Conversations across Time and Space: Studies in Comparative Literature - MA Seminar 2

Master's seminars

The MA seminar centres on the comparative literary studies and investigates connections and contrasts between literary works from various cultures, through textual analysis, studies in translation and adaptation.

Second semester.

The seminar will focus on connections and contrasts between literary works originating from various cultures. The discussions during the first semester will introduce the rudiments of comparative studies and foster the skills of reading across linguistic, spatial and temporary boundaries, observing transformations of familiar themes and emergence of new concepts and ideas, transmutations and reinterpretations of traditional narratives across genres and literary forms as well as responses of contemporary writers to voices of their predecessors, and transformations of literary works in visual culture. This approach will encourage students to address cultures as both unique and interconnected, and attempt to understand them on their own terms.

The seminar will focus on close textual analysis, but will also explore connections of literature with history. Study of translations from one language to another and from one media to another will constitute another line of enquiry. During the first semester examples of texts will be provided by the instructor, later on students will select their own texts and contexts, gradually formulating and presenting their projects for open discussion and peer-review in class.

The first semester will be dedicated to overview of theoretical background which will be useful for the projects, as well as analysis of selected texts.

The second semester will continue analysis of texts, and include first presentations of students’ ideas for their dissertations.

The third semester will be focused around students’ projects, in peer-review and open discussion of work in progress.

The fourth semester will consist of individual meetings, focused on each student’s project.

Possible topics / examples:

- “Translation and self-translation: Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories” (or analysis of other selected texts in English / Russian / Polish)

- “Translating Riddles: Alice in Wonderland in three Polish [or Russian] translations” (or comparative translation analysis of other works)

- “Oscar Wilde on Screen: English, American and Russian film adaptations” (or study of other adaptation of literary works in English in film across cultures)

- “Doppelgängers and Liminal Identities: Banville’s Mefisto as a Conversation with World Literatures” (or other studies of common themes in literary works across cultures)

- Comparative analysis of British fictions vs. fictions from other cultures, preferably contemporary literature (eg. Inverted biographies in Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot vs. Vladimir Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; Angela Carter’s fairy tales vs. original stories by Perrault; Ethics and Aesthetics in John Banville’s The Book of Evidence vs. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Posthuman Perspective: Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me vs. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, etc.)

- Adapting Shakespeare: film, visual arts, literary rewritings (Atwood, Updike, McEwan, etc.).

Ahearne, Ed, and Arnold Weinstein. "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time: The Promise of Comparative Literature." Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Ed. Charles Bernheimer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 77-85.

Alexandrov, Vladimir E. "Literature, Literariness, and the Brain." Comparative Literature 59.2 (2007): 97-118.

Amaral, Genevieve. "Edgar Allan Poe's Fear of Texts: 'The Man of the Crowd' As Literary Monster." Comparatist: Journal of the Southern Comparative Literature Association 35 (2011): 227-38.

Andrew, Joe, Malcolm Crook, and Michael Waller, ed. Why Europe? Problems of Culture and Identity: Political and Historical Dimensions. New York: Palgrave, 2000.

Apter, Emily. The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006.

Arens, Katherine. "When Comparative Literature Becomes Cultural Studies: Teaching Cultures Through Genre." Comparatist: Journal of the Southern Comparative Literature Association 29 (2005): 123-47.

Bassnett, Susan. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

Bassnett, Susan. "Reflections on Comparative Literature in The Twenty-First Century." Comparative Critical Studies 3.1-2 (2006): 3-11.

Bassnett, Susan and André Lefevere. Constructing Cultures. Essays on Literary Translation, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998.

Bennet, Milton J. “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”. In Education for the Intercultural Experience, M. R. Paige (ed). Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1993, pp. 22-73.

Berman, Antoine. “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, trans. Lawrence Venuti, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader, London & New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 284-297.

Bluestone, George. Novels into Film. Michigan: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957.

Budick, Sanford, and Wolfgang Iser, eds. The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1978

Chatman, Seymour. “What Novels Can Do That Films Can't (And Vice Versa)”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, On Narrative (Autumn, 1980), pp. 121-140.

Delage-Toriel, Lara. “Shadow of a Double: Taking a Closer Look at the Opening of Kubrick's Lolita,” Miranda 3 (2010)

Durantaye, Leland de la. "The Facts of Fiction, or the Figure of Vladimir Nabokov in W. G. Sebald." Comparative Literature Studies 45.4 (2008): 425-45.

Even-Zohar, Itamar, “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem”, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader, London & New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 192-197.

Heidmann, Ute, and Jean-Michel Adam. "Text Linguistics and Comparative Literature: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Written Tales: Angela Carter's Translations of Perrault." Language and Verbal Art Revisited: Linguistic Approaches to the Study of Literature. Ed. Donna R. Miller and Monica Turci. London: Equinox, 2007. 181-96.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

Katan, David. Translating Cultures. An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. 2nd Ed., Manchester: St. Jerome, 2004.

McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1996.

Mitchell, J.W.T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Mitchell, J.W.T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Venuti L. (ed.). The Translation Studies Reader. London/New York: Routledge, 2000.

Williams, Lisa. The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf. Westport: Greenwood, 2000.

Knowledge

Students:

- broaden their knowledge of comparative studies, translation studies, adaptation theory,

- acquire knowledge of methodologies of dealing with literature and visual culture,

- acquire a deeper understanding of intercultural connections and transference of ideas and themes between cultures, literatures and other media,

- acquire knowledge of selected phenomena in literature, becoming acquainted with selected literary texts and films.

Skills

Students:

- learn to apply the acquired knowledge in analysis of specific texts,

- research a chosen topic: collect, select, synthesize information from academic sources and apply the proper rules of citation and paraphrase in the project,

- plan and organize writing process and use the acquired theoretical apparatus to write master's thesis.

Students get their credit based on regular attendance, active participation in discussions and completing their MA dissertations.

1st semester: presentation of one critical text from the reading list, selection of topic, drafting outline and bibliography for the project.

2nd semester: presentation of the project for peer-review and discussion, participation in discussion, draft of one chapter.

3rd semester: presentations of fragments of the project for peer-review and discussion, leading at least one discussion, draft of another chapter.

4th semester: completing the thesis.