Comparative Literature

Faculty of the Department of Comparative Literature

Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin and Professor of Comparative Literature (Chair)
Margaret Alexiou, George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature
Svetlana Boym, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature
Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
James Engell, Gurney Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature
Luis M. Girón Negrón, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Languages and Literatures
Barbara E. Johnson, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society (on leave fall term)
Walter Kaiser, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Villa I Tatti
James L. Kugel, Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
Stephen Owen, James Bryant Conant University Professor
Judith Ryan, Harvard College Professor and the Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature
Marc Shell, Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of English (on leave fall term)
Susan R. Suleiman, C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave 2000-01)
William Mills Todd III, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
Ruth R. Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature

Other Faculty Offering Instruction in the Department of Comparative Literature

Sacvan Bercovitch, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature (on leave fall term)
George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Cyzevs‘kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature
Karl S. Guthke, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture
Beatrice Hanssen, Associate Professor of German
Robert Kiely, Harvard College Professor and the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English
Francisco Márquez, Arthur Kinsgley Porter Research Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Marcus Moseley, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
Sandra Naddaff, Senior Lecturer on Literature
Maria Tatar, Harvard College Professor and John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures (on leave 2000-01)
Alfred Thomas, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities (on leave fall term)

This field is organized to facilitate the systematic study of subjects and problems common to the various literatures. Programs leading to the degrees of A.M. and Ph.D. may, with the approval of the Department, be undertaken by properly qualified graduate students. Though undergraduates may not concentrate in Comparative Literature, their attention is called to the Literature Concentration, to History and Literature, to the Classics and allied fields, and to options in the concentration in English and American Literature and Language. The courses listed below are designed to supplement the offerings of other departments in ancient and modern languages and related fields, including the Literature and Arts courses in the Core Curriculum.

For Undergraduates and Graduates

Comparative Literature 100c. The Literary World 1000-1500
Catalog Number: 2217
Stephen Owen
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 11. EXAM GROUP: 13
A reading of texts from various literary cultures that were composed roughly between 1000 and 1500 C.E. Attention will be given to literary-historical and cultural contexts. Readings will be in translation.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02.

[Comparative Literature 102x. How to Think Money]
Catalog Number: 8734
Marc Shell
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Introduction to aesthetic and economic form in literature, painting, music, and cinema. Theoretical perspectives from Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Simmel, Burke, Derrida, Baudrillard. Attention to issues of symbolic mediation, theme and structure. Works include Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Metsys’ Moneychanger and His Wife, Poe’s “Wall Street,” Bresson’s Money, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Charles Ives’ Marches.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.

Comparative Literature 103r. Literature and Politics: The Case of Zionism
Catalog Number: 6773
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Seminar on the interrelationship between politics and literature. Studies novels, stories, poems, and dramas that engage in the struggle over the settlement and creation of Israel. Works in different languages reflects different cultural traditions and perspectives. Writers include George Eliot, Haim Nahman Bialik, Yosef Haim Brenner, Sholem Aleichman, S.Y. Agnon, Haim Hazaz, Arthur Koestler, Herman Wouk, A.B. Yehoshua, A.M. Klein.

[Comparative Literature 104. Jewish Autobiography from the Renaissance to the 20th Century]
Catalog Number: 0956
Marcus Moseley
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Jewish autobiographical texts from the Renaissance period to the present in the light of contemporary critical and theoretical perspectives and within a comparative context. Authors to be studied include Y.A. Modena, Nahman of Bratslav, Solomon Maimon, N.H. Bialik, Y.L. Peretz, and David Daiches. All readings are in English.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.

[Comparative Literature 106x. Diaspora in Jewish Fiction]
Catalog Number: 3711
Sacvan Bercovitch
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
An exploration of the transformations in Judaism of the meanings of Diaspora, historically and aesthetically, from scripture to commentary to modern fiction. Selections from the Bible, Commentaries, Hassidic Tales, Sholem Aleikhem, Peretz, Kafka, Babel, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.

[Comparative Literature 111. From Type to Self in the Middle Ages]
Catalog Number: 9245
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines self-representation and the emergence of the individual in selected poems and first-person narratives from medieval/early modern Europe. Examples drawn from spiritual autobiographies, epic poems, saints’ lives, maqama literature (Arabic and Hebrew rhymed prose narratives), troubadour lyric, Hispano-Jewish poetry, pilgrimage tales, medieval allegories, Spanish colonial historiography, and the picaresque novel.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. All readings in English translation.

