The history of world literature
How literary works and books are transformed by cultural transmission
How to critically analyze literary works
The significance of major technological advances in writing
This literature course explores how great writers refract their world and how their works are transformed when they intervene in our global cultural landscape today.
No national literature has ever grown up in isolation from the cultures around it; from the earliest periods, great works of literature have probed the tensions, conflicts, and connections among neighboring cultures and often more distant regions as well.
Focusing mainly on works of literature that take the experience of the broader world as their theme, this course will explore the varied artistic modes in which great writers have situated themselves in the world, helping us to understand the deep roots of today's intertwined global cultures.
Goethe
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Homer, The Odyssey
The 1001 Nights
Voltaire, Candide
Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman
Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman
Eileen Chang
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri
The Lusiads
