Admission requirements
None.
Description
What is world literature? Is it the literature of our shared humanity, an aesthetic and ethical practice that expresses universalistic humanistic values? Can it therefore function as the invaluable bridge between cultures, and as the much needed tool to forge a truly global community? According to some of the reports of the Nobel Prize Jury, it can. But the concept of world literature has also been used to celebrate the superiority of certain national literatures over others, of certain cultural values over others. This course begins by tracing the paradoxes in the history of the concept of world literature. On the one hand, world literature allows us to understand, and relate to, the world’s diversity; on the other hand, some approaches to world literature result in the very erasure of that diversity. This course adopts the two key-concepts of ¬_diversity_ and power to analyse the dynamics that curtails literature’s potential to promote intercultural understanding.
The course is organised around six themes: maps, voice, travel, orientalism, translation, and globalisation. Each theme invites us to ponder the productivity of a specific cultural approach to the world’s diversity. Which cultural codes are shaping the world’s travel narratives? Which of these codes allow for intercultural contact, and which do not? Does the western fascination with authenticity enhance the understanding of cultural otherness, or not? Is translation a means to approach one’s cultural others, or does it deny otherness? Should we accept the other’s incomprehensibility? Or should we begin by accepting our own incomprehensibility? What power dynamics decides our perception of self and other?
One of the ways to respond to these questions, is by acknowledging the inevitable syncretism of almost all cultures and literatures. Through close reading and discussing a variety of creative master pieces, we will learn to negotiate between the different arts a global citizen should master: the arts of imagination and affinity, and the arts of social, cultural, and political analysis.
Course objectives
After this course, students will
i understand different approaches to (world) literature, in different regions of the world, and in different historical periods, and be able to differentiate different culturally and historically specific perceptions of language and identity;
ii have obtained a basic understanding of several influential discourses that have shaped the (predominantly western) perception of cultural others (e.g. orientalism, primitivism, racism), and be able to give an account of the critical debates on these discourses;
iii have obtained different theories and concepts of the interrelatedness of the literatures of the world (mimicry, hybridity, globalisation, Relation, etc.);
iv be able to evaluate the (lack of) productivity of these discourses (see ii), theories and concepts (see iii) for global intercultural understanding; thus, they will also have developed a critical awareness of their own received opinions and ideas on cultural otherness;
v have read and analysed a variety of literary texts from esp. Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, within the framework of the debates on identity, alterity, and globalisation
Timetable
Please see the LUC website: www.lucthehague.nl
Mode of instruction
Teaching Methods: the core of each session is an intense interactive debate on the analysis and interpretation of a literary text, performance, or artwork, within the framework proposed by the reading materials and the lecture of that session. Discussions of the reading materials (and, if necessary, close reading) and introductory lectures will serve as the theoretical and historical preparation for that group interaction. An interdisciplinary theoretical frame will be used to explore each theme. This form of interdisciplinarity (which is common to the field of cultural analysis) will also demand a critical, ethical self-reflection on the students’ own received ideas and notions of ideas of cultural otherness.
Assignments:
– Each student will be asked to open the interactive debate of one session, by presenting his/her opinion of the main points in the reading materials, and a question that will provoke debate.
– After each session, students will post (on Blackboard) their account of the key insights that sprang from that session.
– Students will select two out of five proposed literary texts as the topic of two short analytical essays (800 wrds each), which will be framed by the debates of the relevant sessions. For each literary text, the teacher will provide a research question that will serve as the point of departure.
– Finally, students will write a longer essay on a literary text/performance/art work (either of their own choice, OR suggested by teacher), in which they will frame their reading within one of the theme-related debates of the course (2500 wrds).
Assessment method
- Understanding complex academic texts and debates: assessed through Posting on Blackboard (10% of final grade): Within 24 hrs after each session
- Understanding texts, and offer critical response: assessed through giving an introduction to open class debate (10% of final grade): Once during course
- Guided analysis of creative writing; relating analysis to theoretical debates: assessed through short (1000 wrds) analysis of (aspect of) literary text 1 selected by student, (20 % of final grade): Once during course, to be submitted by mail on 17h, the day before the class on that text
- Guided analysis of creative writing; relating analysis to theoretical debates: assessed through short (1000 wrds) analysis of (aspect of) literary text 2 selected by student, (20 % of final grade): Once during course, to be submitted by mail on 17h, the day before the class on that text.
- Independent analysis of creative writing/art, framed by the academic debates explored during the course: assessed in individual essay (2500-3000 wrds) that testify of critical awareness of debates on interrelatedness, identity, alterity, and globalisation (40% of final grade): End-term (Discussion of possible topics in week 6): Deadline March 31, 17 h.
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Blackboard
This course is supported by BlackBoard site.
Reading list
J.M. Coetzee. Foe. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986. (157 pp)
David Damrosch. How to Read World Literature. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Pico Iyer. The Global Soul: Jet Lags, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. (300 pp)
Orhan Pamuk. Benim Adım Kırmızı. Istanbul : İletişim, 1998. Translated as: My Name is Red. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. (other editions allowed) (417 pp).
Marlene Nourbese Philip. Looking for Livingstone: and Odyssey of Silence. Stratford, Ont.: Mercury Press, 1991 (75 pp).
John McLeod. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester U.P., 2010. (2nd edition)
Registration
This course is only open to LUC students.
Contact information
Dr. I. Hoving, Faculty of Arts
Weekly Overview
Week 1 Mapping
Tue 7.2; Session 1; Introduction: What is world literature? Goethe, Marx, Damrosch
Th 9.2; Session 2 Case: Mappamundi, Sheikh; Literature and World
Literature and society; worlds and maps
Week 2 Voice
Tue 14.2; Session 1; Philosophies of language: the Power of the Voice
th16.2; Session 2 Case: calypso; The Politics of the Voice
Week 3 Travel
Tue 21.2; Session 1 ; Travellers and tourists
Th 23.2; Session 2Case: Philip. Livingstone; Travelling Otherwise
Week 4 Orientalism
Tue 28.2; Session 1 ; Orientalism
th 1.3; Session 2 Case: Pamuk. My Name is Red; Orientalism and multiculturalism
Week 5 Translation
Tue 6.3; Session 1; Translation
th 8.3; Session 2 Case: Devi. “Draupadi.”; Translation and power
Week 6 Globalisation
Tue 13.3; Session 1 Case: Coetzee. Foe; The Limits of Translation
Th 15.3; Session 2; The Literatures of migration
Week 7
Tue 20.3; Session 1 Case: Iyer. The Global Soul; Hybridity
Th 22.3; Session 2; The literatures of globalisation
Preparation for first session
None