Home > Comparative Central European Literature II: Literature, Culture, History and Ideology: Select Masterpieces of Eastern and Central European and American Literature
Comparative Central European Literature II: Literature, Culture, History and Ideology: Select Masterpieces of Eastern and Central European and American Literature
The aim of this course is to promote dis-course between various modes human beings try to make sense of the world and themselves. We will adopt a basically “New Historicist” perspective to watch the interaction, from the Modernist period to Postmodernism, between cultural phenomena, historical consciousness, prevailing ideologies and literature. In the Central- and East-European region, poetry, drama and fiction are especially interesting as they have often tried to refuse to be blind perpetuators of consciousness, fashioning themselves rather as disruptive and subversive forces, as major forms of resistance. We will read, in a rich historical, cultural and ideological context provided by the instructor, mainly Hungarian pieces but we will also take a look at other East-European countries (Russia, Poland, Serbia, former Czechoslovakia, etc.) as well, and we will ask if an aesthetic reading of literature is still possible. The speciality of the course is that the “strange” or even “alien” (and often tragic) Central European pieces will usually be compared with more familiar American ones to demonstrate parallels in subject-matter, motif, style, attitude and technique. The course will consider creative pieces (poems, short-stories or mini-dramas) as highly adequate responses to the literature under discussion and thus instead of a midterm exam, a creative piece might be handed in, yet this will by no means be compulsory. An optional “field-trip”, guided by the instructor to Budapest, will try to back up the inter-cultural atmosphere of the course.
Prerequisites:
Since the course is designed precisely for finding one’s voice in speaking about literature, it does not require any previous training either in literature (literary theory), or in history, or in any of the social sciences. Some interest in literature and related areas is, however, presupposed.
Additional student cost:
The field-trip to Budapest is optional and although IES contributes to the expenses with 30 EUROs, about 60 EUROs for lodging, food etc. can be expected if one travels to Budapest for a week-end.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course, students are expected to be familiar with the outlines of the history and cultural background of Central- (East-) European literature between the period of Modernism and the
present day, they should be able to identify and put into appropriate context the main literary figures,
and the cultural and literary trends discussed in class, they should be aware of the most significant movements in literary style and writing-technique, they should have growing expertise in the ability to interpret and critically evaluate literary texts and to develop some arguments of their own about them.
Method of presentation:
There will be 20, ninety minute-long sessions. We will be discussing the pieces below, assigned for each meeting. The compulsory readings will be available in the Library in photocopies in a course-packet or will be on reserve; please buy the course-packet. The course is intended as a real dialogue: it will, besides the traditional lecture-format, heavily rely on student participation in the form of short class-presentations and contributions to the discussions.
Required work and form of assessment:
• Required reading: the pieces below (no secondary literature required).
• Midterm (40%): Take-home assignment (with creative option): an essay of approx. 5-8 pages on a freely chosen topic of the course (the juxtaposition of two or more pieces in all possible
combinations, the description of two or more characters, some recurring metaphors in various
pieces, etc.) OR: a CREATIVE piece of writing (poems, a short-story or a short drama)
• Final (50%): Take-home assignment (with creative option): an essay of approx. 5-8 pages on a freely chosen topic of the course (the juxtaposition of two or more pieces in all possible combinations, the description of two or more characters, some recurring metaphors in various pieces, etc.) OR: a CREATIVE piece of writing (poems, a short-story or a short drama)
• Class-participation: (10%) you are expected to be fully present and to take part in the discussions.
• Composition (not graded, due on the third week of the term): “Observation and Memory”, or “A Letter Home”, or “A Letter from Home”: composition or already a creative piece of writing
(approx. 2 pages), to give students a sense of the pleasure and the difficulties of writing and of
finding one’s voice. Observe something in your narrower or wider context (your reading-lamp in your room, a cabbage in the market, a dog in the street, etc.) and describe it, or remember something at home (the Christmas-tree when you were a child, your desk at school, the first movie you remember, etc.) and write about it; or write a letter home or write yourself a letter as if it were coming from home, using, if you wish, imaginary persons.
• Occasionally a "Quiz" at the beginning of each class
Absences should be excused. If you cannot attend for some serious reasons (such as illness or emergency), please contact, if possible, the Registrar in the Registrar’s Office (personally, or by phone) before the class you are going to miss. If you feel you have problems, come to see me, or send me an e- mail: kallay@ucsc.edu[3]
content:
1st week
1st meeting: Getting acquainted and course introduction: Miklós Radnóti (Hungarian): “Forced march”
(1944) -- in various translations
2nd meeting: On holiday in America and in Hungary:
Ernest Hemingway (American): Indian Camp (short-story) (1921)
Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian): The Swim (short-story) (1924)
2nd week
3rd meeting: A dramatic start? Drama I: between realism and the absurd
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian): The Cherry Orchard (1903-4)
4th meeting: Drama II: The theatre of the absurd
Samuel Beckett (Irish): Waiting for Godot (1947-53)
3rd week
5th meeting: Drama III: Is tragedy still possible?
