Comparing Literatures

A blog about comparative literature: theory, books, complaining about English majors, random musings — here's the place for all your comp lit needs. If you're interested in contributing, I'd be very open to having a collaborator; send me an ask and we'll talk about it. The ask box is open, as is the submission box.

[poesizing]

the fact that we get 3 and a half lectures on psychoanalysis stuff but not a single one on historical materialism in the comp lit core course is why comp lit is the way it is. I understand that the lectures they can offer depend what staff they have, but come on there’s a long history of influential classic marxist comp lit (Lukács?) and new historicism is really interesting and popular right now. meanwhile this is 2013 who uses Freud to analyse literary texts? 

[complit]

almost all of my theory background is deconstructionism (with a dash of psychoanalysis and a hint of structuralism and post-structuralism) and it's really irritating.

[complit]

Francophone Postcolonial Theory and Literature

This was the syllabus for my Francophone postcolonialism class. Our overall textbook was Charles Forsdick and David Murphy (eds.)'s Postcolonial Thought in the French Speaking World.

Theoretical texts:

Aimé Césaire, "Discourse on Colonialism"/"Discours sur le colonialisme"

Albert Memmi, "Portrait of the Colonized"/"Portrait du colonisé" and "Portrait of the Colonizer"/"Portrait du colonisateur" from Portraits

Abdelkébir Khatibi, "Diglossia" from Love in Two Languages

Hélène Cixous, "The Names of Oran"

Jacques Derrida, Le monolinguisme de l'autre

Frantz Fanon, "The Negro and Language" from Black Skin, White Masks

Sartre, "Black Orpheus"/"Orphée Noir"

Léopold Sédar Senghor, "Négritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century"

Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant, In Praise of Creoleness/Éloge de la créolité

Édouard Glissant, excerpts from Caribbean Discourse/Le Discours antillais 

Frantz Fanon, excerpts from The Wretched of the Earth/Les Damnés de la terre

Achille Mbembé, excerpts from On the Postcolony 

"Pour une littérature-monde en français"

Literary texts:

Assia Djébar, L'Amour, la fantasia (trans. as Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade)

Patrick Chamoiseau, Solibo Magnifique (trans. as Solibo Magnificent)

Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breakers

Ahmadou Kourouma, Les Soleils des Indépendences (trans. as The Suns of Independence)

Fatou Diome, Le Ventre de l'Atlantique (trans. as The Belly of the Atlantic)

[poesizing]

intro to lit theory

Authorship: Barthes, Death of the Author; Foucault, What is an Author?

Formalism: Eichenbaum, The Theory of the “Formal Method”;  Brooks, from The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry

Structuralism: Saussure, Course in General Linguistics ; Barthes, from Mythologies

Psychoanalysis: Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, The Mirror Stage & The Significance of the Phallus

Ideology: Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Foucault, Truth and Power

Feminism & Queer: Sedgwick, from Between Men; Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa; Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman; Butler, Gender Trouble

Deconstruction: Derrida, from Of Grammatology;

Postcolonial: Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth; Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?

Cultural Materialism: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory  

these are about 2/3 of the readings for my intro to lit theory course, if you’ve ever wondered what one studies on such courses, the links lead to free pdfs  

[complit]

for reference, if anyone's curious.

my intro to theory course featured

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

Barthes, Mythologies; selections from Critical Essays

Benjamin, selections from Illuminations

de Man, selections from Allegories of Writing and Blindness and Insight

Derrida, selections from Dissemination

Foucault, sections of The Order of Things

Butler, Gender Trouble 

as you can see, my professor really only cared about deconstructionism; I'm jealous of this syllabus.

remind me later and I'll post my Francophone postcolonialism syllabus, too.

[isengrimm]

10 Comp Lit Fails

It’s pronounced “Benjamin.”

[complit]

too real again

[ucb-cluj]

Call for Submissions!

We’re currently accepting submissions for the Fall 2013 issue of UC Berkeley’s Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal. We accept undergraduate papers in the humanities, in all languages, from students all around the world. Submit your paper by Sept. 5!

[complit]

followers might be interested. (I might be interested, for that matter.)

[madamedefarge10]

My mom cut this out for me. How nice of her.

[complit]

too real

[complit]

Thank you so much for your advice! I really appreciate your time and I will definitely take your words into consideration - it's nice to hear from someone removed from my situation and your perspective is really helpful for this big decision. A little of both in my applications sounds like a great idea! Thanks again and best of luck :)

you’re very welcome; I’m glad it was helpful. good luck with applications!

