Comp. Lit. 70300 - Literature and the Ancient World: Latin
GC: Th, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 cr. Prof. Stern (permission of instructor required) (91666)
Comp. Lit. 71000 – Research Techniques in Renaissance Studies (91667)
GC: T, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 3 cr., Prof. Carroll (crosslisted with RSCP 82100) (91667)
Comp. Lit. 71000 - Cervantes and the Crisis in European Fiction
GC: T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 cr., Prof. Schwartz (91668)
Comp. Lit. 78100 - Studies in Literary Periods: Reconfiguring Decadence: European Fin De Siecle Culture
GC: T, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 cr., Prof. Lombardi (91669)
Comp. Lit. 79800 - Independent Studies, Variable credit up to 6, Staff
Comp. Lit. 80100 – Symbolisms
GC: W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 cr., Prof. Caws (91671)
Comp. Lit. 80900 – Melancholy: Between Illness of the Body and Malady of the Soul, A Comparative Perspective
GC: W, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 cr., Prof. Calabritto (91672)
Comp. Lit. 88000 – The Italian Dialects: Between Speech and Literary Practice
GC: Tues. 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 cr., Prof. Haller (91673)
Comp. Lit. 89000 – Historicisms: Language, Context, and Crisis
GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 cr., Prof. Elsky (91674)
Comp. Lit. 89200 - History of Literary Theory and Criticism II
GC: Tues., 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 cr. Prof. Aciman (91675)
Comp. Lit. 89800 - Independent Studies, Variable credit up to 6, Staff
Comp. Lit. 90000 - Dissertation Supervision
GC: 1 cr., Staff
CL 80101 B: Dante: Purgatory (taught in English)
NYU: Mon. 3:30-6:10 p.m., 4 cr., Prof. John Freccero (91678)
CL 80102 B: Dante and Medieval Thought (taught in English)
NYU: Tues., 3:30-6:10 p.m., 4 cr.,
Prof. Maria Luisa Ardizzone (91679)
CL 80103 B The Courtsan in Early Modern Italian Society and Culture (taught in English)
NYU: Wed. 3:30-6:10 p.m., 4 cr.,
Prof. Virginia Cox (91680)
CL 80104 B Literary Theory: Theory and Practice of Early Modern Translation (taught in English)
NYU: Thurs. 2:30-5:15 p.m., 4 cr.,
Prof. Jane Tylus (91681)
Comp. Lit. 70300 – Literature and the Ancient World: Latin
Prof. Stern
This course will begin with a review of Latin grammar and syntax. We will then read weekly selections from various classical, medieval and renaissance authors; these will be translated and discussed during class meetings. Readings will be chosen from the following: Augustine, Bede, Boccaccio, Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Jerome, Livy, Lucretius, Medieval lyrics, More, Nepos, Ovid, Pliny, Vergil.
This course, if passed with the grade of B+ or better, will satisfy the ancient language requirement for the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. A suitable knowledge of Latin is prerequisite for the course and therefore permission of the instructor is required in order to register.
Comp. Lit. 71000 – Research Techniques in Renaissance Studies
Prof. Carroll
This course is designed to help students work on their own research for their dissertations, orals, or research papers in Renaissance Studies. The course will include visits to Manuscript and Rare Book Collections in New York (including those at Columbia and the Morgan Library). Students will receive instruction in topics specifically related to research in the early modern period: codicology, paleography, textual editing and analytical bibliography. The major assignment for the course is an annotated bibliography. Other assignments include exercises in paleography, analytical bibliography, and an oral report related to one of the readings for the course on the history of the book.
Reading list:
Michelle P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts.
Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts.
A. Cappelli, Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane.
John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors.
Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer.
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe.
Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: the Impact of Printing 1450-1800.
D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction.
Jean F. Preston and Laetitia Yeandle, English Handwriting 1400-1650.
Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book.
Henri Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing.
L. D. Reynolds & N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars.
Comp. Lit. 71000 – Cervantes and the Crisis in European Fiction
Prof. Schwartz
This course will focus on the study of Cervantes’s Don Quijote (1605-1615) as a text that recreates early modern literary forms, while questioning the writing of fiction, from the perspective of Aristotle’s Poetics and related Italian theories of the novel. Cervantes’s work will be also analyzed in relation to its literary models - romances of chivalry, pastoral, picaresque and Moorish novels, Boccaccio’s Decameron and other stories of adventures – and their philosophical contexts. The function of madness as a fictional device will be also examined in connection with Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly. Other aspects of this complex narrative to be considered include its rhetorical and ethical background, as well as the treatment of popular discourses and of classical adages. Among the works to be read, in addition to Don Quijote, are Sannazaro’s Arcadia, Lazarillo de Tormes, The Praise of Folly, and some novelle of the Decameron.
