complit ma leaflet

MA in ComparativeLiterature

‘To read is to compare.’(George Steiner)

Programme Director:Dr Shane Weller

The MA in Comparative Literatureis aimed at graduates in modernlanguages who are seeking toconsolidate their knowledge in awider context, graduates in Englishand/or American Literature wishingto diversify their interests, andgraduates in a range of otherHumanities subjects (includingHistory, Philosophy, and Theology)who would like to bring theirpreoccupations to bear on literarymaterial. Non-linguists are able tostudy exclusively through themedium of English while modernlinguists (in French, German, Italian,and Spanish) have the opportunityto read extensively in their specialistlanguage or languages.

The programme comprises threemain interweaving strands: (1)themes and major figures in modernEuropean literature; (2) interactionsbetween European nationalliteratures, as reflected in importantgenres such as autobiography andthe fantastic; and (3) literature andtheory, with the emphasis beingplaced on the various possible waysof analysing literary texts: theseinclude psychoanalysis, narratology,feminist and post-feminist criticism,and deconstruction. Theprogramme is designed for studentswith a variety of interests, andreflects the research specialisms

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and publications of the teachingstaff, many of whom are alsomembers of the Centre for ModernEuropean Literature at Kent.

The MA comprises four taughtmodules, each of which isassessed by one 5,000-word essay.All students take the core module,Literature and Theory. For theirremaining three modules, studentsmay either take all three modulesfrom those offered by theDepartment of ComparativeLiterature, or take any two fromthose offered by the Departmentand the third from another MAprogramme in the Faculty ofHumanities (including English andAmerican Literature, French,German, Hispanic Studies, etc.).

Upon successful completion of thecoursework modules, students goon to prepare, under supervision, a12,000-word Dissertation on anapproved topic. The Dissertationmay be written in English, French,or German. Modules are taughtover two terms and normally consistof ten two-hour classes. TheDissertation is written over thesummer.

All students are expected to attendthe relevant postgraduate studiesskills courses offered by the Faculty.Together with other researchstudents, MA students are alsoencouraged to attend the researchseminar series run by the Centre forModern European Literature.

Introduction

MA in Comparative Literaturewww.kent.ac.uk/secl/complit

Literature and TheoryThis module introduces studentsto a wide range of theoreticalpositions with the aim of enrichingtheir understanding andappreciation of literature andcritical practice. The syllabusincludes texts by a range of majorthinkers, including Nietzsche,Freud, Saussure, Heidegger,Benjamin, Adorno, Lévi-Strauss,Genette, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida,Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva,and Cixous. As well as encouraginga critical engagement with theclaims of the theorists, themodule examines a number ofrepresentative theoretical readingsof literary works. Students learn toevaluate the various theorists anduse their ideas, as appropriate, intheir own writing.

DissertationUpon successful completion oftheir four coursework modules,students proceed to write aDissertation over the summer ona comparative topic of theirchoice. Each student is assigneda supervisor with expertise inthe area of study chosen for theDissertation. Given the wide rangeof expertise in the field of modernEuropean literature at Kent,students are able both to buildupon work undertaken for thecoursework modules and toengage with texts not previouslystudied.

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Core modules


The Avant-Garde in Literature,Art and FilmWhat is the avant-garde? Thisinterdisciplinary module exploresthe artistic movements at thebeginning of the twentieth centurythat shook established traditions tothe core and triggered a revolutionnot only of representationalconventions, but also of traditionalseparations between art andpolitics. In this module, weinvestigate literature, art and filmacross the famous ‘-isms’, includingCubism, Futurism, Vorticism,Dadaism and Surrealism. Weconsider the cultural and historicalcontexts from which they emerge,study their manifestos and essays,and explore their different aestheticand political agendas. Are theretypical avant-garde strategies andprocedures? Are there commondenominators between themovements? Is ‘avant-garde’ anaesthetic, historical, political orcultural phenomenon? How doliterature, art and film build uponand react to each other? How is theavant-garde conceptualized anddefined in different theoreticalcontexts? The module allowsstudents to investigate theexpressive and aesthetic qualitiesof literature and the visual arts,exploring similarities, differencesand creative interconnectionsbetween the two.

