UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM OF STUDY
JUNIOR PAPER: GUIDELINES
SENIOR THESIS: GUIDELINES
TRANSLATION THESIS: GUIDELINES
CREATIVE THESIS: GUIDELINES
SENIOR COMPREHENSIVES
READING LIST
FACULTY and ADVISERS
DEPARTMENTAL AVERAGES
CALENDAR
The Department of Comparative Literature is now on the Internet.
www.princeton.edu/~complit
The Department of Comparative Literature
The Department of Comparative Literature invites students to approach literature from a broad, cross-cultural perspective. The curriculum encompasses literatures and languages from around the world, as well as interdisciplinary work of many types. While each student in the Department is expected to focus his or her studies on a particular foreign language and literature, an interest in the way different literatures illuminate one another, or enter into dialogue with other disciplines, media, or forms of art, is fundamental to our work. Students motivated by a desire to understand literature in the broadest terms, as well as those interested in particular examples of literary comparison, will find an intellectual home in the Department of Comparative Literature. The flexibility of the major has always been one of its strong points. With the guidance of the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the junior and senior advisers, each student creates a program of study tailored to his or her intellectual interests, choosing courses and independent projects that contribute to the whole.
Departmental Plan of Study
Prerequisites: Foreign Language Requirement. To enter the department, students must demonstrate their ability to do serious literary work in at least one foreign language, usually by successful completion of a 200-level or 300-level course in a foreign literature or of an advanced language course. Students who major in Comparative Literature are also expected to study at least one other foreign language and to be capable of reading literary texts in this second foreign language before they graduate. Study of the second language may often be accomplished through summer study abroad; students with an interest in this option should inquire about it when planning their program with the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Introductory Courses. Students who wish to major in Comparative Literature are advised (though not required) to take Comparative Literature 201-202, Humanistic Studies 205-206, or Humanistic Studies 216-219 in their sophomore year or earlier.
Early Concentration: Qualified students may elect early concentration and enroll in the department at the beginning of the spring term of sophomore year. They may begin their departmental course of study as well as their independent work.
Program of Study
Students in Comparative Literature select courses from a wide range of offerings throughout the university and are encouraged to construct a program of study to match their individual interests. Beginning with the class of 2005, nine departmental courses are required of each student, chosen according to the type of comparative work pursued. Comparative Literature 300, the Junior Seminar, counts as one of the nine, and is required of all students in the fall term of their junior year. This course is especially designed to introduce students to the history and methodology of the field, as well as to different avenues of comparative study. If study abroad makes it impossible to take the Junior Seminar in the junior year, the course may be taken in the senior year instead. Beginning in the academic year 2004-2005, students with one semester abroad will be allowed to choose 8 departmentals, one of which must be COM 300, for the calculation of their departmental G.P.A. Students with two semesters abroad will choose 7 departmentals, one of which must be COM 300. This option applies only to study abroad programs undertaken during the school year and approved by the department.
Regardless of the area of study elected, all majors must include four upper-division courses in a non-English-language literature. In order to guarantee a high level of linguistic proficiency in at least one foreign language, readings in at least three of these courses will be in the same language. Three of the remaining courses must be taken within the Department of Comparative Literature (one of these will be Comparative Literature 300); the others are taken in appropriate departments throughout the university. Course selections generally fall into one of four areas described below. Each represents the study of literature in a different comparative context:
A. Comparative work in literatures in at least two languages Students choose four upper-level courses in a non-English-language literature; three courses listed or cross-listed with Comparative Literature, one of which is Comparative Literature 300; and two upper-division courses in literature in any other language (including English).
B. Comparative work in literature and a traditional textual discipline, such as philosophy, history, politics or religion. Students choose four upper-level courses in any non-English-language literature; three courses listed or cross-listed in Comparative Literature, one of which is Comparative Literature 300; and two upper-division courses in the other relevant discipline.
C. Comparative work in literature and another medium, for example, photography, film, art history or music. Students electing this program choose four upper-division courses in any non-English-language literature; three courses listed or cross-listed in Comparative Literature, one of which is Comparative Literature 300; and two upper-division courses in the relevant medium.
D. Comparative work in literary study and the creative arts, for instance dance, creative writing, translation, or theatrical performance. Students will choose four upper-level courses in any non-English-language literature; three courses listed or cross-listed with Comparative Literature, one of which is Comparative Literature 300; and two courses in the relevant creative art. Students entering the department select program D provisionally. Final admission depends upon the acceptance of the creative thesis proposal by the department and by an adviser from the Program in Creative Writing or from the Program in Theater and Dance.
