Department of Comparative Literature

Chair

Sandra L. Bermann

Acting Chair (fall)

Michael G. Wood

Director of Graduate Studies

Daniel Heller-Roazen

Professor

April Alliston

Leonard Barkan

David M. Bellos, also French and Italian

Sandra L. Bermann

Claudia J. Brodsky

Marina S. Brownlee, also Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures

Stanley A. Corngold, also German

Maria A. DiBattista, English

Caryl G. Emerson, also Slavic Languages and Literatures

Thomas W. Hare

Daniel Heller-Roazen

Alexander Nehamas, also Council of the Humanities, Philosophy

Andrew H. Plaks, also East Asian Studies

Jean-Michel Rabaté

Michael G. Wood, also English

Froma I. Zeitlin, also Classics

Associate Professor

Eileen A. Reeves

Assistant Professor

Benjamin Conisbee Baer

Associated Faculty

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Philosophy

Eduardo L. Cadava, English

Rubén Gallo, Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures

Anthony T. Grafton, History

Andras P. Hamori, Near Eastern Studies

Thomas Y. Levin, German

P. Adams Sitney, University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, Visual Arts

Michael A. Wachtel, Slavic Languages and Literatures

Lecturer

Christopher Bush, also Council of the Humanities

 

The degree of Doctor of Philosophy in comparative literature is offered by the Department of Comparative Literature in cooperation with other departments. The program of study enables students with exceptional training in languages and literatures to profit from the increased awareness and understanding that may be derived from the considered view of more than one literature and of the theoretical presuppositions behind literary study as a whole. The program prepares candidates for scholarship in the field and for teaching in comparative literature, separate departments of literature, and the humanities.

Language Requirement

In addition to English, students must have a command of two modern and one classical language. These may be Western, East Asian, or Near Eastern.

Students must elect one of these languages as their principal foreign language. A firm reading knowledge of the other two languages must be demonstrated either through departmentally administered proficiency examinations or courses.

Course of Study

The curriculum in comparative literature has two major objectives: while training students in one literary tradition, it also requires them to be seriously interested in at least two other literatures as well as in the historical, critical, and theoretical problems raised by the study of literature. The course of study over the four to six terms prior to the general examination reflects these objectives, and includes course work in comparative literature and in the student’s major and minor literatures.

Areas of Study

Major Literature. The program of study in the major literature aims at giving students a mastery sufficient enough to enable them to teach it in a national or a comparative context. The historical scope of work in the major literature is flexibly defined, but it may conform to the following patterns:

Classical Literatures. The major in classics includes the study of both Greek and Roman literatures. For a detailed description of the curriculum, see the separate Schedule for the Classics Major in Comparative Literature.

Post-Classical Western Literatures. Students majoring in these literatures choose one from among the following periods: (1) Middle Ages to Renaissance, (2) Renaissance to Romanticism, and (3) Romanticism to the present.

East Asian Literatures. Students majoring in Chinese or Japanese may follow the prescribed curriculum for comparative literature students concentrating in one or both of these literatures. For the detailed curriculum, see the separate Schedule for Chinese or Japanese Majors in Comparative Literature.

Near Eastern Literatures. Students majoring in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, or Turkish develop individual programs with the assistance of their advisers. These programs generally involve a version of one or more topics of concentration or fields of study required by the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Additional Literatures. Students are expected to enrich their knowledge of their special fields through work in different languages and literatures. Some of this work is done in comparative literature courses, but at least one minor literature also must be studied in the pertinent department.

Comparative Literature. The program of study in comparative literature combines the students’ work in their major and minor literatures by focusing on a specific area in which these literatures can be fully explored. This area may be a limited segment of literary history (the late Middle Ages, the 16th century, Romanticism) or a particular aspect common to all three literatures (a genre such as lyric or the novel, or a phenomenon such as neoclassicism or the modern). It also may be a critical or a theoretical problem, involving analyses of modes of interpretation; comparisons of genres and themes; questions about the relationship between different art forms (such as painting and poetry); or problems in literary aesthetics or epistemology. In this way, comparative literature functions as the core of the curriculum, exposing students to a range of literary techniques and helping them to organize their work in their chosen literatures.

Advising

Examiners are ordinarily chosen at the end of the second year or the beginning of the third in preparation for the general examination. At least one of these examiners must be from comparative literature.

After concluding the examination, students, in consultation with the director of graduate studies, select a primary adviser who directs the dissertation, either from the Department of Comparative Literature, or, occasionally, from another literature department.

A secondary reader is chosen by the student in consultation with the primary adviser and the director of graduate studies before the time of the prospectus defense. A third reader is appointed before the final oral defense.

