Comparative Criticism: Foundations of Pre-Modern Theory
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
CMLIT 502-1/CMLIT 597A
Monday 2:30-5:30, 430 Burrowes Bldg
Fall 2009, 24 August––28 September
Prof. Dj. Kadir
E-mail: Kadir@psu.edu
Office: 449 Burrowes Building
Office Phone: (814) 863-9629
Office Hours:
Monday 11:30-12:30, Tuesday 11:15-12:15, and by appointment
Course Graduate Assistant: Germán Campos-Muñoz
E-mail: gxc186@psu.edu
Seminar Description
This first five-week module of Comparative Criticism and Theory seminar [CMLIT 502-503:1] is an introduction to the foundations of comparative criticism and theory through readings from the pre-modern period. The seminar examines formative ideas of our critical/theoretical discourses in such defining figures as Gorgias of Leontini, Zhuangzi, Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian Longinus, and Lu Chi. This five-week unit will be followed by a second four-week session (5 October––26 October), taught by Professor Caroline Eckhardt, on “Allegory and Representation,” with particular focus on the Medieval period and texts that continue building on this critical/theoretical tradition. The third five-week segment of this semester (2 November––7 December) will focus on “Western Classical Ideas in Poststructuralist Thought” and will be taught by Professor Thomas Beebee. This five-week module can be taken as a one-credit course, or as part of the semester-long aggregate of the three-modules adding up to three-credits [CMLIT 502-503:1-3]. The second semester of this two-semester-long series of six-modules for six credits [CMLIT 502-503: 4-6] will be offered in the Spring 2010 term.
Seminar Objectives
The readings and discussion of this five-week module of the seminar aim to explore the origins, articulation, and controversies of the critical and theoretical concepts that continue to define our scholarly and academic discourse, pedagogy, and scholarship in literary studies. We trace the terminology, institutional incorporation, and cultural sanction of critical/theoretical parameters of our disciplinary practices. The readings are juxtaposed, contrapuntally, as facets of a set of issues that still occupy scholarly and critical discourse in literary studies today. Some of the elements of this comparative/contrastive exploration and analysis are: knowledge, wisdom, language, writing, reading, representation, inspiration, artisanship, ethics, and pedagogical and critical responsibility.
Required Text (available for purchase in the University Bookstore)
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Vincent B. Leitch et al., eds., New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001, to be supplemented by other library or electronic sources.
Seminar Modus Operandi
Each member of the seminar is expected to a) have read the assigned texts for each session, reflect on the preliminary questions posed on this syllabus (and related questions that might occur to you as you read); b) prepare a two-page précis-critique-position on the issues elicited by the readings and the furnished questions that strike you as most compelling (and questions of your own); c) prepare a ten-to-twelve-page paper for the end of the five-week period in which you trace a particular thread you’ve been tracking each week, or aggregate your five-weeks’-worth of critical reflections into a coherent critical narrative. This is to be turned in no later than 3 October mmix, and will serve as partial basis (one third) of your grade; the other two thirds will be based on your weekly written preparation, b. above, (one third), and contribution to the seminar discussion (one third). Your final grade for the Fall semester will be calculated on the basis of the cumulated grade you receive in the three fourteen-week modules (if you are signed up for all three modules of 502 for 3 credits), or solely on your performance in this five week module (if you are only signed up for the 1-credit 597A single module).
All university regimental protocols, caveats, admonitions, and exhortations on professional performance and academic comportment apply. All university regimental protocols, caveats, admonitions, and exhortations on professional performance and academic comportment apply.
Plan of Work
Session One, 24 August mmix: Persuasion & Paradox––Performative Contradictions
Readings:
- “Introduction to Theory and Criticism,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, pp. 1-8;
- Gorgias of Leontini (483-376 BC), from Encomium to Helen, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism,” pp. 29-33.
- Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu, late 4th century BC), “Levelling All Things,” Lin Yutang, trans. at: http://www.vl-site.org/taoism/cz-text2.html#INDEX
Some preliminary questions: 1) Ontology, or what’s what? 2) Epistemology, or how do you know? 3) Rhetoric, or, well, well, what do you know? 4) Etiology, or where are you coming from? 5) Palinodes and dames: Bringing it all back, or, is it always her fault?