Departmental Distribution Requirements
When considering their individual programs of study, students are expected to include at least one 300-level course in three out of five historical periods: (a) antiquity; (b) the middle ages; (c) the early modern; (d) Enlightenment and Romanticism; and (e) the Modern Period. Those working in non-Western literatures, whose periodization does not conform to the above, should consult their advisers about an appropriate chronological distribution of courses.
Students working in literatures in at least two languages (option A above) must take at least one course in each of the three genres (lyric, drama and narrative); those choosing options, B, C, and D are urged, though not required, to do so.
Theory and Methods of Comparative Literature
Theoretical issued naturally arise in the study of comparative literature. They may also function as the main focus of a student's work. Theoretical issues are specifically addressed in two departmental courses: Comparative Literature 220, Introduction to Literary Theory; and Comparative Literature 301, Theory and Methods of Comparative Literature: Critical and Literary Theory. Upper-division courses in theory, methodology and criticism that are offered by other humanities and social science departments may also fulfill departmental requirements.
Independent Work
Junior Year: Two Junior papers are required. The first, some 3,000 words in length, will normally involve the close study of works from non-English-language literatures in which the student has linguistic competence. Its purpose is to develop the student's basic skills as a reader of complex texts. The second should be wider in scope, and might serve as the beginnings of a senior thesis. It will normally be some 8,000 words in length.
Senior year: Each student's senior thesis, normally limited to 20,000 words, will be comparative in nature and should reflect the student's ability to relate and analyze materials in the area of study chosen: literatures in two or more languages; literature and a textual discipline; literature and another medium. Creative theses (for students electing option D above) must be accompanied by a substantial critical essay.
Senior Departmental Examination: The senior departmental examination is based in part on a broad reading list, specific titles from which are chosen in consultation with the student's senior adviser, and in part on the student's particular language proficiency and chosen program of study.
Additional Information
Please feel free to consult with the current Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Daniel Heller-Roazen, via email (dheller@princeton.edu), or during his office hours (XXX), or by appointment.
JUNIOR PAPER GUIDELINES
A Preliminary Word. Each student entering the Department should discuss his or her areas of interest with the Director of Undergraduate Studies no later than the spring of sophomore year in order to form a preliminary judgment as to the suitability of a supervisor. Either in May of that year or early the following fall, the Director of Undergraduate Studies will assign to each student a supervisor. Once this decision as to an adviser becomes final, it is the responsibility of the student to see the supervisor as soon as practicable in order to discuss possible Junior Paper topics. The student and the supervisor have mutual responsibility, if not for regularly scheduled, then at least for fairly frequent consultation. This might be loosely defined as two or three consultations per paper, although any attempt at strict definition in this area is difficult. In any case, it is the responsibility of the student to seek out the supervisor as early as possible. Because a Junior Paper is independent work, the function of the adviser is to guide research, not to control or to edit it. While an adviser may be relied upon for help in improving the presentation overall, or in identifying broad or recurrent problems of writing or composition, the adviser's function is not that of a line-by-line copy editor: please remember that additional guidance on writing can and should be obtained at The Writing Center, 108 Notestein Hall (258-2797). Finally, just as it is the adviser's responsibility to be regularly available to students during office hours, it is the student's responsibility to respect the office hours posted by each faculty member and to keep appointments.
The Junior Papers. All students are strongly advised to read carefully Writing a JP:The Handbook, obtainable from the Princeton Writing Program, 108 Notestein Hall. This guide offers helpful advice on some of the most important elements that advisers consider when evaluating a finished junior paper: the importance, interest, and appropriateness of the question or problem addressed, the reasoning and evidence presented in support of the thesis, and the writing style.
In general, our design for the two papers includes two major dimensions: (1) the desire to help students express themselves clearly in analyzing specific literary texts (or a single literary text) in a language or languages other than English; (2) the encouragement of students' abilities to deal with larger critical issues as these apply to literary texts. While these aims are not mutually exclusive, they do suggest something about the differing natures of the two Junior Papers.
The First Paper. Not more than 3000 words in length (approximately 12 pages), the first paper should concentrate on textual analysis, and should involve at least one text that is written in a language other than English. Exercises that would be appropriate include the following:
(1) An explication of a shorter text or of a portion of a longer text (e.g., a single lyric poem, an act or scene from a play, a passage from a novel or narrative poem).
