Spaces of Comparison: Approaches to Comparative Literature 2017-18

In 1827, Goethe stated provocatively that ‘National literature has become rather meaningless. The
time has come for world literature.’ This view may seem particularly pertinent today, in an age of
globalisation. Yet there is little sign that literature is becoming homogenised. Our limited linguistic
competence and our specific cultural identities entail that we are generally most familiar with the
literature of our own culture, and that other literatures are ‘foreign’. The historical events and
developments that help to shape literature will differ between nations, and each literature has its
own major authors and texts acting as models to be emulated or refuted. This does not mean that
literature is constrained by national or cultural boundaries. Writers and readers move between
literatures and bring them into play with each other, and the classical canon has given the European
vernacular literatures a common basis. Translation and adaptation provide modes of creative
transfer, and literature has always thrived on diversity of cultures and places. By studying literature
comparatively, you will develop an enhanced awareness of the complexity of literary
communication and develop your cultural imagination.

A degree-level knowledge of at least one European language plus English is a requirement for
admission to this programme.

The course will consist of 4 seminars in Hilary Term 2018.

Convenor: Professor Patrick McGuinness (patrick.mcguinness@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)

1. National Literatures – World Literature?

2. The Ancients and the Moderns – the Role of the Canon

3. Translation, Adaptation, Version

4. Place and Displacement

Please see the Reading List below for each seminar.

Method Lectures in Michaelmas Term 2017. Students should attend method lectures in
Michaelmas Term. You should attend the lectures on Literary Theory and Critical Thought and/or
German Cultural Theory from Schiller to Wittgenstein. Details on the times and locations for these
lectures are on the Lecture List.

Presentation
Each student will be expected to give a short presentation at one of the seminars. Full details will
be provided by the convenor before the seminars begin.

Assessed Essay
At the end of Hilary Term, participants must submit a 5,000-7,000 word essay. The topic of the essay
will arise out of the topic areas discussed during the seminars in Hilary Term. In January, a title and
topic for the essay will be agreed with the seminar convenor.
 READING LIST

This list is very selective, and the focus is on titles in English. Please ask subject specialists for
advice on further titles in other languages relevant to your work.

Anthologies

Leitch, Vincent B. (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (New York and London:
Norton, 2001)

Walder, Dennis (ed.), Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents , 2nd rev. ed.
(Oxford: OUP, 2004)

1) National literatures – World literature?

Core Reading

Auerbach, Erich, ‘Odysseus’s Scar’, in E. Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in

Western Literature, trsl. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953); see also 50th ed.
with introduction by Edward W. Said (2003) [German: ‘Die Narbe des Odysseus’, in
Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur (1946)], Chapter 1

Culler, Jonathan, ‘Whither Comparative Literature?’, Comparative Critical Studies 3.1-2 (2006), 85-
97

Jameson, Fredric, ‘Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’, Social Text 15
(1986), 65-88

Wellek, René, ‘The Crisis of Comparative Literature’, in R. Wellek, Concepts of Criticism, ed.
Stephen G. Nichols (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963), 282-95

Further Reading

Barker, Francis, et al. (eds), Europe and its Others, Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the
Sociology of Literature, July 1984, 2 vols (Colchester: U of Essex, 1985)

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

Bernheimer, Charles (ed.), Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism (Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995)

Bhabha, H (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990)

Casanova, Pascale, The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard UP, 2004) [French:
La république mondiale des lettres, 1999]

Damrosch, David, What is World Literature? (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2003)

Glick, T.F. (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Relativity (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987)

Glissant, Édouard, Poetics of Relation, trsl. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1997) [French: Poétique de la relation, 1990]
Greenfield, Liah, Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard UP, 1992)

Guillén, Claudio, The Challenge of Comparative Literature, trsl. Cola Franzen (Cambridge/Mass.:
Harvard UP, 1993)

Prawer, Siegbert, Comparative Literature Studies: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 1973)

Sinclair, Alison, Trafficking Knowledge in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: Centres of Exchange and
Cultural Imaginaries (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2009)

Wellek, René, ‘The Crisis of Comparative Literature’, in: R. Wellek, Concepts of Criticism, ed.
Stephen G. Nichols (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963), pp. 282-95

2) The Ancients and the Moderns – the Role of the Canon

Core Reading

Butler, Marilyn, ‘Repossessing the Past: The Case for an Open Literary History’, in M. Levinson et
al. (eds), Rethinking Historicism: Critical Readings in Romantic History (Oxford: Blackwell,
1989), 64-84

Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trsl. William R. Trask
(Princeton: Princeton UP) [German: Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter
(1948)], esp. Chapters 1-4

Eliot, T.S., ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, in Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1999),
13-22 [first publ. 1919]

Kermode, Frank, ‘Canon and Period’, in F. Kermode, History and Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988), pp. 113-170

Further Reading

Auden, W.H., ‘The Greeks and Us’ (1948) and ‘Augustus to Augustine’ (1944), in W.H. Auden,
Forewords and Afterwords (Vintage, 1989, pp. 3-32 and 33-39

Beard, Mary, and John Henderson, Classics. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 22000)

Bloom, Harold, ‘Shakespeare, Center of the Canon’, in The Western Canon. The Books and School
of the Ages (New York: Harcourt 1994), 45-75

Calinescu, Matei, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, decadence, Kitsch,

Postmodernism (Durham/N.C.: Duke, 1987)

Calvino, Italo, Why Read the Classics?, trsl. Martin McLaughlin (London: Vintage, 2000) [Italian:
Perché leggere i classici (1991)]

Demaria, Robert, Jr, and Robert D. Brown (eds), Classical Literature and its Reception. An
Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)
Eliot, T.S., ‘Modern Education and the Classics’ (1932), in Selected Essays (London: Faber and
Faber, 1999), 507-516 [first publ. 1932]

Frye, Northrop, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1982)

Green, Otis H., Spain and the Western Tradition. The Castilian Mind in Literature from El Cid to
Calderón, 4 vols (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963-66)

Guillory, John, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993)

Kallendorf, Craig W. (ed.), A Companion to the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)

Lauter, C.A.N., Canon and Contexts (Oxford: OUP, 1991)

Pound, Ezra, ‘Translators of Greek: Early Translator of Homer’, in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound
(New York: New Directions, 1968), 249-275 [first publ. 1920]

3) Translation, Adaptation, Version

Core Reading

Benjamin, Walter, “The Task of the Translator”, in W. Benjamin, Illuminations (New York:
Schocken, 1968), 69-82

Jakobson, Roman, ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in Language in Literature

(Cambridge/Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1987), 428-435

Paterson, Don, ‘Afterword’, in: Rainer Maria Rilke, Orpheus. A Version of Rilke’s Die Sonette an
Orpheus by Don Paterson (London: Faber and Faber, 2006)

Further Reading

Baker, Mona, In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (London: Routledge, 1992)

Eco, Umberto, Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation (London: Phoenix, 2004)

Hamburger, Michael, ‘Preface’, in Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems and Fragments, trsl. M. Hamburger,
bi-lingual edition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), ix-xviii

Reynolds, Matthew, The Poetry of Translation: From Chaucer & Petrarch to Homer & Logue
(Oxford: OUP, 2011)

Scott, Clive, Channell Crossings. French and English poetry in dialogue 1550-2000 (Oxford:
Legenda, 2002)

Steiner, George, After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford: OUP, 21992)

Tomlinson, Charles, Metamorphoses. Poetry and Translation (Manchester: Carcanet, 2003)

Venuti, Lawrence (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader (London; Routledge, 22004)

Walcott, Derek, Omeros (London: Faber, 1990)

 4) Place and Displacement

Core Reading

Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) [see also 2nd ed., 2004, with a
new preface by the author]

Davenport, Guy, The Geography of the Imagination. Forty essays (San Francisco: North Point,
1981), Chapters 1 and 2

Kronfeld, Chana, On the Margins of Modernism. Decentering Literary Dynamics (Berkeley and
London: U of California Press, 1996), Introductory chapter

Ramazani, Jahan, A Transnational Poetics (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2009), Introductory

chapter

Further Reading

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd ed
(London and New York: Routledge, 2006)

Bevan, David (ed.), Literature and Exile (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990)

Burdett, Charles, and Derek Duncan (eds), Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the
1930s (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2002)

Fanon, Frantz, Black skin, white masks, trsl. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto, 2008 [and
earlier editions]) [French: Peau noire, masques blancs (1952)]

Moretti, Franco, Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900 (London: Verso 1998) [Italian: Atlante del
romanzero europeo 1800-1900 (1997)]

Naipaul, V.S., India: a Wounded Civilization (London: André Deutsch, 1977 [and later editions])

Rushdie, Salman, Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (London: Granta 1991)

Said, Edward, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978 [and later editions in Penguin])

Soyinka, Wole, Myth, Literature, and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976)

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York and London:
Methuen, 1987)

Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. A Reader
(New York: Columbia UP, 1994)

Young, Robert, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, Routledge (London: Routledge,
1990, 22004)