ENGL 320 - Studies in Literary Traditions

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

This course examines various literary traditions. The materials may cross historical, national and linguistic boundaries, and may investigate how a specific myth, literary form, idea, or figure (e.g., Pygmalion, romance, the epic, the fall of man, Caliban) has been constructed, disputed, reinvented and transformed. Topics vary from year to year.

Topic for 2018/19b: Telling it Slant. (WMST 320) How do past stories lure contemporary imaginations? The course presents canonical works that have been translated, adapted, or rewritten by authors who approach them sideways. Be prepared to read deeply and to discover alterity where you may not expect it. Our readings likely include the first translation of the Odyssey into English by a woman, Emily Watson, as well as the Penelopiad, a novel by Margaret Atwood; 1001 Nights, with contextualization of its early European translations by scholar Marina Warner and a recent retelling in English by Hanan al-Shaykh; Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and a Caribbean rewriting, Windward Heights, by Maryse Condé, originally in French; and selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, set next to Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and A. Ignosi Barrett’s Nigerian Blackass. Jean Kane.

One 2-hour period.