(2) A study of two absolutely related works, where one is an imitation of another (e.g., a Wyatt version of a Petrarch sonnet, Yeats's version of Ronsard's sonnet to Hélène, Angela Carter's rewriting of a Grimm fairy tale).
(3) Examination of the more general presence of an earlier work in a later one (e.g., the Vergilian resonances in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Christa Wolf's revisions of Homer or Aeschylus in Kassandra).
(4) Consideration of the relationship between a poet's description of his practice and that practice itself (e.g., Horace's Ars Poetica and one satire or epistle; Schiller's "On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry" and one of his poems; Corneille's "Of the Three Unities "and one of his plays).
The Second Paper. Not more than 8000 words in length (approximately 30 pages), the second paper should concentrate on larger critical issues, and may well serve as an early examination of the student's eventual Senior Thesis topic, or at least of its area of interest. While the many possibilities for this paper defy description, the sort of endeavor that seems appropriate may be gleaned from the following:
(1) Problems in periodization (e.g., the definition of medieval and renaissance attitudes as these are found to be reflected in a major work of the fourteenth century, such as the Decameron).
(2) Genre study (e.g., the pastoral tradition in the European renaissance as reflected in Spenser or Sidney).
(3) Problems in poetics (e.g., Samuel Beckett's response to Romantic theories of inspiration; the relationship between generic and structural principles of criticism as these may be applied to one or two authors).
(4) Thematics (i.e., not merely the tracing of a literary idea or trope through several works, but the analysis of differences that distinguish varying uses of similar literary materials, such as Classical catalogues [e.g., Iliad II] and Romantic collections of junk [e.g., Balzac's Maison Vauquer, the contents of Félicité's room in "Un coeur simple"]).
(5) Critical perspective: an extended exercise in which the student chooses a critic and analyzes a text using his/her methodology (e.g., Wolfgang Iser's description of the act of reading applied to a prose poem of Baudelaire).
Deadlines and Extensions: Junior Papers are due in the Comparative Literature office, 133 East Pyne, on the date specified on the Departmental calendar. Any independent work received after the deadline will be subject to a grade reduction of three points per day on a scale of 100 (approximately one step on the letter-grade scale, e.g. from B+ to B). Petitions for extensions for medical reasons must include letters from a doctor or dean and be received by the Director of Undergraduate Studies at least seven days prior to the deadline in question. As independent work must be paced over the course of the entire academic year, petitions for extensions will normally not be deemed admissible in the final week before a deadline. The reasons for these rules are simple: (1) lateness is not fair to the other students who, perhaps at the risk of doing a less-than-perfect job, hand their work in on time, and (2) extensions ultimately handicap the individual directly involved, since they make the completion of the usual end-of-term course work all the more difficult.
SENIOR THESIS GUIDELINES
For most undergraduate students the initial thought of writing a senior thesis, even though their two junior papers together are more than half the length of the thesis, seems palpably unreal, as though they feel expected to walk from here to Chicago, swim the English Channel, in short, to complete a project which others have completed before them, but not others like themselves. t is thus of the utmost importance that juniors prepare themselves for the undertaking well before they leave for the summer by having a preliminary discussion with at least one member of the faculty and submitting a tentative statement of purpose (see Calendar for Departmental Independent Work) to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
While there is no official set of requirements governing the choice of a topic, the following suggestions should be followed:
1) Students are discouraged from working on subjects for which they have scant or no preparation, thus essentially asking faculty to turn advising for the thesis into an informal course.
2) Students may not give significant space in their thesis to the treatment of works that they cannot read in the original language(s).
3) In general, students should be able to show that their preparation at Princeton and elsewhere has been sufficient to make their choice of topic a reasonable one.
What follows is a series of remarks that represent a mixture of requirements and advice:
(1) Each of you will, at least by early May of the junior year (see "Calendar for Departmental Independent Work"), meet with a member of the faculty in Comparative Literature and then draft a brief statement of purpose, to be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies by mid-May. This will ensure that work on the thesis may be begun early on. At this time assignments of thesis advisers and second readers will begin. Your relationship with the second reader is largely to be defined by the group including you and your two advisers. Some students work extensively with the second reader; others do not. In what follows we refer to a single adviser; you may understand that we potentially mean two of them. Just as it is the adviser's responsibility to be regularly available to students during office hours, it is the student's responsibility to respect the office hours posted by each faculty member and to keep appointments.
