COML1191 - World Literature

What is it that we do, asks David Damrosch, “when we circulate works through the shifting spheres of world literature?” What happens to a text as it moves beyond its culture of origin? What transformations take shape?
This course considers works that move beyond national and linguistic borders, taking on new lives in distinct cultural contexts. We’ll explore key nodes of connection and exchange in world literature in the increasingly interconnected and transnational literary world of the 20th century. In this course, we’ll examine a variety of unique cases in the study of world literature, attending, among others, to global adaptations of Shakespeare; to the exportation of haiku to a variety of linguistic cultures; to debates about the status of African languages in a decolonizing world. This course will cover a wide array of authors and texts from around the world, including Aimé Césaire, Rabindranath Tagore, Chinua Achebe, Roberto Bolaño, and Yoko Towada, as well as theorists like Edward Said, Pascale Casanova, and Franco Moretti.

No previous experience in the study of literature or language is expected. All readings will be offered in English translation.