COMPARATIVE POETICS Prof. Michel Beaujour

Spring ‘04

G29.3399, G45.2890, G40.3390

Mondays 3:30-6:10

When dealing with “post colonial” or “world literature”, and working with premises that are quite removed from Platonic and Aristotelian mimesis, or even from German Romanticism, most contemporary literary critics and theoreticians continue to construct their theses within a conceptual paradigm that is deeply rooted in European culture.

Even if they embrace “global” and “post-colonial” ideologies, theoreticians often remain unaware or oblivious of non-Western poetologies that are rooted in radically alien anthropologies, world-views and practices. The ideological dominance of the West, enforced through the media, and especially the movies and television, has granted an almost universal currency to the basic tenets of European poetology, such as the prevalence of “plotted narratives enacted by human-like characters”.

The aim of this course is to survey and compare (in so far as it is epistemologically possible) several alien poetologies pertaining to non-Western cultures, both literate (Chinese, Arabic) and non-literate (Dogon, Kaluli). The literate poetologies will be approached through theoretical or prescriptive texts written within the respective cultures. The non-literate will have to be approached through the writings of Western anthropologists specializing in “ethnopoetics”. It must already be clear that many of our discussions will deal with definitions and contexts, and with difficulties that may prove to be insuperable.

The question one cannot avoid raising in the end is whether it makes sense to speak of “poetological universals”, and what those might possibly be: rhythm? anaphora? Use of a foreign or archaic dialect? Etc. It to be hoped that such a survey might enhance and expand one’s understanding of the specific choices made by Western poetology, or poetologies. Looking into alien poetics challenges our own tency to believe, along with Plato and Aristotle, that we possess an innate or a priori knowledge of what “poetry” (or “literature”) is . We are thus forced to reconsider the basic concepts that underwrite literary studies, comparative or not, conservative or transgressive.

Most theoretical readings for this course are available in English (versions), a few in French. This course is not a study of alien poetry (literature), therefore a knowledge of the languages involved is not necessary since the theoretical texts can be approached plausibly through competent translations with commentaries.

Succinct Bibliography

Plato, The Republic, Ion (available editions)

Aristotle, The Poetics (Loeb Classical) Criticism

George A. Kennedy (ed), Classical Criticism. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, 1989

Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, Harvard, 1992

Zong-qi Cai, A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin Diaolong, Stanford, 2001

Amjad Trabulsi, La Critique poetique des Arabes jusqu’au Ve siecle de l’Hegire, Damas, 1956

Jamal Eddine Bencheikh, Poetique arabe: essai sur les voies d’une creation, Paris, 1975

A.F.L.Beeston, T. M. Johnstone et alii (eds.), Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, Cambridge, 1983

Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics and song in Kaluli expression. Philadelphia, U. of Pennsylvania, Second Edition, 1990

Genevieve Calame-Griaule, Ethnologie et langage: la parole chez les Dogon, Paris, Gallimard, 1965. English translation: Words and the Dogon World, Philadelphia, Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1986. For a significant excerpt, see: Norman Cantor and Nathalia King (eds.) Notebooks in Cultural Analysis, Duke U.P., 1986, pp.15-60