(2) The next step is to develop, in concert with your thesis adviser, a working bibliography of primary and secondary sources that should immediately become an object of close attention. N.B.: Early attention to bibliography is of especial importance when materials are not available in Firestone Library. In that case, a faculty member (generally the thesis adviser) will need to certify your need for such materials, so that they can be acquired by the Library, whether by Inter-Library Loan or acquisition. Remember also that materials held by the Princeton University Libraries may well be checked out by other readers at the moment you need them. Recalling University holdings or obtaining materials from elsewhere can easily take 2 to 6 weeks, sometimes even longer, so advance planning is essential.
(3) It is a good idea to begin writing as soon as possible. To their great discomfort, writers of theses often find that notebooks full of reading notes are not readily transformed into coherent prose in a short time.(Read the last sentence again: its aptness may be all too evident during the month of March.)
(4) Every time you read material that might be germane to your thesis, enter full bibliographical data in your notes. When you copy down material that you may wish to quote, note precise page numbers.
(5) The outer limit of the thesis is 20,000 words (approximately 60-80 pages).A lower limit may be understood to be roughly 15,000 words. Many students find that, perhaps because of the awe in which they hold the Senior Thesis, once they begin writing they become carried away. Most readers of theses tend to find that longer does not usually mean better. Thus there is another reason for beginning your actual writing early.
(6) While an adviser may be relied upon for help in improving the presentation overall, or in identifying broad or recurrent problems of writing or composition, the adviser's function is not that of a line-by-line copy editor. Please remember that additional guidance on writing can and should be obtained at The Writing Center, 108 Notestein Hall (258-2797).
(7) For all technical matters (format, citations, electronic citations) refer to the MLA Handbook or the Chicago Manual of Style. If you do not possess a copy of these manuals, by all means acquire at least one of them.
(8) The question of acknowledgement of your sources is dealt with in a section of the University publication Rights, Rules, Responsibilities. You should be closely familiar with all of its provisions.
(9) The title-page of your thesis must bear the title of the thesis, your name and class, the name of your adviser(s), the date on which the thesis is due, and the following inscription:
Submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of requirements for the A.B. degree in Princeton University.
(10) The final page of the thesis must include your signature and the following text: This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations, followed by your signature.
(11) You must submit, on or before the deadline date, three copies of the thesis, signed at the end of the final chapter. Two copies must be hard bound; one of these will be kept in the departmental archive, and the other returned to you. The third copy must be unbound. This will be sent, according to University policy, to the Princeton University Archives in the Seeley G. Mudd Library to be microfilmed as an archival copy, and will not be returned. If you are writing a creative thesis, you will be required to submit an additional bound copy for the Creative Writing Program's library.
It is the policy of the University Library that all researchers will have access to senior theses on deposit in Mudd Library. In extraordinary circumstances, a student may petition the Dean of the College in writing to restrict access to a thesis for a specified period of time. The policy of the University Library is that fair-use copying, as defined by the copyright law, should be allowed for all senior theses on deposit in Mudd Library.
(12) Any independent work received after the deadline will be subject to a grade reduction of 3 points per day on a scale of 100 (approximately one step on the letter-grade scale, e.g. from B+ to B).Petitions for extensions for medical reasons must include letters from a doctor or dean and be received by the Director of Undergraduate Studies at least seven days prior to the deadline in question. As independent work must be paced over the course of the entire academic year, petitions for extensions will normally not be deemed admissible in the final week before a deadline. The reasons for these rules are simple:(1) lateness is unfair to other students who, perhaps at the risk of a less-than-perfect job, hand their work in on time, and (2) extensions ultimately handicap the individuals involved since they hamper preparations for comprehensives and final examinations.
(13) You should remember that theses are submitted to the Comparative Literature Department and not simply to your individual thesis adviser. The adviser is only one of the people who will grade the thesis; the final evaluation of your work will be the product of deliberations among your adviser, a second reader, and in some instances, a third reader. While the fact that your adviser has read a draft of your thesis is not a guarantee of its acceptability to the Department, it is normally true that if you work closely with your adviser throughout the year and satisfy her requirements, you should have no trouble in having your thesis accepted by the Department.
Each reader of your thesis will prepare written comments. Usually these take the form of a general evaluation of your work, but you may also find that a reader has prepared detailed comments about particular points of substance or style. You will receive these comments, together with your thesis grade, from your advisers following the departmental examination.
