CMLT 50106: “Literary Theory:

Pre-Modern, Non-Western, Not Exclusively Literary”

Graduate course, open to students from any department.
Autumn Quarter, 2020
Wednesdays, 12:40 - 3:10 on Zoom:
https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/5758810830
(password: 909055)

Instructor: Haun Saussy (hsaussy@uchicago.edu)

Office hours: Weds., 9:00-12:00 over Zoom (same address as above),
and by appointment as well

Course Summary: Readings in theories of literature and related arts from cultures largely
outside the post-1900 industrialized regions. What motivated reflection on verbal art in
Greece, Rome, early China, early South Asia, and elsewhere? Rhetoric, hermeneutics,
commentary, allegory, and other modes of textual analysis will be approached through
source texts, using both originals and translations. Authors to be considered include
Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, Sima Qian, Augustine, Liu Xie, Averroes,
Abhinavagupta, Dante, Li Zhi, Lessing, and Schlegel, with a few framing references to
contemporary theory.
This course fulfills the “501” core requirement for first-year Ph.D. students in
Comparative Literature.

Expectations: Participation in the weekly remote seminar (please do readings beforehand

and be prepared to share your thoughts), as well as an analytic paper of around 20 pages
due at the end of the quarter. Confer with me by mid-October on the subject for the
paper. It helps to get started early. If you don’t have a clear idea, the instructor’s job is to
help you make it clearer.

Readings: A few books have been ordered as required texts at the Seminary Coop.
Knowing how expensive books are, I’ve chosen books that I hope will serve you for the
rest of your career. Other readings will be made available in PDF form through the
course’s Canvas site (below, these are signaled by *), or can be found on external sites.
Some e-books can be accessed through the Library catalogue.

Books Ordered:
Aristotle, The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, tr. Rhys Roberts and Ingram Bywater.
New York: Modern Library, 1984.
David Damrosch, Natalie Melas, and Mbongiseni Buthelezi, eds., The Princeton
Sourcebook in Comparative Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Giambattista Vico, The New Science, tr. Jason Taylor and Robert Miner. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2020.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocöon, tr. Edward Allen McCormick. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1984.
Schedule and List of Readings

Week One (Sept. 30). World literature as project and problem.

George E. Woodberry, “Editorial,” The Journal of Comparative Literature 1 (1903) *
Goethe and Eckermann, “Conversations on World Literature,” 17-25 in Princeton
Sourcebook
Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz, “The Present Tasks of Comparative Literature” (1877) 41-49 in
Princeton Sourcebook
Angus Nicholls, “The ‘Goethean’ Discourses on Weltliteratur and the Origins of
Comparative Literature” *
Georg Brandes, “Weltliteratur,” 61-66 in Princeton Sourcebook
Edward Gibbon, “Essay on the Study of Literature,” tr. Robert Mankin (available at
http://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/essay-study-literature-translation), 21-24
Pascale Casanova, “Literature, Nation, and Politics,” 329-340 in Princeton Sourcebook

Week Two (Oct. 7). An ethnography of literary reading, starting from a basic theoretical
object: “the author.”
Mary Lefkowitz, Lives of the Greek Poets (selections) *
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” (1966), from Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology,
ed. James D. Faubion (New York: New Press, 1998) *
Sima Qian 司馬遷, biography of Zhuangzi 莊子 from Shiji 史記 (Records of the Grand
Historian) *

Week Three (Oct. 14): Text as object versus text as event.

Wilhelm Radloff [= Vasilij Vasil’evich Radlov], Samples of Folk Literature from the
North Turkic Tribes (1885), selections *
Richard Bauman and Charles L. Briggs, “Poetics and Performance as Critical
Perspectives on Language and Social Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990):
59-88 *

Week Four (Oct. 21): Comparative poetics and universal laws. Are “mimesis” and
“catharsis” properties of human nature or terms that have meaning only in Greek culture?
Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics (1990), 12-33, 82-134 *
Plato, Republic, sections 391a-415d *
Aristotle, Poetics, sections 1448a-1452a (Penguin ed., pp. 5-17)
Xunzi 荀子, tr. Eric Hutton, “Discourse on Music” (218-223), “Human Nature is Bad”
(248-257) *
Liu Yiqing 劉義慶, Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 (A New Account of Tales of the World),
selections *

Please email final paper proposals to me during Week 5; take advantage of office hours
to try out possible topics

Week Five (Oct. 28): Genre systems in Chinese literature.

Liu Xie 劉勰 Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍, tr. Vincent Shih as The Literary Mind and the
Carving of Dragons, chapters “On Tao, the Source”; “Evidence from the Sage”; “An
Exegesis of Poetry”; “Spiritual Thought or Imagination”; “Emotion and Literary
Expression” *
Stephen Owen, “Genres in Motion,” PMLA 122 (2007): 1389-1393
Paul Vierthaler, “Fiction and History: Polarity and Stylistic Gradience in Late Imperial
Chinese Literature,” Journal of Cultural Analytics, May 2016 *
Nan Z. Da, “The Computational Case Against Computational Literary Studies,” Critical
Inquiry 45 (2019): 601-639 *

Week Six (Nov. 4): Mimesis as persuasion and evaluation. Performance as capture of
essences?
Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, excerpts *
Jorge Luis Borges, “Averroes’ Search” *
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1354a-1358a (outline of rhetoric); 1360b-1362a (motives of action);
1366a-1368b (praise and blame); 1377b-1378b (on the emotions generally); 1381a-1383b
(on fear); 1385c-1386b (on pity)
[e-book accessible through UChicago Libraries] Sheldon Pollock, A Rasa Reader, 47-65
(Bharata), 193-218 (Abhinavagupta)

Week Seven (Nov. 11): Cultural contact, difference, overlay.

Augustine, Confessions, book I, 1-6, 13-18; book III
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, books 2 and 3
(online version available at http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0137/)
(another version at Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-
Nicene_Fathers:_Series_I/Volume_II/On_Christian_Doctrine/Book_II)
Erich Auerbach, “Figura” from Scenes from the Drama of European Literature *
Shadi Bartsch, “Roman Literature: Translation, Metaphor and Empire.” Daedalus 145
(2016): 30-39 *

Week Eight (Nov. 18): Non-classical or post-classical writing; the exaltation of the
fragment, creation as critique.
Zhuangzi 莊子, “The Way of Heaven” 天道 *
Sei Shōnagon 清少納言, Makura no sōshi 枕草子 (The Pillow Book, tr. Ian Morris)
(excerpts) *
Dante, De volgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular) *
Li Zhi 李贄, Fen shu 焚書 (A Book to Burn, 1584), 15-18, 102-106, 278-281 *
Germaine de Staël, “Of the General Spirit of Modern Literature,” 10-16 in Princeton
Sourcebook

Week Nine (Dec. 2): Media-specificity, culture-specificity, and the human body as a
medium.
Giambattista Vico, The New Science
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocöon
Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments (excerpts) *

Final papers will be due (please send to me via email) by 5 pm on December 11. If you
are graduating in Fall quarter, please speak to me about an earlier date.