPLT 589b, Fictions of Interpretation: The Work of Franz Kafka. Benjamin Harshav. Th 3.30–5.20
A close reading of the major works of Franz Kafka: ideas and poetics. Interpretations as protagonists in fiction. Competing interpretations of Kafka's fictional worlds. Literary predecessors (Gogol, Dostoevsky). The theory of Minor Literature (Deleuze/Guattari). Reading knowledge of German welcome but not required.
CPLT 611au, Goethe's Faust in Its European Context. Cyrus Hamlin. MW 1–2.15
Close study of Goethe's Faust, Parts I and II. History of composition, reception, and performance of the drama, traditions of the Faust legend, philosophical theories of tragedy in German Idealism, and Romantic theories of myth and history in drama. Weekly lecture in English for all students in the course; discussion in German for German-speaking students, in English for those reading in translation. Readings in English and German. Also GMAN 661au.
CPLT 630bu, German Literature, Thought, and Culture in the Age of Goethe. Cyrus Hamlin. TTh 1–2.15
Interdisciplinary survey of German culture, literature, philosophy, music, and the arts during the Romantic era (1770–1830). Focus on concepts of the individual and self-consciousness, freedom and self-development, the rise of alienation, pessimism, and despair in the early nineteenth century. Among authors to be studied: Kant, Goethe (Werther and Faust), Mozart (Magic Flute), Schiller, and Hölderlin; music by Beethoven and Schubert; Romantic literary criticism and theory (the Schlegels, Novalis); painting by C. D. Friedrich and architecture by C. F. Schinkel; philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer. No prerequisites. Readings and discussion in English. Also GMAN 630bu.
CPLT 694b, Studies in Lyric Poetry of the Renaissance. David Quint. Th 10.30–12.20
A study of several lyric poets writing in Italian, French, and English during the Renaissance, probably including Petrarch, Labé, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Donne. The stress falls upon textual analysis, although some general perspectives on Renaissance literature are also introduced. Also ENGL 578b, RNST 510b.
CPLT 725a, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature. Christopher L. Miller. Th 10.30–12.20
A survey of theories relevant to colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. Focus on theoretical models (Orientalism, hybridity, métissage, créolité, "minor literature"), but also on the literary texts from which they are derived (francophone and anglophone). Readings from Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Mbembe, Amselle, Glissant, Deleuze, Guattari. In English. Also AFAM 846a, AFST 746a, FREN 946a.
CPLT 743a, Aesthetics of Horror and Disgust. Winfried Menninghaus. T 3.30–5.20
Outline of some major theoretical models of how art can transform horror into a source of pleasure. Focus on a widely neglected topos of aesthetics: that of Ekel (disgust), which in Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Kant demarcates those border phenomena which resist any transformation into aesthetic pleasure. Readings also include Dubos, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Lovecraft, Freud, and Sartre. Also GMAN 695au.
CPLT 762b, The Enlightenment and Its Legacy. Catherine Labio. M 1.30–3.20
Seminar devoted to the French Enlightenment in its broader Euro-American context. Particular attention is paid to its epistemological organization, questions pertaining to the nature of civil society, ties with England and North America, the French Revolution and the reactions to it both in France and abroad, and the Counter-Enlightenment, as well as to the applicability of Enlightenment thought to key contemporary social, political, and economic issues. Works by Montesquieu, Condillac, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, the physiocrats, Laclos, Kant, Gouges, Horkheimer, Foucault, and Lyotard, among others. In French and English. Also FREN 862b.
CPLT 763b, Questioning the Enlightenment. Carol Jacobs. Th 1.30–3.20
This is not a course that systematically introduces the basic tenets of the Enlightenment. The seminar proceeds, rather, by close readings of individual works whose performances leave the concept of basic tenets uncertain. We explore a number of texts historically rooted in the period and others that appear as commentaries, declared and undeclared, on the way in which language, knowledge, reason, and power interact in the writings of the authors we read (Hamann, Herder, Shelley, Novalis, Horkheimer and Adorno, Foucault, Plato). Also GMAN 601b.
CPLT 784b, Literature and Psychoanalysis. Shoshana Felman. W 1.30–3.20
How has psychoanalysis revolutionized our conception of knowledge and of man? What are the psychoanalytic concepts that inform modern culture? How does psychoanalysis give us tools for understanding and interpreting literary works? The course explores these questions through selected readings in Freud, Lacan, Winnicott, Klein, Kohut, and others. Emphasis on Freud's and Lacan's understanding of the self as well as of society and culture, through an illumination of the relation of desire to repression, of life to death, of fiction to reality. Among the notions discussed are theories of sexuality, narcissism, identification, dreams, repetition, death drive, mourning, trauma, memory, and history. In English. Also FREN 784b.
CPLT 814a, The Prose and Thought of a Poet: Giacomo Leopardi. Paolo Valesio. W 3.30–5.20
Leopardi's crucial importance as one of the founders of modern poetry on the international scene is in large part due to the depth of his philosophical thought and to the brilliant counterpart and context in prose of his output in verse. We study his dramatic dialogues (Operette morali), his critical and social essays, and his uniquely rich journal (Zibaldone), with reference to other philosophical-poetical experiences, like those represented by English Romantic writings and by Soeren Kierkegaard's Journals. Also ITAL 761au.
CPLT 863bu, Richard Wagner and the Theater of Modernism. Cyrus Hamlin. MW 1–2.15
Introduction to the life, thought, and work of Richard Wagner, with close study of selected musical dramas including Tannhäuser, The Ring of the Nibelung, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and Parsifal. Particular focus on his concept of theater, drama, and opera (Gesamtkunstwerk) and its realization through performance, above all in the context of the Bayreuth Festival. Consideration of Wagner's European influence (especially on Nietzsche and G. B. Shaw) and the production history of his work to the present. Also GMAN 651bu.