(14) The grade of the thesis is the average of the grades given by the two readers. In the case that the two grades are 10 or more points apart, the thesis will be assigned a third reader. This reader will be anonymous and his/her grade will be final.
GUIDELINES FOR THE TRANSLATION THESIS
The translation of a literary work can be a valuable exercise in comparative literature, one that asks the student both to make discriminations and to find common ground between two literary and cultural traditions. An accurate translation demands expertise in the historical structures and particular nuances of the foreign language. A persuasive translation requires a real literary flair and sensibility in the translator's handling of his or her own language.
The Department of Comparative Literature includes the translation of a work or works of literature among the options which the departmental major may consider as a subject for senior independent work. In addition to the translation itself, the thesis should include a critical essay of at least twenty-five pages (ca. 6,000 words) that both examines closely the translated literary text and explores its comparative relationship to other works of its genre, period, and tradition. The translation thesis should be viewed as part of the exercise of criticism and the study of literary history.
Because of its particularly demanding nature, the translation thesis may not be appropriate for all departmental majors. It is, moreover, subject to special departmental guidelines. It is a prerequisite for students who are considering undertaking a translation for their senior thesis to develop their skills in the Translation Workshop sponsored by the Program in Creative Writing. The proposal to write a translation thesis must be handed in by mid-May of the Junior year, accompanied by a ten-to fifteen-page sample of the proposed work. This material will be considered by the Director of Undergraduate Studies in consultation with the student's adviser, and they will notify the student by the end of May whether or not they have approved it as senior independent work in the Department of Comparative Literature. If the project is approved, the student is required to continue working on the translation over the summer, and to hand in a further twenty-page section at the beginning of the Senior year in September. The student will be strongly urged to hand in a first draft of the entire translation component of the thesis to his or her first reader in December before the holiday break. This arrangement will leave the student ample time for revision and for the writing of the critical section of the thesis.
GUIDELINES FOR THE CREATIVE THESIS
In certain circumstances, an original work of poetry or prose may be presented in fulfillment of the senior thesis requirement. A collection of shorter pieces or a single longer work, if accompanied by a substantial critical section, can demonstrate a student's literary understanding and facility with language as amply as any other form of writing.
Students who are considering the possibility of writing a creative thesis must develop their writing skills in at least one workshop offered by the Program in Creative Writing, before the Senior year. The proposal to write a creative thesis must be handed in by mid-May of the Junior year, accompanied by a ten- to fifteen-page sample of the proposed work and the name of an instructor in the Program in Creative Writing with whom the student has worked or discussed the project. N.B.: No proposal to write a creative thesis in the Department of Comparative Literature will be accepted unless it has first been accepted and assigned an adviser by the Program in Creative Writing. The student must also submit both the creative proposal and a proposal for a standard critical thesis to the Department of Comparative Literature, so that the Director of Undergraduate Studies may assign an appropriate second reader if the creative proposal is accepted by the Program in Creative Writing, or suitable advisers for the critical project should the creative proposal not be accepted. The proposal and writing sample will be considered by the Director of Undergraduate Studies in consultation with the student's adviser, and they will notify the student by the end of May whether or not they have approved it as senior independent work in the Department of Comparative Literature. If the project is approved, the student is required to continue working on the fiction or poetry over the summer, and to hand in a further twenty-page section at the beginning of the Senior year in September (for projects in poetry, the length of the manuscript may be more flexible, at the discretion of the Director of Undergraduate Studies and of the student's adviser).The student is strongly urged to hand in a first draft of the entire creative portion of the thesis to his first reader in December, before the winter recess. This arrangement will leave ample time for revision and for the writing of the critical section of the thesis.
Every creative thesis must include a critical section, approximately twenty-five pages (ca. 6,000 words) in length (as a preface, introduction, or afterword). The critical section gives the student an opportunity to demonstrate an analytic perspective on the imaginative work, and to situate it in its literary and linguistic contexts. It is thus an essential part of the creative thesis, as it is of the translation thesis.