Classical Myths: Modern andPostmodernThis module analyses some of thekey factors contributing to theconstruction and deconstruction of

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dramatic movements in WesternEurope in the twentieth century, bylooking at the adaptation ofclassical myths by modern authors.It focuses on links betweenestablished literary and non-literarymedia and between Europeancultures. The playwright’s choice oftechniques for configuring politicalmessages and evaluating their workas instruments of cultural andpolitical subversion is also one ofthe focal points of this module.Students study a range of classicaltexts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, andEuripides before looking at thefigures of Antigone, Phaedra,Orestes, and Oedipus as adaptedin plays and films by a range ofmodern European artists, includingJean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, PierPaulo Pasolini, and Sarah Kane.

European Tales of the FantasticTheoretical interest in the literaryfantastic has developed rapidly overrecent decades following thepublication of Tzvetan Todorov’sacclaimed seminal study of thegenre, The Fantastic: A StructuralApproach to a Literary Genre(1970). In this module, studentsstudy works by a range ofEuropean and American writers thatfall within the category of thefantastic as established by Todorov.Authors studied include E. T. A.Hoffmann, Henry James, FranzKafka, Mary Shelley, Peter Süskind,and Oscar Wilde. Among the topicsfor consideration are narrativeunreliability, madness, magic,witchcraft, gender, and the uncanny.Relevant elements of literary and

Optional modules include


psychoanalytic theory areintroduced to enrich seminardiscussion on each writer.

Psychoanalysis and LiteratureSince its invention in the latenineteenth century, psychoanalysishas interacted with literature, oftenattempting to reduce it to thewriter’s unconscious pathologies.Moving from an opposite stance,this module explores the inter-implication of psychoanalysis andliterature as opposed to theapplication of the former to thelatter. Students are introduced to avariety of literary, psychoanalytic,and philosophical texts fromdifferent European traditions thatreject the alleged dichotomybetween healthy analyst (orpsychiatrist) and sick writer. Moregenerally, students are encouragedto examine how, despite persistentendeavours to medicalizepsychoanalysis, it is precisely in itsrelation of mutual interiority with thewritten text that a ‘lyric aura ofmadness’ is able to emerge.

Studies in AutobiographyFocusing on a wide range ofmodern autobiographical texts fromdifferent national and linguisticcultures, including works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Michel Leiris,Jean-Paul Sartre, Vladimir Nabokov,Mary McCarthy, Nathalie Sarraute,and Thomas Bernhard, this moduletreats questions of genericdefinition, form, motivation, andrhetorical strategy. Among thequestions considered are: Canautobiography be strictly defined?

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How does autobiography relate toother literary genres such as thediary or the first-person novel? Isautobiography a particular kind ofnarrative? Is there an identifiablerhetoric of autobiography? Issincerity a meaningful criterionwhen considering autobiography?What kinds of relationship doautobiographers attempt toestablish with their readers? Amongthe recurring themes consideredare the representation of childhood,the family, sexuality, gender, ethics,morality, and politics.

Women Writers and the Familyin Twentieth-Century LiteratureThis module analyses a variety offictional and theoretical texts inorder to shed light on the practice

of a number of European womenwriters, including IngeborgBachmann, Simone de Beauvoir,Marie Cardinal, Charlotte PerkinsGilman, and Virginia Woolf. Principaltopics for analysis include: incest,women’s place in society, writing asa means of expressing one’sidentity in a patriarchal society,women joining the workforce,lesbian relationships, filialrelationships, colonial experience,class and cultural boundaries,demystification of official malemodels. The theme of the familyserves as a framework for thediscussion of such issues.


The MA is taught by staffwith a wide range ofresearch interests fromacross the School ofEuropean Culture andLanguages, and includesstaff from the departmentsof Comparative Literature,French, German, HispanicStudies, and Italian. Manyof the staff teaching onthe MA are also membersof the Centre for ModernEuropean Literatureat Kent.

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Staff research interests

Dr Thomas BaldwinAreas of interest: nineteenth- andtwentieth-century French literature;representations of art in literature;literary theory and philosophy.Publications include: The MaterialObject in the Work of Marcel Proust(2005).

Dr Lorenzo ChiesaAreas of interest: contemporaryItalian critical theory; Freudian andLacanian psychoanalysis; twentieth-century French philosophy.Publications include: AntoninArtaud: Verso un corpo senzaorgani (2002); Subjectivity andOtherness: A Philosophical Readingof Lacan (2007).