Comp. Lit. 78100 - Studies in Literary Periods: "Reconfiguring Decadence:European Fin de Siècle Culture"
Prof. Lombardi
Through the analysis of novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction, this course will investigate Decadence in its most complex and multi-faceted manifestations. A comparative approach to the study of European literature and culture of the fin-de-siècle will stimulate the discussion of the most significant elements associated with the Decadent movement. The rhetoric of sickness, the figure of the dandy, fetishism as formulated by Marx and Freud, anti-democratic and Orientalist ideological fantasies will act as topical gateways into a discussion of the aesthetic, literary, social and political practices of this period. Particular attention will be given to questions of identity-formation, gender, and sexuality, as contained within the relations of power displayed in the texts to be examined. Readings will include selected works by Charles Baudelaire, J. K. Huysmans, Gustave Flaubert, Rachilde, Igino Ugo Tarchetti, Gabriele D=Annunzio, Antonio Fogazzaro, Thomas Mann, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.
Schedule
Week 1 Introduction to the course
Week 2 Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal
Week 3 Baudelaire, Le peintre de la vie moderne and Tableaux parisiens
Week 4 Baudelaire, ASalons@ and ANotes sur Poe@; Edgar Allan Poe, AThe Man of the Crowd@, AThe Raven@, AThe Fall of the House of Usher@, ALigeia@
Week 5 Walter Benjamin's essays on Baudelaire; Jacques Derrida, Given Time
Week 6 J.K. Huysmans, A rebours
Week 7 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, AThe Decay of Lying@ and AThe Soul of Man under Socialism@
Week 8 Wilde, Salome; Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô
Week 9 Igino Ugo Tarchetti, Fosca
Week 10 Gabriele D=Annunzio, L=innocente
Week 11 Antonio Fogazzaro, Malombra
Week 12 Rachilde, La jongleuse
Week 13 Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
Week 14 [either Henry James, AThe Beast in the Jungle@, AThe Altar of the Dead@, AThe Aspern Papers@, AThe Figure in the Carpet@; Edith Wharton, AThe Muse=s Tragedy@ or H. Rider Haggard, She or Walter Pater, The Renaissance]
Course requirements
Students will write a one-page response paper every week, and a final paper (20-25 pages). They will also be asked to participate in a series of oral presentations on topics pertinent to the readings assigned.
Comp. Lit. 80100 – Symbolisms
Prof. Caws
Taking the term in its broad scope – so as not to limit the field to a particular moment and point of view -- this seminar will begin with a rapid overview of the possibilities included in the narrow and wider sense of symbolist literature and art. The range of readings and visual material covered will begin with Baudelaire and the paintings associated with his poetry, continue through its best-known poetic representatives, Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud, and reach the twentieth-century representation of the Mallarméan current by Paul Valéry and the strains present in Rilke, Eliot, Yeats, Stevens, and a scattering of more recent American poets. The emphasis will fall heavily on poetry and painting, and touch more briefly on the drama and the essay, depending on the interests of the participants in the seminar. The material will include French and Belgian, Russian and Spanish, Dutch, German and Italian. For example, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Huysmans and Maeterlinck with their anti-realist heroes and heroines will share the discussions with the standard symbolist painters such as Moreau and Delville, as well as the very creepy Khnopff and Toorop. The point is to see the enormous scope and influence of symbolisms as we now conceive them, stretching back and out. Class reports and two papers on different subjects, a shorter one at midterm and a longer concluding one.
Comp. Lit. 80900 - Melancholy: Between Illness of the Body and Malady of the Soul, A Comparative Perspective
Prof. Calabritto
This course will analyze ways authors from the Classical period to the eighteenth century have shaped the notion of melancholy in the language and rhetorical strategies of their texts. Since the course intends to give a comparative overview of the development of the notion of melancholy, the texts taken in consideration come from different national literaturesCItalian, French, English, Spanish. In particular we will study the interconnected notions of melancholy and selfhood from three historical vantage pointsCClassical period, early modern period and modern periodCand according to four generic groups: literary production, and the philosophical, encyclopedic and medical traditions. The course will address the following questions: How do language, rhetorical strategies and melancholy shape one another? What is the relationship between the representation of the bodyCthe physical body of the subject affected by melancholy and the metaphorical body of the textCand the notion of melancholy? When does melancholy stop being perceived and diagnosed as a bodily illness and become an illness of the Asoul@? In which way is melancholy gendered?
Reading list
(Pseudo) Aristotle, Problem XXX, 1
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (selections from Book III and Book IV)
Galen, On humors, (excerpts)
Constantinus Africanus, Viaticum (excerpts)
Marsilio Ficino, Three Books of Life (excerpts)
Michel de Montaigne, Essays (selections)
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (excerpts)
Tomaso Garzoni, The hospital of the incurable fools (excerpts)
Robert Burton, Anatomy of melancholy (excerpts)
Juan Huarte, The Examination of Men's Wits (excerpts)
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Physician of his Honor
Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
Provisional bibliography
Babb, Lawrence. The Elizabethan Malady. A Study of Melancholy in English Literature from 1580 to 1642. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951.