Teaching Experience

Practice teaching forms a significant part of graduate education in comparative literature. It is not only a crucial element in a graduate student’s preparation for teaching and research, but it is also an essential credential for future employment, especially if a student wishes to qualify for a position in his or her major literature. As a matter of departmental policy, therefore, all students, after their first year, are normally required to accumulate at least four hours of teaching experience during their time at Princeton.

General Examination

The general examination tests, as it reflects, the candidate’s course of study. Based on a reading list devised by the student and the student’s advisers, the written examination is divided into two parts. The first concerns the candidate’s major literature, and is comprehensive in nature. It is normally taken at the end of the fourth or fifth term. The second, in comparative literature, is usually taken at the end of the fifth or sixth term. It is intensive in nature and consists of questions based on those areas of study that the candidate has prepared in consultation with his or her faculty advisers, often in anticipation of the candidate’s eventual dissertation topic. Students who have satisfactorily completed the required number of courses plus both parts of the written examination are awarded the Master of Arts. A dissertation prospectus examination, focusing on the proposed dissertation topic, concludes the general examination at a later date.

Dissertation

The dissertation should demonstrate the candidate’s competence in writing a substantial work of scholarship and criticism, and his or her proficiency in maturely handling the foreign languages chosen. Under certain circumstances, candidates may be permitted to submit an original translation of a work of particular difficulty. A dissertation based on translation, however, must be preceded by a comprehensive introduction that examines in depth the comparative context of the translated work as well as the linguistic and theoretical problems arising from the translation itself.

A final public oral examination is required after the dissertation has been read and approved by representatives of the faculty. This examination consists of two parts. The first is a 30-minute lecture in which the candidate justifies the subject treated and the methods employed, accounts for any new contributions made to literary history and criticism, and projects plans for future scholarship and publication based upon the dissertation. The second is a series of questions growing out of subjects presented in the lecture and relating to both the criticism and the teaching of literary material dealt with in the dissertation.

Courses

COM 513 Topics in Recent and Contemporary Philosophy (see PHI 513)

COM 521 Introduction to Comparative Literature

Daniel Heller-Roazen

This course provides a general introduction to the theory and methods of comparative literature, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary issues. We consider the relationship of comparative literature to fields of study extending beyond the literary: aesthetics, semiotics, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and postcolonialism. The aim is to discover within and among these diverse and formidable fields some promising avenues for comparative literary research.

COM 522 Historicity, Topoi, and Genre

Staff

An advanced seminar in the methodology of comparative literature. One or more of the following problems are stressed: the concept of historicity, influence, and literary relations; genre theory and the evolution of individual genres; and the significance of recurrent motifs and themes and their affinities among different literatures.

COM 531 Comparative Poetics (also EAS 561)

Andrew H. Plaks

Theory and practice of literary history, and evidence from various cultures: ancient and contemporary, and Euro-American and intercultural are studied. Topics may include literature and history, and literary history; the genesis of poetic and critical systems; literary change and periodizings; interpretations and ideologies; gender and other conditions of authorship/readership; cultures and languages and translations; and reception and influence. Readings are in literary, historical, theoretical, and exemplary texts.

COM 533 Literary Criticism: Classicism and Neoclassicism

April Alliston

A study of classical texts of literary criticism from antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 18th century (Plato to Johnson), emphasizing the doctrines of the great critics, the continuities and changes in critical ideas, and the relation between theory and poetic practice.

COM 534 Literary Criticism: Lessing to the Present

Claudia J. Brodsky

The study of literary and aesthetic theory and the production of critical theory from the relationship between them. Readings primarily are in Lessing, Diderot, Baudelaire, and Benjamin.

COM 535 Contemporary Critical Theories

April Alliston, Sandra L. Bermann, Claudia J. Brodsky

Criticism as an applied art and an autonomous discipline. Exploration of its place in intellectual history and a theoretical analysis of its basic assumptions. Topics vary each year.

COM 541 The Classical Tradition: Readings in Tragedy

Staff

The norms of classicism as they evolve within two ruling forms of poetry. Alternation between the epic and the tragic drama. The former, a study of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid; the contrast between primary and secondary epic poetry, changing conceptions of the heroic and of narrative form. Tragedies include Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the Theban plays of Sophocles, and selected plays of Euripides and Seneca, with an emphasis on the relationship of tragedy to social orders, theologies, and myths.