[complit]

Hi :) I saw your recent post and incidentally thought to elicit advice from you. Are my prospects better or worse in a doctoral program in Comp Lit or in French Lit (I will first have an M.A. in French Lit)? I am studying courtly love in the 19th century and its definition from the Middle Ages throughout the centuries. For now I have a French focus, but I can see working with Italian and Latin texts down the road to broaden my focus of the French idea to the European idea of courtly love. Ideas?

well, I’m only an undergrad, so I’m probably not the best person to ask for advice, but here are three general thoughts and advice that has been given to me:

remember that for most doctoral programs in comp lit you’ll have to demonstrate at least reading knowledge of multiple foreign languages (so for you probably Italian and Latin in addition to French)

pragmatically speaking, there just are more graduate programs in French than in comp lit, so looking for a program will be a lot easier

by the same token, there are a lot more teaching positions in French than in comp lit, and something to consider, if comp lit isn’t definitely your calling, is the possibility than in looking to hire faculty for French universities might prefer a candidate who’s been all-French all the time, although on the other hand, since you’ll have an MA in French, this is probably less of a concern for you than someone who’s always been in comp lit.

ultimately, though, I think it mostly depends on the program? I know both my Renaissance-ist and medievalist French professors both also work with texts in Latin and I think also Italian (Renaissance definitely Italian, medieval I think also), and as far as I know both of them were always in French.

I guess maybe my recommendation would be to look at some comp lit doctoral programs and some French programs and see which ones appeal to you more, keeping the above in mind? you’d probably be better off asking someone already in hardcore academia, though.

[poesizing]

[…] while the problem of lyric reference might seem to have been what was at astake in the preceding pages, the overlapping or incongruous details, seasons, public and private histories, battles and pets, sex scandals and insect remnants, books, newspapers, and all sort of familiar letters that surrounded the lines later published as a Dickinson lyric could not be said to be what the lines are “about”. In fact, those contingencies may never have been the subject of the lines, but in any case they could only have formed part of what the lines were about; that is, the stories that could be unfolded from them may or may not have been relevant to the lines’ potentially miscellaneous subjects (and objects) in the past. Once the lines were published and received as a lyric, those several severally dated subjects and objects and their several stories faded from view, since the poem’s referent would thereafter be understood as the subject herself - suspended, lyrically, in place and time. That lyrical suspension may seem to be where Dickinson’s lines on the cricket were always headed, detaching themselves over and over from whatever circumstances clung to them and readily attaching themselves to others. Yet, as we shall see, one of the most interesting aspects of 20th century critical thought about lyric subjectivity was the lack of such particular attachments; for literary theory in the United States in the 20th century, the isolated lyric subject tended to become a social, even an historical and cultural, abstraction. In D’s case, that meant that the sensely woven fabric of social relations from which her verse was removed when it was edited and published as a series of isolated lyrics was replaced by a theoretical concept of “the social” as such; the lyric subject then became the personification of that concept.

Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading, Virginia Jackson 

This is a version of the cricket poem mentioned, Dickinson attached a dead cricket to the letter when she send these lines (in a slightly different form) to Mabel Loomis Todd in 1883 (she sent different versions of these to several other people as well). Jackson’s book is really amazing, it’s a bit hard to read if you’re not familiar with Dickinson or lyric poetry, especially the history of the reception of lyric poetry, but it’s been really great at making me rethink the way I think about lyric poems as “written” as opposed to “voiced”, as well as about other issues I’ve been turning around in my head connected to lyric poetry like to what extent lyric poetry is always self-referential, how is lyric poetry staged, how can we make better ‘feminist’ readings (which rely less on normative assumptions about universal female existences) etc 

(via poesizing)

things to investigate.

[anxiedemia]

When the 27th person this week asks me what exactly I “compare” in Comparative Literature

[kuunakullanvalkeana]

#I know it’s a valid question but come on

[poesizing]

First, then, the translator must surrender to the text. She must solicit the text to show the limits of its language, because that rhetorical aspect will point at the silence of the absolute fraying of language that the text wards off, in its special manner. Some think this is just an ethereal way of talking about literature or philosophy. But no amount of tough talk can get around the fact that translation is the most intimate act of reading. Unless the translator has earned the right to become the intimate reader, she cannot surrender to the text, cannot respond to the special call of the text.

‘The Politics of Translation’, Gayatri Chakaravorty Spivak (from the Translation Studies Reader ed Lawrence Venuti)

people always complain about Spivak being ‘obtuse’ but this essay is so lovely, I need to get Outside in the Teaching Machine from the library  

(via andyispoesizing)

[elementofstyle]

Oh man, petroleum engineering beat Comp Lit AGAIN?

So did about nine other majors with the word “engineering” in the title. And I was so sure we had them this year. 

