Professor Ted Mack
TTh 1:30-3:20 PAR 322
This goals of this proseminar are as follows:
- To introduce students to traditional methods of literary analysis. In the attempt to situate literature into larger discourses, many contemporary critical approaches spend less time with (or presume a familiarity with) traditional modes of literary analysis. To address this, we will use a classic introduction to the study of literature, René Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature.
- We will simultaneously be looking at a similar introductory text in Japanese, Yomu tame no riron: Bungaku, shisô, hihyô, by Ishihara Chiaki, Kimata Satoshi, Komori Yôichi, Shimamura Teru, Takahashi Osamu, and Takahashi Seori. In addition to introducing a variety of approaches to literary texts (and thus complementing the Wellek and Warren text), this book will introduce students to a basic vocabulary of literary terms in Japanese.
- Following the completion of Warren and Wellek, we will address our own positionality, as scholars of Japanese literature in the United States, through the discourse of Orientalism. A familiarity with Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) will be presumed; instead, we will read subsequent statements by Said on the topic, as well as a response to Orientalism by Aijaz Ahmad.
- Students will then be presented with two basic approaches to the study of literature that have influenced the way Japanese literature is studied in the United States today: an Area Studies model and a Comparative Literature model. As challenges to the Comparative Literature model are contained in a number of texts we will be reading, we will also read challenges to the Area Studies model at this time.
- Finally, we will address a variety of meta-questions about the study of literature. The first, Komori Yôichi's 'Yuragi' no Nihon bungaku, addresses the problems attendant with the grouping of texts under the rubric of "Japanese literature," while the second, David Perkins' Is Literary History Possible?, addresses the problems attendant with a diachronic grouping of texts within a developmental narrative.
- The goal of this class, finally, is for students to give serious thought to the intellectual agenda that will guide their professional futures, becoming aware of a variety of approaches to literary texts, particularly when they are grouped under the rubric of a "foreign" national literature.
The following assignments and schedule are tentative and subject to change.
Students will be expected to supplement these core readings will relevant additional readings as necessary. |
