A recording of the opening lecture for the Institute for World Literature, Harvard, July 2016
A re-examination of “Lyric” as occasion as well as genre. Central questions to be explored will include: how do the “lyrics” of composed song come alive in performance? For example, how do the two librettists of Puccini’s opera La Bohème contribute to the making of a masterpiece in song? Shared readings include The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology, edited by Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins.
Does love have a history? This course will explore a particularly rich, multisecular episode in the literary history of this emotion: the efflorescence and varieties of love poetry, both lyrical and narrative, in Europe and the Middle East from the Middle Ages through the 16th century. Weekly discussions will center on close readings of selected love poems and versified narrratives from a variety of literary traditions, including: Provençal troubadour lyric; French chansons, the Germanic Minnesang and the Galician-Portuguese cantigas (the question of amour courtois); Ibero-Romance and colloquial Arabic jarchas; the Italian dolce stil novo; the Petrarchan sonnet and its early modern heirs in Portugal, England and Spain; Arabo-Andalusian and Hispano-Jewish qaṣā’id and muwashshaḥāt, medieval Latin love lyric; Persian Sufi and Christian mystical love poetry; Dante’s Vita nuova; and selections from two other erotological classics in narrative verse, Libro de buen amor and Roman de la Rose. Discussions will be framed by an overview of both premodern discussions on love – how love is conceptualized at the intersection of philosophy, theology and medicine by Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers– and contemporary scholarly debates on the origins and development of medieval love literature.
Recent years have seen attempts to rethink modernism as a global phenomenon rather than a mostly Anglo-American and West European movement. Center-periphery relations have often been foregrounded in these efforts, and in critiques of them. Building on theoretical statements by Jorge Luis Borges, Oswald de Andrade, Pascale Casanova, Susan Stanford Friedman, Franco Moretti, Oe Kenzaburo, and Roberto Schwarz, this seminar will explore the politics of language, representation, and center-periphery relations in works by Antonio Machado de Assis, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Higuchi Ichiyo, James Joyce, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Franz Kafka, Eileen Chang, Clarice Lispector, Lu Xun, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer.ars have seen ambitious attempts to rethink modernism as a global phenomenon rather than a largely Anglo-American and West European movement. Center-periphery relations have often been foregrounded in these efforts, and in critiques of them. Building on theoretical statements and critiques by Jorge Luis Borges, Kenzaburo Oe, Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Emily Apter, Eric Hayot, and Susan Stanford Friedman, this seminar will explore the politics of language, periodization, and center-periphery relations both within and beyond the West, in works by Higuchi Ichiyo, James Joyce, Lu Xun, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Borges, Kukrit Pramoj, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and Derek Walcott.
Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.
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