Huffington Post rates the 13 Best-Paying College Majors: PayScale List

[poesizing]

something else happened in eng lit today

We were meant to talk about TGS in our groups, but instead we were talking about random stuff and one of the guys asked me what other courses I was doing and I said comp lit and he asked me if comp lit is just like English lit and I said no, it’s like English lit times 10, it’s much much better and then he asked the fatal question that everybody always asks, but what is comp lit, actually? and, as always, I collapsed into incoherence.

[complit]

yep.

[fralusans-ana-marein]

There may be a general lesson here. Theory, we might conclude, does not give rise to harmonious solutions. It doesn’t, for instance, teach us, once and for all, what meaning is: how much the factors of intention, text, reader, and context peach contribute to a sum that is meaning. Theory doesn’t tell us whether poetry is a transcendent vocation or rhetorical trick or how much of each. Repeatedly I have found myself ending a chapter by invoking a tension between factors or perspectives or lines of argument and concluding that you have to pursue each, shifting between alternatives that cannot be avoided but that give rise to no synthesis. Theory, then, offers not a set of solutions but the prospect of further thought. It calls for commitment to the work of reading, of challenging presuppositions, of questioning the assumptions on which you proceed. I began by saying that theory was endless — an unbounded corpus of challenging and fascinating writings — but not just more writings: it is also an ongoing process of thinking which does not end when a very short introduction ends.

Jonathan Culler, “Identity, Identification, and the Subject,” Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

I really wish I’d remembered I had this and had thought to read it during Introduction to Theory of Literature; it would have helped the course a) make much more sense and b) be much more enjoyable.

(via fralusans-ana-marein)

theory theory

[fralusans-ana-marein]

Good taste follows and is developed by the study of literature; its precision results from knowledge but does not produce knowledge. Hence the accuracy of any critic’s good taste is no guarantee that its inductive basis in literary experience is adequate. This may still be true even after the critic has learned to base his judgements on the experience of literature and not on his social, moral, religious, or personal anxieties. Honest critics are continually finding blind spots in their taste: they discover the possibility of recognizing a valid form of poetic experience without being able to realize it for themselves.

Northrop Frye, “Polemical Introduction”, Anatomy of Criticism

You lost me at “Good taste”.

Seriously though, can you teach me your strange, dissociative ways that allow you to split your “social, moral, religious, [and] personal anxieties” off from you while you experience literature and form opinions about it? How does this strange magic work? What is “the experience of literature” if not a thing that is shaped by our life experiences?

(via fralusans-ana-marein)

I don't ever want to be in an environment where I can't talk about serious things in this kind of informal way; I hope any other future academics out there will join me in making an effort to open up academia in this way — that is, to humanize academia and to open academia up to the personal in a way that it currently emphatically is not.

[halfhauntings]

What texts would you recommend to read in a Comparative Literature class?

[complit]

there's a question. I don't know if I have the answer — it depends hugely on what kind of class. just an introductory class in "comparative literature"? lecture or seminar? theoretical or "practical"?

[complit]

Greetings and defiance

It has been a very long time since I did anything with this blog — more than a year now. I started this blog with a very naïve understanding of comparative literature; three years later I feel rather more informed, but also painfully aware of how little I actually know. I’m also conscious of how obnoxious claiming this url was and feel kind of bad about still having it considering I never use this.

That said, I’ve just cleared off some of the messier older posts and if people would be interested, I’d love to make this blog an actual comp lit blog where we talk about comp lit things, a sort of FY Comp Lit, but also with actual discussion of comp lit-related topics. I’d really like collaborators if I’m going to do that, though — as always, the ask box is open, so please let me know if you’d like to help out (or if you have questions).

I’m going to repost a question I posted back in the day before the giant influx of followers (i.e. before the year-long leave of absence).

Also, for what it’s worth, I’ll introduce myself: I’m just finishing up my third year of undergrad as a comp lit major. I’m almost done with the major, just one core seminar and my senior essay left to go. I’m using French and ancient Greek for the language requirement for the major, but I’m pretty much definitely going to abandon Greek after this semester. I’m interested in grad school in folklore, Celtic studies (with a focus in Scottish Gaelic), Canadian studies, or any of a number of other things. My senior essay is going to be on Franco-American literature in New England and Gaelic literature in Nova Scotia. This blog will likely be a sort of free-association game of languages (hopefully even more than just the ones I know, if other people submit!).

I feel like the comp lit version of “favorite ice cream flavor” is probably “favorite theorist”, but I don’t know that I have an answer; it’s more that there are individual theoretical works I like (and frankly not actually that many of those) than that there are theorists I like. Recently I enjoyed Thomas King’s essay “Godzilla vs. post-colonial”. I also enjoyed Barthes’s Mythologies when I read it for Intro to Theory of Literature and Derrida’s Le monolinguisme de l’autre when I read it for class last semester.