CPLT 864a, "Character"–"Person"–"Identity." Peter Brooks. T 1.30–3.20
The course attempts to talk about what we mean by "character," in relation to such other terms as "subject," "person," "identity," "self." It draws on some material from linguistics, psychoanalysis, moral philosophy, and law. Readings are mainly narratives, eighteenth to twentieth century, and will probably include: Rousseau, Confessions; Nathalie Z. Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre; Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert; Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White; Gustave Flaubert, L'Education sentimentale; George Eliot, Daniel Deronda; Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle and The Jolly Corner; and Marguerite Duras, Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein. In English. Also FREN 895a.
CPLT 900, Directed Reading. Faculty.
CPLT 901, Individual Research. Faculty.
CPLT 912b, European Literature without the Nation: Regionalism, Dialect, "Minor" Literature. Katie Trumpener. M 10.30–12.20
University study of European literatures (and with it, comparative literature itself) often presupposes the nation-state as a unit of organization. Yet throughout the modern period, important literary texts, figures, and circles have positioned themselves outside, beneath, or beyond the nation, championing regional customs and concerns, or identifying with the transnational multiculturalism of Europe's internal empires. Through readings of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century texts, this course explores Enlightenment vernacular revivals; nineteenth-century linguistic and cultural centralization; modernist rediscoveries of folklore; dialect literature; "minor" writing; and the influence of debates over tradition on genres like the fantastic tale. Probable readings include works by Johann Herder, Robert Burns, Richard and Maria Edgeworth, George Sand, Prosper Mérimée, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Federico Garcia Lorca, Libuše Moníková, Erich Auerbach, Michel de Certeau, Renée Balibar, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Tom Nairn. Also ENGL 892b.
CPLT 913a, Empire and Its Double. Sara Suleri Goodyear. W 3.30–5.20
A course that concentrates on readings of Empire as a "secret sharer" of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British narrative. Rather than solely focusing on images of Orientalism, we examine infiltrations of alterity that lie too close for comfort. While attempting to undo the idea of exoticism, we simultaneously address what E. M. Forster calls "aspects of the novel" in order to consider the question, What does the novel want? Texts include Edmund Burke's story-telling in Parliamentary debate, Dickens, Austen, Wilkie Collins, Kipling, Forster, Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Agha Shahid Ali. Our examination of Conrad's trope of the secret sharer causes us to question the singularity of imperial stories and their slippage into theories of nation. Also ENGL 913a.
CPLT 917a, Films and Their Study. Dudley Andrew. T 10.30–12.20
"Films and their Study" sets in place some undergirding for graduate students in various disciplines who plan to develop a subspecialty or who want to anchor their particular film interest to something like the "professional discourse" of this field. Providing a coordinated set of topics under the rubrics of (a) spectacle, (b) narrative, (c) realism, and (d) signification, the flow of this survey is interrupted first by the often discordant relation of history to theory 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 923b, Modernist Fiction: The Seen and the Unseen. Pericles Lewis. F 9.30–11.20
This seminar surveys a range of modernist stories and novels that describe the interaction between the visible world—of objects, bodies, and the natural and social environment—and the invisible world—of mental states, unconscious desires, unseen social forces, and the occult. Authors considered include Henry James, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett. Also, readings from early twentieth-century social scientists such as Durkheim, Freud, and Weber. Also ENGL 964b.
CPLT 931a, Literature, Film, and Justice. Shoshana Felman. W 1.30–3.20
A study of scenes of judgment in literature, film, and history, focusing on literature's ways of dealing with injustice in various legal, historical, political, and/or psychoanalytic circumstances. Topics include the opposition between legal justice and literary justice, and the relation between evidence, truth, and judgment. The course also looks at some historical trials reflected on by literary writers. Texts by poets, storytellers, and dramatists such as Kleist, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Mallarmé, Celan, Camus, Blanchot, Beckett, Brecht, Melville, Forster, Woolf, and Morrison, and critics such as Benjamin, Arendt, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Barthes, Levinas, and Lanzmann. Films such as Night and Fog, The Sorrow and the Pity, Shoah. In English. Also FREN 788a.
CPLT 941a, Fiestas cubanas. Roberto González Echevarría. TTh 2.30–3.45
A study of the feasts marking the Cuban calendar from the nineteenth century to the present, how they respond to cultural and political transformations, and how they are inscribed in literature, particularly the narrative. The feast as the representation of time and social and political change. The work of anthropologists and theorists of literature such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Arnold van Gennep, and Michail Bachtine, along with that of Latin American and Cuban anthropologists and writers like Fernando Ortiz, Lidia Cabrera, José Arrom, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Miguel Barnet, and Octavio Paz. Fiction by Cirilo Villaverde, Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo Arenas, Daína Chaviano, and others. In Spanish. Also SPAN 942au.
CPLT 951a, 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 its point of departure, the seminar offers a multifaceted approach to dealing with the power and failures of beauty. Readings include Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" and other versions of the myth by Ronsard, Friedrich Schlegel, d'Annunzio, John Cheever; 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. Also GMAN 707a.
CPLT 979bu Text, Memory, Identity. Michael Holquist. TTh 11.30–12.45
The course examines three key concepts that are increasingly used in literary and cultural studies. We analyze relations between them as they work together to authorize religions, create works of art, national imaginaries, and personal identities. Readings are divided between two kinds of works, theoretical and exemplary. First group includes Plato, Hegel, Freud, Bakhtin; second includes selections from the Bible, stories by Kleist, Gogol, Kafka, and samples of nationalist ideology (Fichte, Dostoevsky, Emerson).
Next: Computer Science
|