Professor Osman DurraniAreas of interest: German literaturefrom the eighteenth century to thepresent day, especially Goethe,Kafka, and contemporary authors;the German historical novel; theFaust myth; European tragedy;visual arts and popular culture.Publications include: Fictions ofGermany: Images of the GermanNation in the Modern Novel (1994);Faust: Icon of Modern Culture(2004).

Teaching staff


Dr James FowlerAreas of interest: novels, dramaand other writings of the eighteenthcentury; prudes and their relation tolibertinage; narratology;psychoanalysis; discourses of thebody. Publications include: VoicingDesire: Family and Sexuality inDiderot’s Narrative (2000).

Dr Ben HutchinsonAreas of interest: nineteenth- andtwentieth-century German andEuropean literature; Rilke, W. G.Sebald, Jean Améry, Kafka,Thomas Bernhard; twentieth-century poetry; modernism;comparative poetics. Publicationsinclude: Rilke’s Poetics ofBecoming (2006).

Dr Antonio Lázaro-RebollAreas of interest: cultural studies;film studies; reception studies;visual culture, in particular art-horror in Spanish visual culture.Publications include: (co-ed.),Spanish Popular Cinema (2004).

Dr Karl LeydeckerAreas of interest: divorce inEuropean literature, eighteenth totwentieth centuries; German dramaand social history, 1890–1930;Expressionism; Ernst Toller;novelists of the Weimar Republic.Publications include: Marriage andDivorce in the Plays of HermannSudermann (1996); (ed.), GermanNovelists of the Weimar Republic:Intersections of Literature andPolitics (2006).

Dr Ana de MedeirosAreas of interest: Francophone andLusophone women authors, inparticular Marguerite Yourcenar,Assia Djebar and Annie Ernaux;autobiography and postcolonialstudies. Publications include: LesVisages de l’autre: alibis, masqueset identité dans ‘Alexis ou le traitédu vain combat’, ‘Denier du rêve’ et‘Mémoires d’Hadrien’ de MargueriteYourcenar (1996); (ed.), L’Exil etl’écriture (1999).

Professor Peter ReadAreas of interest: nineteenth- andtwentieth-century French literatureand the visual arts, especiallySurrealism. Publications include:(ed.), The Cubist Painters:Apollinaire and Cubism (2002);Picasso and Apollinaire: ThePersistence of Memory (2008).

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Dr Montserrat Roser i PuigAreas of interest: twentieth- andtwenty-first-century Spanish(including Catalan) literature,especially poetry and theatre; theavant-garde movement; theFrancoist period and the literaturefrom the transition to democracy tothe present day. Publicationsinclude: (ed.), A Female Scene:Three Plays by Catalan Women(2007).

Dr Anna Katharina SchaffnerAreas of interest: avant-garde andneo-avant-garde literature, art, filmand theory; digital poetry; Europeanand American cinema; modernismand postmodernism. Publicationsinclude: Sprachzerlegung inhistorischer Avantgardelyrik undkonkreter Poesie (2007).


Dr Axel StählerAreas of interest: Jewish literatureand culture; early modern festivalculture; the eighteenth-centurynovel in Europe; intermediality and‘iconarratology’; postcolonialliterature and theory;fundamentalism and literature.Publications include: ‘PerpetuallMonuments': Die Repräsentationvon Architektur in der italienischenFestdokumentation (ca. 1515–1640)und der englischen court masque(1604–1640) (2000); (ed.),Anglophone Jewish Literature(2007).

Dr Shane WellerAreas of interest: Europeanmodernism, postmodernism, andliterary theory; literature andphilosophy. Publications include: ATaste for the Negative: Beckett andNihilism (2005); Beckett, Literature,and the Ethics of Alterity (2006);Literature, Philosophy, Nihilism: TheUncanniest of Guests (2008).

Terms and conditions The University reserves the right to make variations to the contentand delivery of courses and other services, or to discontinue courses and other services, ifsuch action is reasonably considered to be necessary. If the University discontinues anycourse it will endeavour to provide a suitable alternative. To register for a programme ofstudy, all students must agree to abide by the University Regulations (available online atwww.kent.ac.uk/regulations/ or from the Information and Guidance Unit).Data protection For administrative, academic and health and safety reasons, the Universityneeds to process information about its students. Full registration as a student of theUniversity is subject to your consent to process such information.

For further information,please contact:Dr Shane WellerSchool of European Cultureand LanguagesUniversity of KentCanterbury, Kent CT2 7NFT: +44 (0)1227 824716E: [email protected]

www.kent.ac.uk/secl/complit

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