What about you, eminent followers? Who are you? What brings you here? What do you study? What do you read?

[fralusans-ana-marein]

feel kind of lame signal-boosting my own side blog, but whatevs.

also Andy I found the first time we communicated.

[poesizing]

I can’t believe it’s been two (and a half?) years and we’re both almost finished with our degrees - also, this isn’t lame at all, it’s cool - I’m always surprised by people who do comp lit but are not HYPER excited about comp lit and it’s nice to see more comp lit stuff on Tumblr - I will start submitting things after I finish dissertation work

I’ve just finished my 3rd year of an English Lit / Comp Lit 4 year MA - Glasgow only offers Comp Lit as a joint honours and despite initial hesitation between doing Eng Lit or a modern foreign language, I’m glad I went with Eng Lit although it’s made me drifting away from comp lit a bit lately and I feel kind of guilty about it - well, next year I’m only taking one Eng Lit course so I’ll have more time to focus on comp lit. I’m doing my dissertation in Eng Lit on “gender non-conforming” poetic voices in 19th century women’s poetry (I need to decide on a couple of specific poets to look at). There are so many comp lit things I wish I had the time to focus on - especially I wish I could take another language (Czech or Polish since GU specializes in Slavonic languages / literatures) and do period papers in French / Spanish / Slavonic literatures, but there’s just no time… (I keep telling myself that I will have a long ~career~ so I’ll have plenty of time to explore all my interests). Things I’m interested in right now are a) pre-1900s women’s poetry, esp “lyrical voice” in women’s poetry and developing (new) ways to read women’s poetry as women’s poetry without making recourse to biographical readings, b) translation studies, esp translation as critical practice / critical “space”, c) (re)writings of history in post-89 C/EE, esp how history became institutionalized, but also how people (esp women) coped with collective traumas (I wish I could do oral history projects at home), d) “history” more generally, I guess, in the context of queer historiography - there’s a lot of interesting work on things like “queer temporality” which would be interesting to apply to C/EE - for example, how can we understand the perpetual “transition” from communism to capitalism we’re stuck in in “queer” terms? - but also less theoretically, I’m interested in gathering information on queer people who lived in Romania, e) education and finding ways to make “academic knowledge” more accessible to people outside of academia and (hopefully?) trying to find alternatives to acquiring / sharing knowledge through academia. Poetry by queer women also remains a constant side-interest, although I don’t get to bring it up in school work that often.

I’m not sure if I have a favourite theorists, the type of work I aspire towards is sort of queer / feminist informed new historicism but applied across literatures not just to English lit - which sounds like (potentially pretentious) gibberish, but what I mean is that I like the way people like Emily Apter, Peter Brooks, Valerie Traub, Jonathan Sawday or Yopie Prins write / work. I guess they’re all “critics” rather than “theorists”, I haven’t really had a lot of time to read “theory” this year? I’m taking two theory courses next year though, one focused on comp lit and one in the English department so ask me again in a few months.

[complit]

times really have changed, and I feel like I should have something insightful to say in reflecting on the last two and a half years, but really all I've got is that Socratic sense of how little I know (and how much more there is to know).

in more detailed terms, if I had to list interests besides the super-broad ones above, here would be some:

minority language communities and literatures

Canadian literature

modernism (esp. Canadian modernisms)

speculative fiction

postcolonialism (esp. as relevant to speculative fiction and minority literatures)

fandom studies (particularly on my mind recently is the relationship between fan criticism, i.e. meta and close readings, and academic criticism)

broadly I guess I'm interested in the relationship between literature of whatever kind and communities — thus my senior essay. wow. have never actually articulated that before, but that definitely underlies a good portion of my interests

also Indo-European linguistics, whoops too bad the one professor who taught that didn't get tenure and will be gone next year

I read a lot of poetry and think a lot about it, but I'm still not very good at approaching it critically, mostly I think for want of practice doing so. the vast majority of critical things I read are focused on prose, so that's what I know best how to talk about, but I'm going to need to change that for my senior essay.

queer readings of texts (e.g. Germaine Guèvremont's Le Survenant, which I just was working on for a final paper for class) are also always in my head but have never yet made it out of my mouth in class or onto paper for an essay.

I am also interested in spreading knowledge outside of academia — tumblr has had a huge impact in my understanding of how knowledge can be produced and shared, and the utility of blogging and microblogging as a means of sharing knowledge is something I'm (obviously, given this blog) interested in, though I'm not sure exactly what I want to do with that interest.