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This course explores a key question in literary studies: ‘What is a classic?’ It examines how influential literary critics and writers (e.g., Calvino, Coetzee, Eliot, Horace, Petrarch) addressed the problem at different historical moments and evaluates what we can learn about the values attached to literature and the frameworks through which literature is seen. In examining texts from antiquity, the Renaissance, and the modern period, we will consider the difference between a ‘classic’ and the ‘canon’ and will study the conflicts and histories of both canon-formation and canon-contestation. We will also consider the question of literary fame and celebrity, examining institutions that contribute to certain texts becoming successful, while others disappear.
The course takes into account a set of exemplary literary and critical debates and applies conceptual tools such as intertextuality and postcolonial criticism to questions of canonicity. Here, we will discuss how literature is studied and appreciated (scholarly and publicly) according to a set of historically formed and shifting values. Genre will also occupy an important place in our discussions, as we will assess how different forms of writing – including poetry, correspondence, essay, novel, novella, graphic memoir, and film – are differently received. Another important dimension of the course is how texts travel through space and time and are reappropriated in different settings and periods through rewriting and adaptation (e.g., Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis). In this way, one of the crucial literary and critical practices that contribute to canonization and periodization is translation and global distribution – the translation and travel of texts beyond their immediate context and their appreciation, citation and appropriation in other settings.
Format
There will be two seminar-style classes per week, and students will be expected to do all assigned reading in advance of each session. Because the course will be dynamic and discussion-based, there will be a particular focus on partner/small-group work, interactive writing exercises, and short in-class presentations. Students will also be responsible for leading short discussions on the literature for an assigned session as well as bringing to class any specific questions related to the material. Literature for the first half of the course will be disseminated before the start.
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