COML 4220 - [Literature and Oblivion]

(LA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015. Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

N. Melas.

The monumental aspirations of literature to immortality date back as far as the earliest epics. This course will attempt a critical study of the powers of art against oblivion. We will start with the paradox whereby all language and especially poetic language necessarily destroys that which it seeks to preserve, just as a monument substitutes and thus overwhelms the very loss it commemorates. Since Arts monumentality sets it against the contingencies of history, a central concern will be the relation of art to history, particularly when artís negations encounter powerful worldly negations, such as those surrounding gender difference and colonial domination. Framed by Homer’s Iliad and Derek Walcott’s “postcolonial” Caribbean epic Omeros, the readings will also be a comparative exercise in reading across time and space and will include theoretical texts (Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Blanchot, Benjamin, Patterson ) alongside literature. Particular attention in course time and writing assignments will be directed to improving critical writing skills.