SENIOR COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATIONS
The exam is divided into three main parts: on the first day, a 3-hour section devoted to the Departmental Reading List, and on the second day, a 90-minute segment involving an explication de texte, and a final exercise, also 90 minutes in length, attending to questions of genre and periodization. Students are allowed up to four hours each test day in order to polish their essays; the exam runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
On the first day of the exam, students are asked to answer two of six possible questions, and they are provided a copy of the Departmental Reading List as an aide-memoire. Typically, these questions begin with a short observation concerning some aspect of literature, and the students are asked to demonstrate the relevance of this remark to a number of unspecified works on the Reading List. Recent examples include, for instance, Peter Brooks on narrative, Kundera on the novel, Bakhtin on the dialogic novel, Barthes on modernity's obsession with the real, and The Handbook of Literary Terms on the lyric. Variations on this approach include questions that begin, "It might be argued that poetry..." or "A certain critic has suggested…"
The second day of the exam begins with the explication de texte. Students are provided with both an unidentified passage in the student's principal language other than English, and a definition of explication taken from the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics. They are allowed to use an appropriate dictionary during this exercise. A text in each language other than English studied by any senior majoring in Comparative Literature will be provided; students equally strong in two or more literatures may survey the assembled passages at the beginning of the second day of the exam and choose at that moment the text they prefer to analyze.
The final section of the exam consists of three questions, from which the student chooses one. Like the questions from the first day, these sometimes begin with a short critical observation. A crucial difference is that the answers do not necessarily involve works drawn from the Departmental Reading List. Students are in fact asked to avoid discussing the same texts on both days of the exam, and they are also cautioned against analyzing works which they have treated extensively in their senior theses.
The comprehensive exams will be evaluated by four members of the Comparative Literature faculty within that coming week, and students will find their scores posted alongside their social security numbers outside the departmental office.
THE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE READING LIST
The Reading List comprises a group of works which departmental majors should have read by the end of their senior year. The first day of the Departmental Comprehensive Examination held in May of the senior year tests the student's familiarity with the list. The works gathered here are meant to exemplify the development of various genres (epic, drama, lyric, novel) and modes (tragedy, comedy, satire).They are also chosen because of their historical importance as models for subsequent writers. The list may also give a shared body of reading to department majors whose interest and languages diverge in many different directions.
This list, should not be seen as prescriptive, and majors are not encouraged to shape their course work around it. The department does encourage students to read widely in world literature, which includes non-Western literature and a variety of traditions.
The numbers in parenthesis indicate how many texts are to be selected from each section for purposes of the exam. As early as possible in the senior year, the student chooses the requisite number of texts in consultation with his or her adviser. By mid-April, this individualized list, initialed by the adviser, is turned in to the Director of Undergraduate Studies for final approval. These selected readings will serve as the basis for Day One of the Comprehensive Examination, while Day Two focuses more closely on the student's particular languages and fields of study.
Epic (4)
Epic of Gilgamesh [14th century B.C.E.]
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey [8th century B.C.E.]
Vergil, Aeneid [1st century B.C.E.]
The Tale of the Heike [13th century]
Dante, Inferno [14th century]
The Epic of Son-Jara; A West African Tradition (Sundiata; An Epic of Old Mali) [14th century]
Milton, Paradise Lost [17th century]
Lyric (7)
Sappho, Lyric Poems and Fragments [7th century B.C.E.]
Japanese Court Poetry [6th-14th century, esp. from Earl Miner's Introduction]
8th-9th centuries
LiPo and TuFu, Selected Poems [esp. those in Arthur Cooper's Penguin anthology]
Du Fu, Selected Poems
Kokinshu Poems
12th-14th centuries
Arnaut Daniel, Selected Poems
Bernart de Ventadorn, Selected Poems
Petrarch, Canzoniere [esp. 1-5, 16, 23, 30, 35, 52, 126, 129, 189, 190, 234, 264, 267, 281, 310, 323, 348, 359, 362, 364-6]
16-17th centuries
Shakespeare, Sonnets
Milton, Lycidas
Juan de la Cruz, Selected Poems
19th century
Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn,"and "Ode to a Nightingale"
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
Dario, Azúl
Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
20th century
Yeats, Selected Poems [esp. "The Secret Rose", "Easter 1916", "The
Second Coming", "Sailing to Byzantium", "Leda and the Swan", "Among
School Children", "Byzantium", "Lapus Lazuli", "The Circus Animals' Desertion", "The
Tower", "A Dialogue of Self and Soul", "Crazy Jane" poems]
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
Paz, Selected Poems
Akhmatova, Requiem
Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land
Sédar Senghor, Selected Poems
Drama (9)
5th-4th centuries B.C.E
Aeschylus, Oresteia
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Euripides, Bacchae
Aristophanes, The Clouds
15th-16th centuries
Shakespeare, King Lear, Hamlet
Rojas, La Celestina
Zeami, No Plays
17th-18th centuries
Molière, Misanthrope
Racine, Phèdre
Calderon, La Vida es sueño
Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North
Tang Hsien-tsu, Peony Pavilion
Chikamatsu, Love Suicides of Amijima
19th century
Büchner, Woyzeck
Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Chekhov, Cherry Orchard
20th century
Brecht, Mother Courage
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Pirandello, Six Characters in Search Of an Author
Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite
Other (10)
Hebrew Bible (esp. Genesis and Exodus; 11th century B.C.E.)
