European literature(歐洲文學) Fall 2022
« l’Art est le moyen de vivre la chose en train de se faire, et en art ce qui
est fait n’a pas d’importance.» - Victor Chklovski
(“Art is the way of living the things that are making themselves, and in art
what is made is of no importance.”) (my translation)
“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived
and not as they are known.” - Victor Shklovski
This course aims to provide a thematic introduction to European Literature,
with particular emphasis on the exploration of relations between Art and
literature in the 19th-century English, French and German literatures. Each
lecture will be divided into two parts; the first will be focused on the
analysis of selected texts and the approaches that help interpret the text in
question; the second will be on the important intellectual, artistic and
literary currents that bear directly or indirectly upon the literary production.
Themes:
1) Art and Reality
2) Art and Imagination
Tentative Schedule(欲修習本課程的同學，請盡量不要缺席，尤其是開學前三周，務請出席):
Week 1 Introduction and orientation
Week 2-8 Art and Reality
1. Texts and contexts; selected readings
2. The Princes; selected readings
3. The Greek Spirit and The Gothic impulses; selected readings
Week 9-10 Mid-term exam (response report, oral and written)
Week 11-15 Art and Imagination
1. Texts and contexts; selected readings
2. The Artists (ou les fous) ; selected readings
3. Romanticism and Modernism; selected readings
4. questions and discussions
Week 16 Final presentations/Term paper due
*This schedule is susceptible to change.
Tentative Evaluation:
1.出席 class attendance 10%
2.課堂參與和表現 class participation (readings[+in-class sharing-reports] and
discussions, learning attitude) 40%
3.期中報告 (口說與書寫) midterm report (oral and written) 20%
4.期末報告 (口說與期末論文) final report/term paper 30%
Main References:
Backgrounds of European Literature by Rod. W. Horton and Vincent F. Hopper (New
York UP).
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, v. 2, 8th edition.
What is Enlightenment by Michel Foucault.
Selected Writings on Art and Literature by Charles Baudelaire.
A Short History of Literary Criticism by Vermon Hall, Jr.
A Useful Website:
Free eBooks by Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/