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 middle of the 19th century to the 21st, between cultural phenomena, historical consciousness, prevailing ideologies and literature. In the East-European region, literature 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, ideological and comparative context mainly Hungarian pieces but we will also take a look at other East-European countries (Russia, Poland, former Czechoslovakia, Romania and Serbia) as well, and we will ask if an aesthetic reading of literature is still possible. The range of literary genres is equally wide: short-stories, poems, dramas and two short novels (one by first Hungarian Noble-prize winner, Imre Kertész) will feature on the reading list. 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 or final, a creative piece might be handed in, yet this will by no means be compulsory. A “field-trip”, guided by the instructor to Budapest on the second week-end of October, 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 the student will assume some costs. Additional information is provided onsite.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course, students should be:
Familiar with the outlines of the history and cultural background of Central (East) European literature between the middle of the 19th century and the present day;
Identify and put into appropriate context the main literary figures and the cultural and literary trends discussed in class;
Recognize the most significant movements in literary style and writing techniques;
Possess a growing expertise in the ability to interpret and critically evaluate literary text and to develop arguments on 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. There will be an optional field-trip to Budapest, too, led by the instructor.
Required work and form of assessment:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
Required reading: the pieces below (no secondary literature required).
Midterm (40%): Take-home assignment (with creative option): an essay of approximately 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 approximately 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%): students are expected to be fully present and to take part in the discussions. If you cannot attend class 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.
Composition (not graded, due during the third week of the term): “Observation and Memory”, or “A Letter Home”: composition or a creative piece of writing (approximately 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 imaginary persons.
Ocassionally a quiz at the beginning of each class.
content:
1st week:
1st meeting: Getting acquainted and course introduction: Miklós Radnóti (Hungarian): “Forced march”
(poem, 1944); János Pilinszky: “Quatrain” (1956) István Örkény: “In Memoriam Dr. K. H. G.”
(1964). (Texts will be provided in photocopies in class)
2nd meeting: The nation-state and revolution in the mid-19th century: 1848-49 and poems by Sándor Petőfi (Hungarian)
2nd week:
3rd meeting: The croaking of damnation and the trauma of loss: Edgar Allan Poe (American): “The
Raven” (1844) (longer poem)
4th meeting: after a lost revolution and the sense of guilt: Mihály Vörösmarty: “The Ancient Gypsy”
(ode, 1854) and János Arany: “Mistress Agnes” (1851, ballad-poem)
3rd week:
5th meeting: (Composition due!): Poems (1906-12) by Endre Ady (Hungarian); Zsigmond Móricz
(Hungarian): “Barbarians” (1933, short-story
6th meeting: Franz Kafka (Austrian-Czech-Jewish): “The Metamorphosis” (longer short-story, 1915)
4th week:
7th meeting: “Gentle folks and the parlour maid”; Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian): Anna Édes (1925, novel, I.)
8th meeting: The mysterious case of murder; Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian): Anna Édes (1925, novel, II)
5th week: World War II and the trauma of the Holocaust
9th meeting: Imre Kertész (winner of the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 2002, Hungarian): Fateless (1975, short novel, I)
10th meeting: Imre Kertész (winner of the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 2002, Hungarian): Fateless
(1975, short novel, II)
MIDTERM WEEK
6th week Before and after 1956
11th meting: Ádám Bodor (Hungarian-Romanian): “The Outpost” (1968, short-story)
12th meeting: Tibor Déry (Hungarian): “Philemon and Baucis” (1965, short-story)
7th week: Suffering and the post-modern experience
13th meeting: Midrag Bulatovic (Serbian): “The Lovers” (1976) (short-story) ,
14th meeting: Bohumil Hrabal (Czech): “The World Cafeteria” (1968) (short-story)
8th week: The Russian literary scene: the floating intellectual (the superfluous hero)
15th meeting: Aleksandr Sergeeyevich Pushkin (Russian): Evgeniy Onegin (1837) (novel in verse), trans. by Vladimir Nabokov I.
16th meeting: Aleksandr Sergeeyevich Pushkin Evgeniy Onegin (1837) (novel in verse), trans. by
Vladimir Nabokov II.
9th week: “The whole of Russia is a madhouse”: voices and politics
17th meeting: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian): “Ward No. 6” (longer short-story)
18th meeting: Milan Kundera (Czech): “Nobody Will Laugh” (short-story, 1974), In: Laughable Loves, pp. 3-38
10th week
19th meeting: History, ideology and the “new Hamlet”: Slavomir Mrozek (Polish): Tango (drama, 1965)
20th meeting: Everyday life” in the office “under Communism” and the secret of language: Vaclav
Havel (Czech): The Memorandum (drama, 1966)
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 Ferenc (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 Kunos (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.