New Testament (esp. Matthew, Acts, Epistle to the Romans, Apocalypse; 2nd-4th centuries)
Koran (7th century)
Plato, Symposium and Phaedrus [4th century B.C.E.]
Aristotle, Poetics [4th century B.C.E.]
Sima Quin, Records of the Historian [2nd century B.C.E.]
Parables of Zhuangzi [3rd century B.C.E.]
Augustine, Confessions [4th century]
9th-12th centuries
Sei Shonagon, Pillow Book
Chretien de Troyes, The Tale of the Holy Grail
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal
14th-16th centuries
The Thousand and One Nights
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
Juan Ruiz, Book of Good Love
Boccaccio, Decameron
Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas
Zeami, Fushikaden
17th-18th centuries
Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Voltaire, Candide
Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North
19th century
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Goethe, Faust
Chekhov, "The Duel" and "Lady with A Dog"
20th century
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Borges, Fictions
Novel (10)
Tale of Genji [11th century]
17th-18th centuries
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves
Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love
Dream of the Red Chamber
19th century
Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Flaubert, Mme Bovary
Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina or War and Peace
Melville, Moby-Dick
Jorge Isaacs, Maria
Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro
20th century
Joyce, Ulysses
Woolf, Between the Acts
Proust, Swann's Way
Mann, Magic Mountain
Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
Carpentier, The Lost Steps
Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Kane, Ambiguous Adventure
Mahfouz, Cairo Trilogy [any of three]
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Makioka Sisters
Kawabata Yasunari, Snow Country
Film [optional] (5)
Lumière, Méliès, and Griffith, Selected Short
Films [1895-1915]
Wiene, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920]
Micheaux, Body and Soul [1924]
Murnau, Sunrise [1927]
Eisenstein, October [1927]
Renoir, Rules of the Game [1939]
Welles, Citizen Kane [1941]
Rossellini, Rome Open City [1945]
Kurosawa, Rashomon [1950]
Godard, Breathless [1960]
Ray, World of Apu [1960]
Hitchcock, Psycho [1960]
Buñuel, Viridiana [1961]
Varda, Cleo from 5 to 7 [1962]
Bergman, Persona [1966]
Sembene, Black Girl [1966]
Alea, Memories of Underdevelopment [1968]
Chen Kaige, Yellow Earth [1984]
(January 2002)
FACULTY AND ADVISERS
The following listing, for the information of our students, is intended to make clear the major areas of competence and interest of this faculty.
April Alliston
Languages: French, German, Ancient Greek
Areas of Interest:
The novel, its history and theory, from Greek romance to contemporary fiction
18th - century literature
Literary theory, especially feminist and narrative theory
The Gothic, sentimental, and Romantic novel
Enlightenment and romanticism
Women and authorship
History and literature
Life writing
Leonard Barkan
Languages: Italian, Latin, French, German
Areas of Interest:
Shakespeare and English Renaissance Literature
Italian Renaissance Art
Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature
Relations between Literature and the Visual Arts
Latin Literature and the Survival of Antiquity
Drama and Theater
Food, Wine, and the Arts
David Bellos
Languages: French, German, Russian
Areas of Interest:
Nineteenth-century French fiction and criticism
Modern and contemporary French fiction
The OuLiPo
Translation
Sandra Bermann
Languages: Italian, French, Latin
Areas of Interest:
Italian-English Renaissance relations
Literary theory
The Lyric
Linguistics and structural analysis
Women & Gender
Historiography & Literary Theory
Marina Brownlee
Languages:
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Modern Greek
Areas of Interest:
Medieval and Early Modern Spanish and Comparative Literature and Culture
Literary Theory, Gender Theory, Issues of Periodization
Claudia Brodsky
Languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian
Areas of Interest:
The Enlightenment and Romanticism
Philosophy and literary theory
Aesthetics and Epistemology
Spanish and English baroque
Latin American literature
Ben Conisbee Baer
Languages: Bengali, German, French
Areas of Interest:
Modernism
South Asian Literature
Comparative Literature
Postcolonial Criticism and Theory
Deconstruction
Marxism
Literature and Art History/Visual Culture
Stanley Corngold
Languages: German, French; Italian
Areas of Interest:
Modern German literature
European critical theory
Romanticism
Maria DiBattista
Languages: Italian, French, Spanish
Areas of Interest:
19th-and 20th-century English and American literature