Comparative Literature 112. Religion and Literature in the Middle Ages
Catalog Number: 6579
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 1. EXAM GROUP: 6
An introduction to religion as a cultural context for literary expression in the Middle Ages. Selected case studies on the following themes: poetry, prophecy and mysticism; Scriptural interpretation and allegorical fiction; dreams and visions of the other-world; Jews, Christians and Muslims; magic and astrology; miracle stories and medieval society; the philosophical tradition; ritual and theater, pilgrimage narratives; and saints and heroes as literary types.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. All readings in English translation.

Comparative Literature 151. The Faust Legend in Literature
Catalog Number: 6217
Karl S. Guthke
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Important works in the Faust tradition, from the Faustbuch (1587) to the 20th century, with emphasis on Marlowe, Calderón, Lessing, Goethe, Byron, Berlioz, and Mann.
Note: No reading knowledge of Spanish, French, or German required.

[Comparative Literature 159. The Peasant in Literature: Conference Course]
Catalog Number: 9742
George G. Grabowicz
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
The perception of the peasant as topic, as ideal, and as the Other in 19th- and 20th-century literature. Examines the paradigms and strategies of Romantic idealization, realism and verismo, naturalism, impressionism and symbolism, as well as ideological stances (populism, Marxism, socialist realism, anti-fascism) and psychological attitudes (from self-identificaion to demonization). Authors treated include George Sand, Shevchenko, Turgenev, Hardy, Tolstoy, Zola, Reymond, Verga, Kociubynskyj, Silone, Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, and Kosinski.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. All texts can be read in English.

[Comparative Literature 163. From Kafka to Kundera: Questions of Identity in Central European Modernist Fiction]
Catalog Number: 7586
Alfred Thomas
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores interrelated issues of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in key works by German, Polish, and Czech writers of the 20th century (Witold Gombrowicz, Egon Hostovsky, Bohumil Hrabal, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler, Bruno Schulz, and Richard Weiner.) Includes film versions of Kafka’s “The Trial” and Schnitzler’s “Dream Story.”
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. All readings in English.

Comparative Literature 164. The 20th-Century Post-Realist Novel in Eastern Europe: Conference Course
Catalog Number: 7762
George G. Grabowicz
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Psychological, mythic, “catastrophist,” and comic tendencies in the Eastern and Central European novel between the two World Wars (1918–1939). Focus on Kafka, Capek, Bulgakov, Schulz, Witkiewicz, Gombrowicz, and Nabokov.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. All texts can be read in English translation.

Comparative Literature 166. The Comic Tradition in Jewish Culture
Catalog Number: 3418
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Studies some of the genres, subjects, theories and uses of comedy in Modern Jewish culture. Examines the joke, parody, satire, film and stage comedy, and stand-up humor. Asks what are the functions of humor? What are the methods of humor? Does humor have a national dimension? Are Jews predisposed to comedy, and if so, why?
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. Readers of Yiddish may take this course as Yiddish 200.

Comparative Literature 167. Contemporary Fiction: The Novel After Theory
Catalog Number: 1808
Judith Ryan
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1 and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
Examines a series of novels from 1980 to the present that build consciously on recent literary and cultural theory. Also explores the relation of fictional narrative to history, social problems, and ideology. Authors treated include: Helen Darville, Marguerite Duras, David Malouf, Christoph Ransmayr,Marilynne Robinson, Patrick Süsskind, Graham Swift, and Christa Wolf. Theorists include: Barthes, Bhabha, Baudrillard, Derrida, Hassan, Lacan, and White.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02.

Comparative Literature 168. Literature and Film
Catalog Number: 8121
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). W., 2–4. Film screenings to be arranged.
Focuses on literary and cinematic techniques of representation and the ways in which different media reflect and inform modern cultural myths. Special attention to representation of history and memory in East and West European film and to the tradition of cinematic experimentation from the silent era to the present. Works by Vertov, Eisenstein, Gogol, Trauberg, Nabokov, Kubrik, Jarmusch, Cortázar, Antonioni, Kundera, Vajda, Tarkovsky, Varda, Sarraute, and others.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02.

Comparative Literature 182. Comparative Cultures of Money
Catalog Number: 0539
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Th., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 18
Language and money as means of representation and exchange. Special attention to presumptions about politics, imitation, and the visual arts. Readings include texts by modern theorists as well as Aristotle, Balzac, Del Mar, Goethe, Heidegger, Hess, Martineau, Pascal, Shakespeare, Thoreau, and Ueda.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02.

