Comparative Literature Department :: University at Buffalo

COL 302 - History of Literary Theory
COL 320 - Desire and Murder in Literature
COL 451 - Modernism: Reading Jorge Luis Borges

COL 302 - HISTORY OF LITERARY THEORY (top)

Nicholas Lawrence
Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:50
Room: 640 Clemens
Registration Number: 032280

Since even before Plato adjudicated the contest between poetry and philosophy by kicking poets out of his ideal republic, a mainstay of critical theory has been the problem of construing the relation between art and politics. How do the representational and expressive practices of art reflect, refract, inform, deform, serve, swerve away from, subvert, address, redress, undress, deride, derive from, speak to or bespeak the modes and aims of political thought as well as action? What is the place of poets in the polis, and conversely, how do political values enter the precincts of poetry? What, in Walter Benjamin's elusive phrase, does it mean to "aestheticize politics" and to "politicize aesthetics"?

Viewed through this lens, the history of critical theory becomes a series of battlegrounds over the very meanings of such terms as art and politics. Since these battles are still being fought today--elephant dung, anyone?--it's useful to get a long view of the war by studying the ways it has been waged in the past, with an eye to recurrent skirmishes and decisive shifts in terrain. This course examines the various articulations of art and politics in works by Plato, Aristotle, Euripedes, Schiller, Hegel, Shelley, Büchner, Benjamin, Brecht, and Arendt, among others.

COL 320 - DESIRE AND MURDER IN LITERATURE (top)

Barish Ali
Mon/Wed, 9:30-10:50
Room: 640 Clemens
Registration Number: 099438

The notion of desire is usually associated with the psychological desire for love, or the sensuous desire for sex. But an entire history of literature has shown that a fine and permeable line separates the desire to love from the desire to murder. This course will investigate crimes of passion to explore the inseparability of desire and murder as it has manifested itself in literature, film, and philosophy. We begin by studying notions of love and desire as they have developed in literary history (Plato, Shakespeare). Then we look at love and desire in extremis, to see what happens when desire is taken beyond its normal limits. By looking at sublime love--and murder--in the work of Marquis de Sade and George Bataille, sadomasochism in Pauline Réage, serial killing in Patrick Süskind's "Perfume," sexual exploration in Federico Andahazi's "The Anatomist," the macabre in Poe, and the femme fatale in the American noir tradition, we will question where the desire to love ends, and the desire to murder begins.

Requirements: One in-class presentation, active participation, one mid-term paper (seven pages), and one final paper (seven to ten pages).

COL 451 - Modernism: Reading Jorge Luis Borges (top)

Professor David Johnson
Mon/Wed, 3:30-4:50
Room: 88 Alumni
Registration Number: 413827

We will begin by taking up several of Borges's principal philosophical intertexts, Augustine's chapter on time in the Confessions, George Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, and Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, before turning to detailed readings of certain Borgesian "problems": time, space, the subject, monstration/monstrosity, mirrors, representation, culture, identity, the imagination. In addition to considering several of Borges's important philosophical essays ("The New Refutation of Time," "The Nothing of Personality," etc.), we will read the entirety of his two most important books of "fantastic" literature, Ficciones and The Aleph. The course concludes with an attempt to think through the limits of justice and friendship by reading "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "La Intrusa [The Intruder]" alongside Jean-Luc Nancy's remarkable brief essay, "L'Intrus [The Intruder]."

The course should be of interest to anyone concerned with the study and limits of philosophy and literature, but also to those in general preoccupied by epistemological questions. Borges writes about nothing less than the possibility of knowledge. The reading for this course is not particularly burdensome: Borges wrote precise but brief texts. Students will, however, be required to write 3 papers (2 rather short, 1 longer).


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	:: Spring 2003 - Undergraduate Courses
Graduate Undergraduate Course Archive	COL 302 - History of Literary Theory COL 320 - Desire and Murder in Literature COL 451 - Modernism: Reading Jorge Luis Borges COL 302 - HISTORY OF LITERARY THEORY (top) Nicholas Lawrence Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:50 Room: 640 Clemens Registration Number: 032280 Since even before Plato adjudicated the contest between poetry and philosophy by kicking poets out of his ideal republic, a mainstay of critical theory has been the problem of construing the relation between art and politics. How do the representational and expressive practices of art reflect, refract, inform, deform, serve, swerve away from, subvert, address, redress, undress, deride, derive from, speak to or bespeak the modes and aims of political thought as well as action? What is the place of poets in the polis, and conversely, how do political values enter the precincts of poetry? What, in Walter Benjamin's elusive phrase, does it mean to "aestheticize politics" and to "politicize aesthetics"? Viewed through this lens, the history of critical theory becomes a series of battlegrounds over the very meanings of such terms as art and politics. Since these battles are still being fought today--elephant dung, anyone?--it's useful to get a long view of the war by studying the ways it has been waged in the past, with an eye to recurrent skirmishes and decisive shifts in terrain. This course examines the various articulations of art and politics in works by Plato, Aristotle, Euripedes, Schiller, Hegel, Shelley, Büchner, Benjamin, Brecht, and Arendt, among others. COL 320 - DESIRE AND MURDER IN LITERATURE (top) Barish Ali Mon/Wed, 9:30-10:50 Room: 640 Clemens Registration Number: 099438 The notion of desire is usually associated with the psychological desire for love, or the sensuous desire for sex. But an entire history of literature has shown that a fine and permeable line separates the desire to love from the desire to murder. This course will investigate crimes of passion to explore the inseparability of desire and murder as it has manifested itself in literature, film, and philosophy. We begin by studying notions of love and desire as they have developed in literary history (Plato, Shakespeare). Then we look at love and desire in extremis, to see what happens when desire is taken beyond its normal limits. By looking at sublime love--and murder--in the work of Marquis de Sade and George Bataille, sadomasochism in Pauline Réage, serial killing in Patrick Süskind's "Perfume," sexual exploration in Federico Andahazi's "The Anatomist," the macabre in Poe, and the femme fatale in the American noir tradition, we will question where the desire to love ends, and the desire to murder begins. Requirements: One in-class presentation, active participation, one mid-term paper (seven pages), and one final paper (seven to ten pages). COL 451 - Modernism: Reading Jorge Luis Borges (top) Professor David Johnson Mon/Wed, 3:30-4:50 Room: 88 Alumni Registration Number: 413827 We will begin by taking up several of Borges's principal philosophical intertexts, Augustine's chapter on time in the Confessions, George Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, and Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, before turning to detailed readings of certain Borgesian "problems": time, space, the subject, monstration/monstrosity, mirrors, representation, culture, identity, the imagination. In addition to considering several of Borges's important philosophical essays ("The New Refutation of Time," "The Nothing of Personality," etc.), we will read the entirety of his two most important books of "fantastic" literature, Ficciones and The Aleph. The course concludes with an attempt to think through the limits of justice and friendship by reading "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "La Intrusa [The Intruder]" alongside Jean-Luc Nancy's remarkable brief essay, "L'Intrus [The Intruder]." The course should be of interest to anyone concerned with the study and limits of philosophy and literature, but also to those in general preoccupied by epistemological questions. Borges writes about nothing less than the possibility of knowledge. The reading for this course is not particularly burdensome: Borges wrote precise but brief texts. Students will, however, be required to write 3 papers (2 rather short, 1 longer).
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