Edward Albee (American): Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963)
6th meeting: Drama IV: Alienation and history
Bertolt Brecht ([East]German): Mother Courage and Her Children (1936)
4th week
7th meeting: Drama V: To be home abroad?
Slawomir Mrozek (Polish): The Emigrants (1972)
8th meeting: An East-European in Western Europe:
Tadeus Rozevitz (Polish): In the Most Beautiful City in the World (novella) (1957)
and a West-European Hungarian in Eastern Europe:
Géza Ottlik (Hungarian): Nothing's Lost (novella) (1968)
5th week
9th meeting: Lost references and the working of history
Sherwood Anderson (American): I Want To Know Why (short-story) (1924)
Géza Csáth (Hungarian): Matricide (short-story) (1915)
10th meeting: Sexuality and murder
Ernest Hemingway (American): The Killers (short-story) (1922)
Iván Mándy (Hungarian): Ball-Game (short-story) (1951)
6th week
11th meting: The reality of mass-murder
Flannery O’Connor (American): A Good Man Is Hard to Find (short-story) (1955)
Tadeus Borowski (Polish): This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (short-story) (1947)
12th meeting: Helplessness, madness and survival
Nicolai Gogol (Russian): Diary of a Madman (short novel) (1835)
7th week
13th meeting: Self-identification
F. Scott Fitzgerald (American): Babylon Revisited (short-story) (1931)
14th meeting: Guilt, punishment and survival
Gyula Krúdy (Hungarian): The Last Cigar at the Grey Arab (short-story) (1927)
8th week
15th meeting: In quest of love; crime and punishment
Carson McCullers (American): A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (short-story) (1942)
Milan Kundera (Czech): Edward and God (short-story) (1969)
16th meeting: The seeming innocence of cafés and the problem of exposure
Shirley Jackson (American): The Lottery (short-story) (1948)
István Örkény (Hungarian): Café Niagara (short-story) (1965)
9th week: Poems I
17th meeting: Poems by William Carlos Williams (American), Sándor Weöres (Hungarian) and Vasco
Popa (Serbian)
18th meeting: Poems II
Poems by John Berryman (American), János Pilinszky (Hungarian) and Dezső Tandori (Hungarian)
10th week Poems III
19th meeting: Sylvia Plath (American), Zbignew Herbert (Polish) and Ágnes Nemes Nagy
(Hungarian)
20th meeting: Summary and poetry-reading
11th week:
21st meeting: FINALS-BACK session
Required readings:
the pieces above
Recommended readings:
Alexandra Büchler (ed.), Allskin and Other Tales by Contemporary Czech Women, Seattle: Women in
Translation, 1998
Győző Ferencz (et. al. ed.), The Lost Rider, An Anthology of Hungarian Poetry, Budapest: Corvina, 1993
Miroslav Krleža, On the Edge of Reason, trans. from the Croatian by Zoran Depolo, London and New
York: Quartet Encounters, 1987
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, London: Faber and Faber, 1999
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. from the French by Aaron Asher, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1996
László Kúnos (et. al. ed.) Nothing is Lost, An Anthology of Hungarian Short-Stories, Budapest: Corvina, 1989
Ádám Makkai (et. al. ed.) In Quest of the Miracle Stag… A Comprehensive Anthology of Hungarian
Poems, Budapest: Corvina, 2002
Sándor Márai: Embers, London: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001
Michael March (ed.), Description of a Struggle, The Vintage Book of Contemporary Eastern European Writing, New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1994.
Géza Kállay earned MA degrees in Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, English Literature and Linguistics, with teaching degrees, and MA in General and Applied Linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary in 1984. He got his Ph.D. in Literature and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium in 1996. He is currently full professor at the School of English and American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, giving lectures and seminars on Renaissance English drama and cultural history, literary theory, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. He is the program director of the MA program in English Studies at Eötvös University and founding member of the Doctoral School in Literature at the same institution. He is also visiting professor at Corvinus University, Budapest, teaching East- and Central European Culture. He pursued post-doctoral studies at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. Current research areas include the relationship between literature and philosophy, Shakespearean tragedy and Hungarian literature. His recent publications include "Személyes jelentés" ([Personal Meaning], a book of essays on philosophy and literature, Budapest: Liget Publishers, 2007) and "Semmi vérjel" [No Stain of Blood], a book of essays mainly on Hungarian literature, Budapest: Liget Publishers, 2008).