Primarily for Graduates

*Comparative Literature 202. Melancholy: The Anatomy of an Affect in Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts: Seminar
Catalog Number: 5684
Beatrice Hanssen
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
The disposition of melancholia has exerted unparalleled fascination in literature and the arts. Is melancholia just a disabling psychic state, akin to depression? Or does it play a more fundamental role in moral philosophy, political theory, conceptions of beauty, and the crafting of a new cultural history in modernity? Figures considered:Aristotle, Dürer, Montaigne, Pascal, Shakespeare, Lavater, Kant, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Rilke, Benjamin, Freud, Abraham, Torok, Celan, Kristeva, Warburg, Panofsky, Munch, Klee, and Kiefer.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. Open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates.

*Comparative Literature 207. Theory and Methods in Comparative Oral Traditions: Seminar
Catalog Number: 7426
Gregory Nagy
Half course (fall term). M., 2–4; Tu., 11–1. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Genres, forms, and themes of oral traditions in poetry and prose. Problems of analyzing divergences and convergences in oral and written literatures. The concept of the canon in oral and written literatures. Theories of performance and composition. Comparative metrical and formulaic analysis.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. Knowledge of Greek not required. Qualified undergraduates welcome.

[*Comparative Literature 210. Comparative Themes in the Literatures of Medieval Spain: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 3298
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines Jewish-Christian-Muslim interaction as a Hispano-Medieval paradigm of cultural creativity. Examples drawn from Spanish epic, muwashshahat, Hispano-Jewish poetry, the short story tradition, maqama literature, the adab tradition, medieval didactica, historical chronicles, polemical writings, the Sephardic romancero, cancionero poetry, La Celestina, and Spanish mystical literature.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Spanish, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew materials will be read in English translation but students are encouraged to work with the originals.

*Comparative Literature 211. Mysticism and Literature: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3867
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (spring term). W., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 9
Examines trends, issues, and debates in the comparative study of mystical literature. Close readings of primary works by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim authors from the Middle Ages through the 16th century. Topics include poetry and mysticism; allegory, symbolism, and Scripture; body and gender; apophasis vs. cataphasis; exemplarity and autobiographism; language and experience. Also examines creative engagement of premodern mystical literature in selected works by modern authors (Borges, T.S. Eliot, Goytisolo) and literary theorists (DeCerteau.)
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02.

[*Comparative Literature 260. Literature and Exile: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 3691
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores the intimate connection between literature and exile through fiction, poetry, autobiographical and critical writings of writer-expatriates. Topics to be considered include exile as a metaphor and as an experience, nostalgia and irony, imagined homelands and national canons, bilingualism and transnational identity. Readings from Nabokov, Kundera, Sarraute, Cortázar, Rushdie, Brodsky.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Open to qualified undergraduates.

*Comparative Literature 261. Memory and Modernity: Seminar
Catalog Number: 6923 Enrollment: Limited to 15. Limited to 15.
Svetlana Boym
Half course (fall term). W., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Explores modern art of memory in literary, philosophical, and critical texts. Topics to be considered: nostalgia and search for newness, collective and individual memory, conspiracy theories and ethics of remembering, modern “memory sites” — metropolis, museum, monument, home. Special attention to contemporary East-European reflection on art, memory, and nation. Readings from Baudelaire, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Proust, Nabokov, Tsvetaeva, Kundera, Kis, Levi, Cortázar, Borges, Brodsky, Lyotard, and others.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. All texts available in English, but reading texts in the original is encouraged. Primarily for graduate students; qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 264. Baudelaire and Benjamin: Seminar
Catalog Number: 4348
Barbara E. Johnson
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Close analysis of poetry and other writings by Charles Baudelaire, juxtaposed with the provocative fragments written about 19th-century culture around and through Baudelaire by Walter Benjamin.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02. Reading knowledge of French required. Knowledge of German helpful but not required.

[*Comparative Literature 269. Metaphors of Illness: From Polio to AIDS: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 8517
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Considers culture and social aesthetics of 20th-century medical epidemics in Europe and America. Literary texts, films, visual art. Syllabus includes Tales from Inside the Iron Lung, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, speeches by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, medical texts about hysterical paralysis, paintings by Frida Kahlo and Masaccio. Theorists of aesthetics and medicine include Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Mann, Susan Sontag.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.

