World Literatures 177 - WORLD LIT: SPEAKING IN TONGUES

From the earliest Chinese poetry to the latest Arabic Internet novels, comparative literature makes available new worlds—and “newly visible” old worlds. To become “world-forming,” one must realize one’s belonging to a given world or worlds, as well as one’s finitude. To rethink the relationship between literature and world, each section of this course focuses on a given genre, movement or theme. Through topics such as “Epic Worlds,” ”The Short Story” and “Literature and Medicine,” we consider the creation of worlds through words. May be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20: Language is probably the most powerful, pervasive, subtle, and perverse tool humans use. This course explores (mostly) 20th century attempts by writers to defy/supersede/explode/reinvent the strictures of “normative” language. We will experience manifestoes (Schwitters, Marinetti), imagined languages (Khlebnikov, Miéville, Le Guin), bizarre typographies (Apollinaire, Eugen Gomringer, Mary Ellen Solt), cross-linguistic methods of re-hearing one’s native tongue (Zukofsky, Stalling), novels written in imagined future English (Russell Hoban). The writers we read seek in every case to change their readers by re-shaping and expanding their linguistic reality. (E)