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 middle of the 19th century to the 21st, between cultural phenomena, historical consciousness, prevailing ideologies and literature. In the East-European region, literature 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, ideological and comparative context mainly Hungarian pieces but we will also take a look at other East-European countries (Russia, Poland, former Czechoslovakia, Romania and Serbia) as well, and we will ask if an aesthetic reading of literature is still possible. The range of literary genres is equally wide: short-stories, poems, dramas and two short novels (one by first Hungarian Noble-prize winner, Imre Kertész) will feature on the reading list. 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 or final, a creative piece might be handed in, yet this will by no means be compulsory. A “field-trip”, guided by the instructor to Budapest on the second week-end of October, 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 the student will assume some costs. Additional information is provided onsite.
By the end of the course, students should be:
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. There will be an optional field-trip to Budapest, too, led by the instructor.
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
Required reading: the pieces below (no secondary literature required).
Midterm (40%): Take-home assignment (with creative option): an essay of approximately 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 approximately 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%): students are expected to be fully present and to take part in the discussions. If you cannot attend class 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.
Composition (not graded, due during the third week of the term): “Observation and Memory”, or “A Letter Home”: composition or a creative piece of writing (approximately 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 imaginary persons.
Ocassionally a quiz at the beginning of each class.
1st week:
1st meeting: Getting acquainted and course introduction: Miklós Radnóti (Hungarian): “Forced march”
(poem, 1944); János Pilinszky: “Quatrain” (1956) István Örkény: “In Memoriam Dr. K. H. G.”
(1964). (Texts will be provided in photocopies in class)
2nd meeting: The nation-state and revolution in the mid-19th century: 1848-49 and poems by Sándor Petőfi (Hungarian)
2nd week:
3rd meeting: The croaking of damnation and the trauma of loss: Edgar Allan Poe (American): “The
Raven” (1844) (longer poem)
4th meeting: after a lost revolution and the sense of guilt: Mihály Vörösmarty: “The Ancient Gypsy”
(ode, 1854) and János Arany: “Mistress Agnes” (1851, ballad-poem)
3rd week:
5th meeting: (Composition due!): Poems (1906-12) by Endre Ady (Hungarian); Zsigmond Móricz
(Hungarian): “Barbarians” (1933, short-story
6th meeting: Franz Kafka (Austrian-Czech-Jewish): “The Metamorphosis” (longer short-story, 1915)
4th week:
7th meeting: “Gentle folks and the parlour maid”; Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian): Anna Édes (1925, novel, I.)
8th meeting: The mysterious case of murder; Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungarian): Anna Édes (1925, novel, II)
5th week: World War II and the trauma of the Holocaust
9th meeting: Imre Kertész (winner of the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 2002, Hungarian): Fateless (1975, short novel, I)
10th meeting: Imre Kertész (winner of the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 2002, Hungarian): Fateless
(1975, short novel, II)
MIDTERM WEEK
6th week Before and after 1956
11th meting: Ádám Bodor (Hungarian-Romanian): “The Outpost” (1968, short-story)
12th meeting: Tibor Déry (Hungarian): “Philemon and Baucis” (1965, short-story)
7th week: Suffering and the post-modern experience
13th meeting: Midrag Bulatovic (Serbian): “The Lovers” (1976) (short-story) ,
14th meeting: Bohumil Hrabal (Czech): “The World Cafeteria” (1968) (short-story)
8th week: The Russian literary scene: the floating intellectual (the superfluous hero)
15th meeting: Aleksandr Sergeeyevich Pushkin (Russian): Evgeniy Onegin (1837) (novel in verse), trans. by Vladimir Nabokov I.
16th meeting: Aleksandr Sergeeyevich Pushkin Evgeniy Onegin (1837) (novel in verse), trans. by
Vladimir Nabokov II.
9th week: “The whole of Russia is a madhouse”: voices and politics
17th meeting: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian): “Ward No. 6” (longer short-story)
18th meeting: Milan Kundera (Czech): “Nobody Will Laugh” (short-story, 1974), In: Laughable Loves, pp. 3-38
10th week
19th meeting: History, ideology and the “new Hamlet”: Slavomir Mrozek (Polish): Tango (drama, 1965)
20th meeting: Everyday life” in the office “under Communism” and the secret of language: Vaclav
Havel (Czech): The Memorandum (drama, 1966)
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 Ferenc (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 Kunos (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