[*Comparative Literature 280. Literary Theory and Criticism in the Middle Ages: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 2215
Jan Ziolkowski
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines the place of theory and criticism in the curriculum (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic). Topics include allegory and allegoresis; nature of medieval glosses and commentaries; continuity of Platonic and Aristotelian traditions; medieval sign theory. Readings include works by Augustine, Fulgentius, Bede, Bernard Silvestris, Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Snorri Sturluson, Dante, and Boccaccio.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.

[*Comparative Literature 283. Language Wars and Polyglot Literature: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 9342
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
First we consider how language difference abets war and promises peace; sites include ancient Gilead and Rome, as well as contemporary Québec, Nigeria, and Hispaniola. Then we consider problems of translation, heteroglossia and literary multilingualism; texts include the trilingual New Testament and works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Celan, and Beckett.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.

[*Comparative Literature 285. Comparative Romantic Theory: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 0752
James Engell
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Intensive readings in Anglo-American and Continental theory of the Romantic period with relevant 20th-century commentary (e.g., Coleridge, Schelling, Keats, de Man, Todorov, and McFarland on allegory and symbol). Topics include language theory, irony, influence and originality, expression and reception, literary forms (genre), gender, and aesthetics.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02.
Prerequisite: Some prior knowledge of Romantic literature. Reading knowledge of German desirable but not required.

[*Comparative Literature 287r. Selected Topics in Poetics and Rhetoric: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 7999
Gregory Nagy
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Points of departure: Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. Knowledge of Greek not required. Qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 299ar (formerly *Comparative Literature 299a). Literary Theory: Proseminar
Catalog Number: 2431
Barbara E. Johnson
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
An introduction to some perennial problems in literary studies (mimesis, authorship, form) and to some of the ways in which these problems have been discussed in literary theory since the 1960’s.
Note: Required of first-year graduate students in Comparative Literature; others may be admitted by permission of instructor.

Graduate Courses of Reading and Research

*Comparative Literature 396. Preparation for the General Examinations
Catalog Number: 4570
Jan Ziolkowski 7275, Margaret Alexiou 1214, Sacvan Bercovitch 7638 (on leave fall term), Svetlana Boym 1926, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715 (on leave spring term), James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, George G. Grabowicz 4511, Karl S. Guthke 1715, Barbara E. Johnson 7626 (on leave fall term), Walter Kaiser 2561, Robert Kiely 1621, James L. Kugel 7575 (on leave spring term), Francisco Márquez 5064, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423 (on leave spring term), Stephen Owen 7418, Judith Ryan 1135, Marc Shell 3176 (on leave fall term), Susan R. Suleiman 7234 (on leave 2000-01), Maria Tatar 3645 (on leave 2000-01), William Mills Todd III 1634 (on leave spring term), and Ruth R. Wisse 3177

*Comparative Literature 397. Direction of Doctoral Dissertations
Catalog Number: 0320
Jan Ziolkowski 7275, Margaret Alexiou 1214, Sacvan Bercovitch 7638 (on leave fall term), Svetlana Boym 1926, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715 (on leave spring term), James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, George G. Grabowicz 4511, Karl S. Guthke 1715, Barbara E. Johnson 7626 (on leave fall term), Walter Kaiser 2561, Robert Kiely 1621, James L. Kugel 7575 (on leave spring term), Francisco Márquez 5064, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423 (on leave spring term), Stephen Owen 7418, Judith Ryan 1135, Marc Shell 3176 (on leave fall term), Susan R. Suleiman 7234 (on leave 2000-01), Maria Tatar 3645 (on leave 2000-01), William Mills Todd III 1634 (on leave spring term), and Ruth R. Wisse 3177

*Comparative Literature 399. Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 2893
Jan Ziolkowski 7275, Margaret Alexiou 1214, Sacvan Bercovitch 7638 (on leave fall term), Svetlana Boym 1926, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715 (on leave spring term), James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, George G. Grabowicz 4511, Karl S. Guthke 1715, Barbara E. Johnson 7626 (on leave fall term), Walter Kaiser 2561, Robert Kiely 1621, James L. Kugel 7575 (on leave spring term), Francisco Márquez 5064, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423 (on leave spring term), Stephen Owen 7418, Judith Ryan 1135, Marc Shell 3176 (on leave fall term), Susan R. Suleiman 7234 (on leave 2000-01), Maria Tatar 3645 (on leave 2000-01), William Mills Todd III 1634 (on leave spring term), and Ruth R. Wisse 3177
Note: Candidates for the doctoral degree in Comparative Literature may pursue advanced studies under the individual supervision of these instructors. Permission to register for this course should be obtained from the instructor whose guidance is sought and from the Chairman of the Department.