World Literature

This option introduces students to the concept of World Literature, its development and current debates. Students will read primary texts that have gained a place in 'world literature', a term often loosely used to describe literary works that have been received successfully well beyond their national boundaries, but that also, more importantly perhaps, draws attention to a work's, and its author's, 'worldliness', its position in the world, and its relation to other literatures and works of art. We will read texts by well-known and lesser well-known, canonical and non-canonical, 'world authors' (J.W. Goethe, A. Djebar, T. Cole, Y. Tawada, J. Galloway, V.S. Naipaul, S. Sontag, J.M. Coetzee, O. Pamuk) and discuss why these authors/texts deserve, have gained, or were given 'world status'. Each primary text is matched with a key critical/theoretical text whose concerns are reflected in the primary text. Theories/critics (Damrosch, Spivak, Moretti, Casanova, Rosendahl Thomsen, Siskind, Apter, Walkowitz, Venkat Mani, Shi) are discussed in chronological order to understand the growing interest in World Literature since 2000, to unpack the links as well as differences between various approaches to the concept, and to explore how recent and current debates have shaped and defined the field. Credit Level: 11 Year taken: Postgraduate