Session Two, 31 August mmix
Readings:
Plato (427-347 BC), Introduction, pp. 33-37; Ion, 37-48; from Republic, pp. 49-80; from Phaedrus, pp. 81-85, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Some preliminary questions: 1) Ion (Gr., verb), or where do you think you’re going? 2) Ecstasis, or why wax rhapsodic when you can be divine? 3) Real drag or, could that be anyone other than Mr. Mimesis herself? 4) Elenchus, or which will it be, truth or its consequences? 5) Poetry matters, or why is Plato so afraid of poets? 5) How rhetorically anti-rhetorical is Plato; how poetically anti-poetic? 6) Spelunking, or where did you get that torch, Socrates? 7) Mneme, mnemotechnics, anamnesis, meme, or what did you say your name was, Phaedrus? How do you spell that?
Session Three, 14 September mmix
Readings:
Aristotle (384-322 BC), Introduction, pp. 86-90; Poetics, pp. 90-117; from Rhetoric, pp. 117-121, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Some preliminary questions: 1) Poetry or poetics, how does the difference matter? 2) Rhetoric, why must it be public? 3) Are your representative’s representations mediatic, objective, or mannerly? 4) Are you naturally theatrical, or just putting us on? 5) Peripeteia and purgation, or how does Aristotle differentiate himself from Plato? A handful of ways would be reasonable. 6) Why must you be good, appropriate, life-like, and consistent to be tragic, or is this epic understatement? 7) Phronesis, or how do you know when to be deliberative, judicial, or demonstrative, and why might it matter?
Session Four, 21 September mmix
Readings:
- Horace (65 BC-08 AD), Introduction, pp. 121-124; Ars Poetica, pp. 124-135, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
- Quintilian (ca. 30/35––ca. 100 AD), Introduction, pp. 155-157; from Institutio Oratoria, pp. 157-171, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Some preliminary questions: 1) What alibi does Horace’s Ars Poetica rest on, and how did Quintilian give it cover? 2) Dulce et utile, or what does Horace learn from Aristotle about natural organics, and how does he edulcorate their artificial flavor? Why? 3) Parturient montes…, or how could a Muse turn into a mouse? 4) Iambus vs. troche, or why does the first make for “technical perfection” and the latter stumbles into squalor? And how does a spondee soar? And, heavens, what would Plato say of such libation highs? 5) Ut pictura poesis, or by what light might/could poetry be read? 6) How does Quintilian assuage the Aristotelian paradox of ethical instruction for the orator’s art of persuasion, otherwise called rhetoric? 7) How does Quintilian differentiate between a trope and a figure? 8) When is irony a trope and when is it a figure, or is it just dissimulation? 9) When does a metaphor morph into an allegory? 10) How does virtue equate with eloquence and what happens to Plato in the process?
Session Five, 28 September mmix
Readings:
- Longinus (1st century AD), Introduction, pp. 135-137; from On Sublimity, pp. 138-154, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
- Lu Chi (261-303 AD), “Essay on Literature [Wen Fu]” at: http://www.humanistictexts.org/luchi.htm
Some preliminary questions: 1) Soaring highs, again, or what happens to the “mad poet” in Plato, in Horace, and, now, in Longinus? 2) How does Longinus co-opt Plato and what would the latter think of it? 3) Must one be persuaded in order to be ecstatic, or does sublimity leapfrog eloquence and emotion? 4) Phantasia, or where does the image leave the imagination? 5) Conjuratio…, or how does Horace’s and Quintilian’s designing artificer become genial (and genuine!) sublime? 6) Hyperbaton…, what sort of baton is that and where does it march the reader? 7) How do Lu Chi’s and Longinus’ comments on precursors, on knowing and doing, on words and ineffability resonate with each other? 8) How does the scale of Lu Chi’s poetic horizon compare to Longinus’s economy of poetic extension? 9) How does Lu Chi construe inspiration, language, form, and composition for poetic effect? 10) What are the perils of such artistry in Longinus and in Lu Chi?