Comparative Literature

• Efficiency• Innovation

Efficiency

Comparative Literature (Comp Lit) bridges two departments: English and FLL

It interacts with other interdisciplinary programs: Women’s Studies, Philosophy and Literature, the Renaissance Consortium, etc.

Innovation

1. Global admissions

2. Flexibile areas of study, emerging fields:

Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies, ??

3. Learning . . . .

3. Learning

How a unit on lyric poetry in FLL 230, Introduction to Comparative Literature, now teaches not just how to read and scan a line of verse, but also:

1. Diversity

2. Global Awareness

3. Historical Understanding . . . .

Learning: Diversity, Global Awareness, Historical Understanding / lyric poetry

• Every poem has a speaker and audience.• Trick: the speaker is not necessarily the author; the

audience may be overhearing the poem.

• Analyzing a poem is like analyzing a painting, where you ask what is in the frame, what is left out.

Hebrew

• Bereshit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-aretz

• In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

(Rhyme in the form of parallel ideas)

Greek

Menin, aida, thea, Peleiadeo ‘AchileosWrath, sing, goddess, Peleus’s son, Achilles,

ME nin ah / EE da they / AH, PAY / LAY ee ah / DU ah chi / LAY os

(No rhyme. Quantitative not qualitative meter)

Greek

Houlomenin, ‘e myri Achaiois Alge etheke

Intense wrath that brought countless sorrows to the Greeks.

Homer, The Iliad (ca. 750 B.C.)

Chinese

quian shan niao fei jue 1 1 3 1 2A hundred mountains and no bird,

wan jing ren zong mie 4 4 2 1 4A thousand paths without a footprint

gu zhou suo li weng 1 1 1 4 1A little boat, a bamboo cloak, an old man

gu diao han jiang xeu 2 4 2 1 3Fishing in the cold river-snow

Liu Zongyuan, “River-Snow” (T’ang Dynasty, ca. 800 A.D.

Italian

Sempre caro me fu quest’ermo callee questa siepe, che da tanta partedell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo

esclude.

Giacomo Leopardi, “L’infinito” (1830)

German

Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeutenDass ich so taurig bin;Ein Märchen aus alten ZeitenDas kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

Heinrich Heine, “Die Lorelei” (1830)

French

Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l’abîme

Do you come from on high or out of the abyss

O Beauté? ton regard, infernal et divin,O Beauty? Godless yet divine, your gaze

Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,indifferently showers favor and shame,

Et l’on peut pour cela te comparer au vin.and therefore somehave likened you to wine

Charles Baudelaire, “Hymne à la Beauté”

Russian

V zhurnal sovsem ne evropeiskii,

Nad koim chahnet staryi zhurnalist,

S svoeyu prozoyu ladeiskoi

Vzoshel bolvan seminarist.(You think you published in a modern intellectual journal but

your lackey prose sounds like that of an old seminary student.)

Alexander Pushkin (1830)

English

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

‘Tis not thorugh envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness—

John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” (1820)

Arabic

La ilaha illa Allah;Mohammed rasul Allah.

There is no god but Allah,and Mohammed is His Prophet.

The Numbers

History of Comp Lit

• Founded ca. 1975 by Margaret Church

• Participating Faculty– 20 from English– 26 from Foreign Languages and

Literatures– 1 from Philosophy

33 graduate students from 12 countries

• China (7), Japan (3), Egypt (1), Italy (2), Roumania (1), Brazil (1), Portugal (1), United States (6), Spain (5), Turkey (1), Taiwan (4), Mexico (1)

• Goal: Increase US enrollment; continue diversity

New Graduate Students for 2003-2004 (60%

acceptance rate)1. Dongmei Xu (China)2. Lucian Ghita (Roumania)3. Lynn Cornell (US)4. Maria Hadjipolycarpou (Cyprus)5. Yin Liao (China)6. Melissa Oliver (US minority:

nominated for Knox Fellowship)

Administrative Budget

• $4,000 from SLA: 50% for program support and speakers50% supplies, phones, postage, travel

• Part-time secretary(shared with Grad Program in English)

School Support

• 2 FTE from English Department• 10 FTE from Foreign Languages

and Literature• Lynn Fellowship, Ross Fellowship,

PRF, other TA positions in FLL, course grader, editorial assistant, employment at other universities

Goals

• Improve fund raising

• Increase undergraduate majors

• Promote hiring in various languages and time periods

• Continue innovations in course offerings and dissertation topics