Boyle, Marjorie O'Rourke. A Pure of Heart: From Ancient Rites to Renaissance
Plato. Journal of the History of the Ideas. 63, 1 (2002): 41-62.
Doob. Penelope. Nabuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974. Selections.
Calabritto, Monica. A Introduction. L'ospedale dei pazzi incurabili/The Hospital of the Incurable Fools. By Tomaso Garzoni. Tr. John Crayton and Daniela Pastina. MRTS, forthcoming.
Cicero. Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4. Ed. and tr. Margaret Graver. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2002.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. Elizabethan Psychology and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Journal of the History of Ideas. 38 (1977): 373-88.
Gowland, Angus. The Problem of Early Modern Melancholy. Past and Present 191 (2006): 177-120.
King, Helen. The Power of Paternity: The Father of Medicine Meets the Prince of Physicians.@ Reinventing Hippocrates. Ed. David Cantor. Aldershot; Burlington USA; Singapore; Sidney: Ashgate, 2002. 21-36.Klibansky, Raimond, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholia. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art.
Nedeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1979.
Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun. Depression and Melancholia. Tr. By Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1989.
Lyons, Bridget Gellert. Voices of Melancholy. Studies in Literary Treatments of Melancholy in Renaissance England. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971.
MacDonald, Michael. Mystical Bedlam. Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Neely, Carol Thomas. Distracted Subjects. Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004.
Nutton, Vivian. Roman Medicine, 250 BC to AD 200.@ The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800. Ed. Lawrence I. Conrad, Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter, Andrew Wear. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 39-87.
Padel, Ruth. Whom Gods Destroy. Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.
Radden, Jennifer. The Nature of Melancholy: from Aristotle to Kristeva. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Selections.
Screech, M.A. Montaigne and Melancholy. The Wisdom of the Essays. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1983.
Soufas, Teresa Scott. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1990.
Zatti Sergio. The Quest for Epic. From Ariosto to Tasso. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Comp. Lit. 88000 – The Italian Dialects: Between Speech and Literary Practice
Prof. Haller
This course will introduce the students to the rich linguistic and literary diversity of Italy. In the first part, we will discuss the principal linguistic features of the main dialect groups, providing keys to identifying and reading the country’s various regional languages. Questions concerning the origins of dialects and their interrelations with the evolving Standard language will be addressed, as well as the dialects’ Italianization and changing social uses in the most recent decades. The central part of the course will be dedicated to Italy’s literary heritage in dialect, a canon that developed side by side with the Tuscan tradition, beginning in the Renaissance, when the codification of a literary Standard was enacted. We will read key texts from this tradition, such as those written in Friulan by Pier Paolo Pasolini, texts from the Neapolitan poets and playwrights Salvatore Di Giacomo and Eduardo De Filippo, the Roman Giuseppe Gioachino Belli and Trilussa, the Romagnol Tonino Guerra and Raffaele Baldini, the Milanese Carlo Porta, Delio Tessa and Franco Loi, the Venetian poets Biagio Marin, Virgilio Giotti, and Giacomo Noventa. The choice of the regional instead of the dominant Standard language will be queried throughout from a sociolinguistic perspective. We will also ponder the question of the widespread use in past and present of Italian dialects in narrative works written in Italian. The course will be taught in Italian. Text: H.W. Haller, La festa delle lingue. La letteratura dialettale in Italia (Rome, Carocci, 2002).
Comp. Lit. 89000 – Historicisms: Language, Context, and Crisis
Prof. Elsky
This course focuses on a series of seminal works that ground language and literature in historical cultures and institutions. Readings will range from the beginnings of philology in the Renaissance and Early Modern period through the Enlightenment to nineteenth-century Romanticism and Idealism and twentieth-century historicism. We will examine these works as responses to decisive—even traumatic-- moments of historical, epochal change, and we will emphasize the uses of philology and historicism in the service of secular empire, nationalism, religious ideology, and trans-nationalism. We will conclude with a consideration of critics of philology and its historical premises. Readings will include Valla, Vico, Herder, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Auerbach, Curtius, Benjamin, and Bhabha.
Comp. Lit. 89200 – History of Literary Theory and Criticism II
Prof. Aciman
A study of the development of thought about literature from the 18th century to the present day with readings from Kant, Lessing, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pater, Wilde, Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Eliot, Lukacs, Barthes, Poulet, and Derrida. This course will not only address issues pertaining to the evolution of modern aesthetics but it will also examine current critical methodology.
For further information, please write to aaciman@gc.cuny.edu