Comparative Central European Literature II: Literature, Culture, History and Ideology: Select Masterpieces of Eastern and Central European and American Literature
The aim of this course is to promote dis-course between various modes human beings try to make sense of the world and themselves. We will adopt a basically “New Historicist” perspective to watch the interaction, from the Modernist period to Postmodernism, between cultural phenomena, historical consciousness, prevailing ideologies and literature. In the Central- and East-European region, poetry, drama and fiction are especially interesting as they have often tried to refuse to be blind perpetuators of consciousness, fashioning themselves rather as disruptive and subversive forces, as major forms of resistance. We will read, in a rich historical, cultural and ideological context provided by the instructor, mainly Hungarian pieces but we will also take a look at other East-European countries (Russia, Poland, Serbia, former Czechoslovakia, etc.) as well, and we will ask if an aesthetic reading of literature is still possible. The speciality of the course is that the “strange” or even “alien” (and often tragic) Central European pieces will usually be compared with more familiar American ones to demonstrate parallels in subject-matter, motif, style, attitude and technique. The course will consider creative pieces (poems, short-stories or mini-dramas) as highly adequate responses to the literature under discussion and thus instead of a midterm exam, a creative piece might be handed in, yet this will by no means be compulsory. An optional “field-trip”, guided by the instructor to Budapest, will try to back up the inter-cultural atmosphere of the course.
Since the course is designed precisely for finding one’s voice in speaking about literature, it does not require any previous training either in literature (literary theory), or in history, or in any of the social sciences. Some interest in literature and related areas is, however, presupposed.
The field-trip to Budapest is optional and although IES contributes to the expenses with 30 EUROs, about 60 EUROs for lodging, food etc. can be expected if one travels to Budapest for a week-end.
By the end of the course, students are expected to be familiar with the outlines of the history and cultural background of Central- (East-) European literature between the period of Modernism and the
present day, they should be able to identify and put into appropriate context the main literary figures,
and the cultural and literary trends discussed in class, they should be aware of the most significant movements in literary style and writing-technique, they should have growing expertise in the ability to interpret and critically evaluate literary texts and to develop some arguments of their own about them.
There will be 20, ninety minute-long sessions. We will be discussing the pieces below, assigned for each meeting. The compulsory readings will be available in the Library in photocopies in a course-packet or will be on reserve; please buy the course-packet. The course is intended as a real dialogue: it will, besides the traditional lecture-format, heavily rely on student participation in the form of short class-presentations and contributions to the discussions.
• Required reading: the pieces below (no secondary literature required).
• Midterm (40%): Take-home assignment (with creative option): an essay of approx. 5-8 pages on a freely chosen topic of the course (the juxtaposition of two or more pieces in all possible
combinations, the description of two or more characters, some recurring metaphors in various
pieces, etc.) OR: a CREATIVE piece of writing (poems, a short-story or a short drama)
• Final (50%): Take-home assignment (with creative option): an essay of approx. 5-8 pages on a freely chosen topic of the course (the juxtaposition of two or more pieces in all possible combinations, the description of two or more characters, some recurring metaphors in various pieces, etc.) OR: a CREATIVE piece of writing (poems, a short-story or a short drama)
• Class-participation: (10%) you are expected to be fully present and to take part in the discussions.
• Composition (not graded, due on the third week of the term): “Observation and Memory”, or “A Letter Home”, or “A Letter from Home”: composition or already a creative piece of writing
(approx. 2 pages), to give students a sense of the pleasure and the difficulties of writing and of
finding one’s voice. Observe something in your narrower or wider context (your reading-lamp in your room, a cabbage in the market, a dog in the street, etc.) and describe it, or remember something at home (the Christmas-tree when you were a child, your desk at school, the first movie you remember, etc.) and write about it; or write a letter home or write yourself a letter as if it were coming from home, using, if you wish, imaginary persons.
• Occasionally a "Quiz" at the beginning of each class
Absences should be excused. If you cannot attend for some serious reasons (such as illness or emergency), please contact, if possible, the Registrar in the Registrar’s Office (personally, or by phone) before the class you are going to miss. If you feel you have problems, come to see me, or send me an e- mail: kallay@ucsc.edu [3]
1st week
1st meeting: Getting acquainted and course introduction: Miklós Radnóti (Hungarian): “Forced march”
(1944) -- in various translations
2nd meeting: On holiday in America and in Hungary:
Ernest Hemingway (American): Indian Camp (short-story) (1921)
Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian): The Swim (short-story) (1924)
2nd week
3rd meeting: A dramatic start? Drama I: between realism and the absurd
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian): The Cherry Orchard (1903-4)
4th meeting: Drama II: The theatre of the absurd
Samuel Beckett (Irish): Waiting for Godot (1947-53)
3rd week
5th meeting: Drama III: Is tragedy still possible?