Narrative/narrative theory
Caryl Emerson
Languages: Russian, Czech, German, French
Areas of Interest:
19th-and 20th-century Russian and Central European prose
Russian music
Russian literary theory
History of the novel
John Fleming
Languages: French, Spanish, German, Italian
Areas of Interest:
Medieval literature and cultural history
Thomas Hare
Languages: Japanese (early, medieval, modern), Classical Chinese, French, German, Middle Egyptian
Areas of Interest:
Early and Medieval Japanese Literature (especially drama and poetics)
Traditional Japanese Music
Buddhism and Literature
Literary Theory
Ancient Egyptian Writing and Representational Styles
Daniel Heller-Roazen
Languages: French, Italian, German, Old French, Old ProvenHal, Latin, Classical Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic
Areas of Interest:
Medieval Poetry & Poetics
The Classical Tradition
History & Theory of the Lyric
Philosophy of Language
Aesthetics
Alexander Nehamas
Languages: Greek (ancient & modern); German, French
Areas of Interest:
Plato
Nietzsche
History & practice of aesthetics
Andrew Plaks
Languages: Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew
Areas of Interest:
The novel
Narrative theory
Eileen Reeves
Languages: Italian, French, Latin
Areas of Interest:
Renaissance and Baroque Literature
Science and Literature
Gabriel Riera
Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian
Areas of Interest:
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Literature
Modern and Contemporary French Literature
Philosophy and Literary Theory
Psychoanalysis and Literature
Michael Wood
Languages: Spanish, French
Areas of Interest:
Theory of the novel
Latin American Literature
Modern & Contemporary Fiction
Film
Literary Theory
Froma Zeitlin
Languages: Ancient Greek, French, Hebrew
Areas of Interest:
Greek tragedy and religious thought
Studies in the Holocaust
CALENDAR FOR DEPARTMENTAL INDEPENDENT WORK 2005/2006
Seniors
Meeting with Undergraduate Director in room 127 East Pyne.
5 page, double-spaced abstract of first chapter, initialed by both advisers, is due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne. 2 pages of this abstract should discuss the books, databases, or research tools you have used. Please send it as an attachment to Mary George (mwgeorge@princeton.edu) as well; use the subject line "COM sr thesis abstract" in the header.
Introduction to independent research tools and techniques. Meet Mary George at the square bench in the front lobby of Firestone Library.
20 pp. of first draft of thesis, due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Return of 20 pp. of first draf of thesis.
See you advisers for feeback on first draft.
Think Deep Thoughts! Keep Writing and Revising! Fix those Footnotes!
One unbound and two bound copies of thesis due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 (9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.)
Senior Departmental Exam – Part I (010 East Pyne).
Senior Departmental Exam – Part II (010 East Pyne).
Friday, May 19, 2006
Return of one copy of thesis, with advisers' reports, if senior survey has been completed.
Juniors
Meeting with Undergraduate Director in room 127 East Pyne.
2 page, double-spaced abstract, initialed by adviser, is due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne. 1 page of this abstract should discuss the books, databases, or research tools you have used. Please send it as an attachment to Mary George (mwgeorge@princeton.edu) as well; use the subject line "COM jp abstract" in the header.
Thursday, October 20, 2005 (7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.)
Introduction to independent research tools and techniques. Meet Mary George at the square bench in the front lobby of Firestone Library.
First Junior Paper due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Return of First Junior Paper.
Monday, February 27, 2006 (3:00 p.m.)
7 page, double-spaced abstract of second junior paper, initialed by adviser, is due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne. 1 1/2-2 pages of this abstract should discuss the books, databases, or research tools you have used.
Second Junior Paper due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne.
Friday, May 12, 2006 (3:00 p.m.)
Tentative Thesis topic (100-word statement of purpose), initialed by any COM faculty member, due in departmental office, 133 East Pyne.
Tentative deadline for submission of application for creative or translation thesis.
Monday, May 19, 2006
Return of second Junior Paper, if thesis proposal has been received.
N.B. ALL work referred to above must be received in the DEPARTMENTAL OFFICE, 133 East Pyne, or postmarked no later than
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