CLT 500/EGL 506 will be taught somewhat differently this year than in the past. It will cover much the same historical ground (from Greek antiquity through the Enlightenment), but will include, in addition to canonical texts in the history of literary theory, works of imaginative literature to which the theory might be said to apply.

A selection of texts from the following list, and perhaps some others to be added later, will comprise our principal reading.

THEORY

Plato, Republic, II, III, X
Aristotle, Poetics
Horace, On the Art of Poetry
Dante, Letter to Can Grande della Scala
Sidney, Apologie for Poetrie
Boileau, The Art of Poetry
Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
Hume, On the Standard of Taste; On Tragedy
Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Schiller, On Naive and Sentimental Poetry
Hegel, Lectures on Aesthetics (selections)

LITERATURE

Homer, The Odyssey
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Horace, Satires
Dante, Inferno
Shakespeare, Sonnets
Racine, Phèdre
Shakespeare, King Lear
Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (selections)
Goethe, Faust, Part One
Sophocles, Antigone

Wednesday 7:00-10:00 p.m. Library E 4305

After an overview of the history of translation theory and practice, students will gain familiarity with contemporary theories of translation, with particular emphasis on the recent 'cultural turn'in translation studies and on the connection between postcolonial theory and translation. We will deal with specific textual problems in a special section on poetic translation, which will include the analysis of the translation of selected works from a variety of non-Western languages. We will also devote two case studies to some of the major issues of translation theory and practice, such as Bible translation, translation from oral cultures, bilingual authors and bilingual works.

Texts:

Bassnett, Susan l992. Translation Studies.
Dingwaney, A. & Carol Maier, eds. l995. Between Language and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts.
Simon, Sherry, l995. Gender in Translation. Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission.
Venuti, Lawrence. l992. Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology.

Monday 3:30-6:30 p.m. Library E 4305

This course is part of a project that has three main sections, namely, 1) Trauma and Performing Age; 2) Discourses of the Aging Body in Medicine; 3) Aging and the Law. In each section, issues of diversity and gender will be central, since I will investigate how cultural constructs impact on lived realities of aging across varied communities. Ultimately, I'll explore how and when the category of aging emerges in different cultures; how it changes with other social and political conditions; and what impact new technologies (cryrogenics, plastic surgery) and science (e.g. gene manipulation) will have on ideas about aging and the aging process itself.

In Fall 1999, I focus on Part I: Trauma and Performing Age. In a deliberately provocative move, I argue first that aging can be "traumatic," and second that women may respond to their special traumas of aging by "performing" age in varied ways. We begin with questions like: Why do great western literary classics (from Oedipus to King Lear to Waiting for Godot) feature aging males? Why does popular culture provide space for aging male actors (Grumpy Old Men), performers (Jack Benny, Sid Caesar); show hosts (Johnny Carson, Cosby) in ways it does not for aging women? What roles do Beauty Culture and the Beauty Industry play in ideas about aging? How does Freud's "family romance" work itself out in the aging process and in generational conflict ? Can aging be different in living structures other than the heteronormative family? What pressures does the family as institution place on those aging? What alternate models can we conceptualize for aging?

We will explore specific 20th century Euro-American, African American, Hispanic and Asian American case studies to theorize varied models for how historical women may perform age. At the same time, we will look at representations of aging women (including select historical figures) in independent film, popular culture and advertising so as to determine cultural constructs about aging. We will work on the Euro-and African-American case studies I have already researched (e.g. Marlene Dietrich, Melanie Klein, Marguerite Duras, Lena Horn), but my hope is that students will select case studies from other ethnic groups to research in the context of theories about aging being developed in the course. Possible publication could result in this case.

Required texts (subject to change) may include:

Caruth, ed. Trauma; Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery; Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty; Kathleen Woodward, ed. Figuring Age; Rosina M. Becerra, "The Mexican-American: Aging in a Changing Culture;" Nellie Tate, "The Black Aging Experience;" McNeely and Cohen, Aging in Minority Groups; McKee, Philosophies of Aging and The Art of Aging; Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age; Marguerite Duras, C'est Tout and Yann Andrea Steiner; Nicholas Wright's play, Melanie Klein and Pam Gems' drama Marlene; Maximillian Schell's film Marlene. Students working on other case studies can require readings, films and other visual/aural materials as they prepare for a class presentations.

