授業の目的 【日本語】
Goals of the Course(JPN) | | |
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授業の目的 【英語】
Goals of the Course | | By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. demonstrate basic understanding of the field of comparative literature;
2. articulate some of the field’s historical phases and aims;
3. read literary works with greater comprehension and critical sharpness;
4. compare and contrast literary works with greater competency;
5. have a broader and richer comprehension of literary history. |
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到達目標 【日本語】
Objectives of the Course(JPN) | | |
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授業の内容や構成
Course Content / Plan | | As a field of study, comparative literature emerged in the early nineteenth century, when Goethe hoped to herald an age of Weltliteratur, or world literature. The course begins with a brief historical overview of comparative literature’s conceptual origins and its development as an academic discipline to the present day.
The course’s theme is the quest for meaning, and we shall explore it in literary works from various nations and time periods. The first text we read, Gilgamesh, an epic about a king who learns of the suffering that attends mortal life, is the earliest known major literary artifact in human history, traceable to over 4000 years ago in Sumeria (modern-day Iraq). We then contemplate a sequence of short poems from medieval Persia, Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, which praises pleasure and expresses metaphysical doubt. A novella from eighteenth-century France follows: Voltaire’s Candide features a hero who holds tightly to an optimistic worldview until he gets a view of the actual world. Toward the end of the course, we analyze modern works that concern the brevity of life and how existential meaning may nonetheless be found. This unit takes us to late-nineteenth-century Russia for Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilych and finally to mid-twentieth-century Japan for a film partly based on it, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru.
Throughout the course, we address a central dilemma in comparative literature: balancing universal themes and appeal with specific cultural and historical contexts. While the works we study, in translation, have achieved broad—indeed global—circulation, we shall be mindful of nuances that may have got lost in translation. |
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履修条件・関連する科目
Course Prerequisites and Related Courses | | |
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成績評価の方法と基準
Course Evaluation Method and Criteria | | 10% Participation in discussion
10% Brief Presentation
30% Midterm Essay
50% Final Paper |
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教科書・テキスト
Textbook | | | All required materials will be made available to students. |
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参考書
Reference Book | | | Details to be provided in class. |
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課外学習等（授業時間外学習の指示）
Study Load(Self-directed Learning Outside Course Hours) | | | Students will be required to undertake reading and writing assignments outside of class. |
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履修取り下げ制度（利用の有無）学部のみ
Course withdrawal | | If you submit the Course Withdrawal Form by the deadline, "W(Absence)" will be given in principle. Otherwise the grade will be "F" unless you meet the passing criteria.
『履修取り下げ届』を期日までに提出した場合は原則「Ｗもしくは欠席」となりますが、同届を提出しない場合は成績評価が行われ、合格基準に達しない場合は「Ｆ」となります。 |
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備考
Others | | |
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授業開講形態等
Lecture format, etc. | | B-3）Face-to-face course（Including some remote classes using both simultaneous interactive and on-demand methods)
※The number of remote classes must be less than 7 out of 15 classes. |
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