COM 542 The Classical Tradition: Modernity—Homer and the Modern

Staff

The reincarnation of classical norms in English and continental European literatures. Alternation between the epic and the tragic drama. The former, a study of epic writing by Milton, Pope, Keats, Joyce, and Broch; the evolution of the heroic within a Christian culture, and the relationship between the epic and the novel. Readings in tragedy from Shakespeare, Racine, Goethe, Chekhov, and Brecht, with an emphasis on the increasing secularity of tragedy and its dramatization of human suffering and achievement.

COM 543 Topics in Medieval Literature

Daniel Heller-Roazen

Comparative studies in selected Latin and vernacular texts of the European Middle Ages, especially, but not exclusively, from the period 1250–1400. The seminar intends to provide an introduction to the methods of literary research in the medieval period.

COM 547 The Renaissance

Leonard Barkan, Eileen A. Reeves

A study of selected major genres and modes of Renaissance literature, such as pastoral, satire, romance, picaresque, confession, lyric, epic, comedy, and tragedy. Attention is given to important social, cultural, and intellectual currents affecting their development, such as Christian Humanism, Reformation and Counter Reformation, mysticism, neo-Platonism, and skepticism. Representative works from various national literatures are chosen for close analysis.

COM 551 The 17th Century in Europe (see SPA 545)

COM 553 The 18th Century in Europe

April Alliston

A consideration of the primary topoi and defining oppositions of Enlightenment thought. Texts and specific focus vary from year to year.

COM 554 The Romantic Idea

Claudia J. Brodsky

The study of formative literary and philosophical works from the 18th through the late 19th centuries. Authors include Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schlegel, Goethe, Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Stendhal, and Nietzsche.

COM 555 Realism and Symbolism

Staff

Readings in all genres and theoretical pronouncements of two principal movements of the later 19th century to explore their origins and dynamics and to analyze their relationship to Romanticism and to the rise of scientific thinking. Topics may focus on selected authors or on broader perspectives, but the interrelationship among the arts is emphasized.

COM 558 The Problematics of Modern Literature

Maria A. DiBattista

Works of poetry, drama, and fiction from the fin de siècle to the present are examined in an effort to determine representative literary responses to such phenomena of Modernism as the crisis of language, the disintegration of values, or the emergence of existential consciousness.

COM 560 The Novel and Romance

April Alliston

Major types of written fiction from the Greek romance to 18th-century novels, including non-Western texts, the cultural background of written fiction, and romance (ancient, medieval, and baroque); the picaresque novel; the psychological novella; and early realist fiction are studied.

COM 561 The Modern Novel

Staff

Narrative fiction from the Enlightenment to the beginning of the 20th century; the novel’s connection to large artistic movements such as Romanticism, Realism, and the early Modernism as well as to social and historical developments, modern narrative genres, and social realism; the historical novel; and the narrative representation of subjectivity are studied.

COM 562 20th-Century Narrative

Staff

Contemporary trends in narrative fiction, including high modernist techniques, various modes of resistance to Modernism, and the emergence of new literatures in national or international languages; and the rise of popular fiction are studied. Emphasis is on the links between literature and major contemporary cultural developments.

COM 563 Studies in Forms of Narrative: The French Novel in the 19th Century (see FRE 523)

COM 565 Studies in Forms of Poetry

Claudia J. Brodsky, Daniel Heller-Roazen

Modern poetry and poetic theory in French, German, English, and Spanish. Authors include Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rilke, Celan, Lorca, Borges, Stevens, and Bishop.

COM 568 Special Studies in the Drama (see ENG 560)

COM 572 Selected Topics in Critism and Theory: Derrida’s Ethics, History, and Politics (see ENG 572)

COM 574, 575 Literature and Society

Staff

Selected topics in the relation of literature to social, political, or historical issues. Topics may be offered in either or both terms.

COM 581 Topics in Non-Western and General Literature

Staff

By examining one or more literatures of the Near East or East Asia, and by referring to Western examples as well, the course raises literary issues that cannot be aired through the study of Western literature alone. Emphasis in any given year falls on Arabic, Persian, Chinese, or Japanese literature viewed in a comparative context.

COM 583 Russia and the West

Staff

A seminar dealing with the Western heritage of 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature and with the Russian impact on the writers of the West. Russian authors may include Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Mandelstam.

COM 584 Authors in a Comparative Context

April Alliston, Caryl G. Emerson

Discussions of the works of individual authors, either in comparison with one another (e.g., Dante and Shakespeare, Rilke and Stevens), or within a larger literary milieu, extending beyond a single literature (e.g., Shakespeare as an issue in Western critical literature; imitations of Kafka in America and Europe).

COM 585 Arts of Imitation

David M. Bellos

A study of the arts of imitation, ranging from literal translation to interpretative adaptation.

Pertinent Courses in Allied Departments

Students are encouraged to take courses in allied departments.