Edward Albee (American): Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963)
6th meeting: Drama IV: Alienation and history
Bertolt Brecht ([East]German): Mother Courage and Her Children (1936)
4th week
7th meeting: Drama V: To be home abroad?
Slawomir Mrozek (Polish): The Emigrants (1972)
8th meeting: An East-European in Western Europe:
Tadeus Rozevitz (Polish): In the Most Beautiful City in the World (novella) (1957)
and a West-European Hungarian in Eastern Europe:
Géza Ottlik (Hungarian): Nothing's Lost (novella) (1968)
5th week
9th meeting: Lost references and the working of history
Sherwood Anderson (American): I Want To Know Why (short-story) (1924)
Géza Csáth (Hungarian): Matricide (short-story) (1915)
10th meeting: Sexuality and murder
Ernest Hemingway (American): The Killers (short-story) (1922)
Iván Mándy (Hungarian): Ball-Game (short-story) (1951)
6th week
11th meting: The reality of mass-murder
Flannery O’Connor (American): A Good Man Is Hard to Find (short-story) (1955)
Tadeus Borowski (Polish): This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (short-story) (1947)
12th meeting: Helplessness, madness and survival
Nicolai Gogol (Russian): Diary of a Madman (short novel) (1835)
7th week
13th meeting: Self-identification
F. Scott Fitzgerald (American): Babylon Revisited (short-story) (1931)
14th meeting: Guilt, punishment and survival
Gyula Krúdy (Hungarian): The Last Cigar at the Grey Arab (short-story) (1927)
8th week
15th meeting: In quest of love; crime and punishment
Carson McCullers (American): A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (short-story) (1942)
Milan Kundera (Czech): Edward and God (short-story) (1969)
16th meeting: The seeming innocence of cafés and the problem of exposure
Shirley Jackson (American): The Lottery (short-story) (1948)
István Örkény (Hungarian): Café Niagara (short-story) (1965)
9th week: Poems I
17th meeting: Poems by William Carlos Williams (American), Sándor Weöres (Hungarian) and Vasco
Popa (Serbian)
18th meeting: Poems II
Poems by John Berryman (American), János Pilinszky (Hungarian) and Dezső Tandori (Hungarian)
10th week Poems III
19th meeting: Sylvia Plath (American), Zbignew Herbert (Polish) and Ágnes Nemes Nagy
(Hungarian)
20th meeting: Summary and poetry-reading
11th week:
21st meeting: FINALS-BACK session
the pieces above
Alexandra Büchler (ed.), Allskin and Other Tales by Contemporary Czech Women, Seattle: Women in
Translation, 1998
Győző Ferencz (et. al. ed.), The Lost Rider, An Anthology of Hungarian Poetry, Budapest: Corvina, 1993
Miroslav Krleža, On the Edge of Reason, trans. from the Croatian by Zoran Depolo, London and New
York: Quartet Encounters, 1987
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, London: Faber and Faber, 1999
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. from the French by Aaron Asher, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1996
László Kúnos (et. al. ed.) Nothing is Lost, An Anthology of Hungarian Short-Stories, Budapest: Corvina, 1989
Ádám Makkai (et. al. ed.) In Quest of the Miracle Stag… A Comprehensive Anthology of Hungarian
Poems, Budapest: Corvina, 2002
Sándor Márai: Embers, London: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001
Michael March (ed.), Description of a Struggle, The Vintage Book of Contemporary Eastern European Writing, New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1994.
Edmund Ordon (ed.), 10 Contemporary Polish Stories, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1974
Géza Kállay earned MA degrees in Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, English Literature and Linguistics, with teaching degrees, and MA in General and Applied Linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary in 1984. He got his Ph.D. in Literature and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium in 1996. He is currently full professor at the School of English and American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, giving lectures and seminars on Renaissance English drama and cultural history, literary theory, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. He is the program director of the MA program in English Studies at Eötvös University and founding member of the Doctoral School in Literature at the same institution. He is also visiting professor at Corvinus University, Budapest, teaching East- and Central European Culture. He pursued post-doctoral studies at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. Current research areas include the relationship between literature and philosophy, Shakespearean tragedy and Hungarian literature. His recent publications include "Személyes jelentés" ([Personal Meaning], a book of essays on philosophy and literature, Budapest: Liget Publishers, 2007) and "Semmi vérjel" [No Stain of Blood], a book of essays mainly on Hungarian literature, Budapest: Liget Publishers, 2008).