Tuesday 1:00-4:00 p.m. Library E 4341

Bracketing the historiography of compared literatures, we will study responses, reactions, and other "attitudes" discernible in literary art toward conventional notions (philosophies) of history and toward the very notion of history itself. To accomplish this will first entail a review of how historical discourse processes (or "reasons") human actions and events.

Following this problematizing discussion, we will shift our focus to the processing (or "unreasoning") of events by certain literary practitioners and devote most of the semester to investigating the visions by which the literary text proposes its own historical (or ahistorical) space-times.

This should lead to some lively and perhaps fruitful speculation concerning possible motivations for these practices. Our purpose will be to gain a clearer understanding for literature's insistence on ignoring, critiquing or "one-upping" so-called "reality."

Literary works by Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Queneau, Marguerite Duras, Pierre Klossowski, Julio Cortázar, Hervé Guibert, Kathy Acker, and Robert Coover. Critical or theoretical works by Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, and Umberto Eco.

Thursday 3:30-6:30 p.m. Library E 4305

The seminar will explore Dostoevsky as a reality of history (largely intellectual and cultural history) both in his own conjunctions with Western and Russian thought (early socialism, Left Hegelianism, religion) and as a writer who has influenced the twentieth century. The first Dostoevsky will be approached through a reading of his major texts--including Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov--the other Dostoevsky, "Our Contemporary" as the Russians title him, will be approached through the literary works (Camus), films (Kurosawa, Scorsese), theater works (Stanislavsky), and other forms of representation that have used him for their own purposes. Students will be encouraged to explore literatures and cultures other than Russian for this Dostoevsky, and to sort out the first from the second. No knowledge of Russian is required.

Wednesday 2:15-5:15 p.m. Library E4305

CLT 520 Problems in Translation

CLT 597 Directed Readings, M.A.

CLT 599 Independent Study

CLT 690 Thesis Research

CLT 698 Practicum in Teaching

CLT 699 Directed Readings: Ph.D. Candidacy

In The Love of the Nightingale, English playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker has a Male Chorus define myth as "The oblique image of an unwanted truth, reverberating through time." Another definition, listed in the OED, takes myth to be "a widely held but false notion, a fictitious person, thing, or idea." The purpose of this course is to play with these contradictory definitions by testing them against certain gender-implicated myths as historically performed in dramatic texts. The analysis and discussion of classical, mainstream, and avant-guard plays by female and male writers of different nationalities and historical circumstances will focus on the dramatic representation of issues such as: the family, motherhood, women's madness, violence and crime, and the intersection of gender and race. The discussion of how these myths have historically been performed in drama will be permeated by an investigation of the consequences of defining gender and genre themselves as myths. Although the emphasis will lie on the reading and analysis of plays, theoretical texts will be assigned to illuminate the discussion.

Among the playwrights, texts by the following will be included: Euripides, Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, Garcia Lorea, J.M. Synge, Eugene O'Neill, August Strindberg, Susan Glaspell, Rachel Crothers, Zola Gale, Sophie Tredwell, Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Franca Rame, Adrienne Kennedy, Martin McDonagh, David Mamet, Heiner Muller, Maria Irene Fornes, Jose Triana, Briar Grace-Smith, Holy Hughes, Karen Finley.

Among the theorists, texts by the following will be assigned: Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, M.M. Bakhtin, Shoshana Felman, E.Ann Kaplan, Mieke Bal, Peggy Phelan, Elin Diamond, Allice Jardine, Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Rayner, Janell Reinelt, Jeanie Forte, Josette Feral, Jill Dolan. (I will be willing to include untranslated plays and theoretical texts if course members can read Spanish and/or Portuguese.)

Thursday 1:00-4:00 p.m. Library E 4341