ENGL 252
The Borders of Literature: From Shrek to Marcel Proust Fall 2012
Division I
Cross-listed COMP 280
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

The aim of this course is to understand literature as a medium intimately related to other media. We shall study contemporary theories of media and intermediality in order to better understand general questions about all art forms and media–but also to be able to specify the medium specific aspects of literature. Theories of intermediality will be the backbone of the course, and a wide variety of examples will be discussed and analyzed. We will begin with the introductory scene of Shrek (Adamson 2001) and move through a handful of example clusters: concrete “visual” poetry, high modernist musical description (short fiction by Mann, Proust, Joyce, Woolf), literary descriptions of visual art (ekphrasis); and Lieder/chansons/rock-lyrics from Schubert to Bob Dylan. We shall also analyze the widespread phenomenon of novel-to-film adaption, exemplified by way of the Beat-poem Howl and the recent film based on the poem and the trial against Allen Ginsberg (Epstein and Friedman 2010).
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 20
Class#: 1371
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active participation, four training writing assignments (3 pages each), one short response assignment, and a final paper (6 pages)
Prerequisites: none; all readings will be done in English but students with knowledge of French, Portuguese, Spanish or German may optionally read portions of the reading in the original languages
Enrollment Preferences: students majoring in Comparative Literature or Literary Studies
Distributions: Division I
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
COMP 280 Division I ENGL 252 Division I

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