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Teacher
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MUSSGnug Florian
(syllabus)
Narratives of Global Catastrophe in an Age of World Literature
L-FIL-LET/14 CRITICA LETTERARIA E LETTERATURE COMPARATE
March – May 2019
This course explores narratives of global catastrophe and survival in a damaged world, from the early Nineteenth Century to the Present. Our discussions will be situated at the intersection of three vibrant fields: comparative literature, global studies and the environmental humanities. Focusing on notions of the planetary – specifically in relation to emergent ideas of world literature – we will consider how apocalyptic thinking plays a key role in shaping modern and contemporary conceptions of Earth as a single cultural sphere and shared habitat. Coherence will be achieved through four broad, historiographic categories: Romanticism, the Fin-de-Siècle, the Cold War and the Contemporary. Each context will be explored in turn, through a sample of theoretical reflections on world literature and through fictional representations of apocalypse. Utopian dreams of globalization and planetary unity will thereby find a necessary counterpoint in dark fantasies of global destruction.
This course will be taught in English. Primary literature should be read in the original language, where possible. Assessment will consist of a compulsory coursework essay (approximately 2.000 words), which must be submitted to the course tutor at least one week prior to the oral examination. This essay may be written in English or in Italian. The oral examination will focus on the coursework essay, and may take place in English or in Italian, depending on the student’s preference.
Students are expected to obtain copies of texts marked by asterisks. All other material will be made available by the course tutor.
PART ONE: World Images: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Mary Shelley
*Mary Shelley, The Last Man [1826], ed. by Morton D. Paley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), or any other available edition.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Conversations with Eckermann on Weltliteratur” (1827), trans. John Oxenford (1850), in David Damrosch (ed.), World Literature in Theory (Oxford: Blackwell 2014), pp. 15-21.
John Pizer, “The Emergence of Weltliteratur: Goethe and the Romantic School” [2006], in David Damrosch (ed.), World Literature in Theory (Oxford: Blackwell 2014), pp. 22-34.
Barbara Johnson, “The Last Man” in Audrey Fisch, Anne K. Mellor and Esther Schorr (eds), The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 258-67.
PART TWO: Beyond Empire: H.G. Wells and Rabindranath Tagore
*H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds [1898], ed. by A. Sawyer (London: Penguin, 2005), or any other available edition.
Rabindranath Tagore, “World Literature” (1907), in David Damrosch (ed.), World Literature in Theory (Oxford, Blackwell 2014), pp. 47-57.
Patrick Parrinder, “The Fall of Empires” in Shadows of the Future: H.G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), pp. 65-79.
Bhavya Tiwari, “Rabindranath Tagore’s comparative world literature”, in Theo d’haen, David Damrosch and Djelal Kadir (eds), The Routledge Companion to World Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 41-48.
PART THREE: Notes from a Vulnerable Planet: James Lovelock, Günter Grass, Paolo Volponi
Excerpts from James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth [1979] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), or any other available edition.
EITHER: *Paolo Volponi, Il pianeta irritabile (Torino: Einaudi, 1978)
OR: *Günter Grass, Die Rättin (München: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1986), English translation by Ralph Manheim [1987] Italian translation by Bruna R. Bianchi [1987] or any other available translation.
Florian Mussgnug, “Species at War? The Animal and the Anthropocene” in Kevin Inston and Florian Mussgnug (eds), Rethinking the Animal-Human Relation, Special Issue, Paragraph, 42-1, 2019.
PART FOUR: Contemporary Perspectives: Mourning a Broken Planet
*Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).
Ursula K. Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meaning of Endangered Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), chapters 1 and 6.
EITHER: *Mauro Corona, La fine del mondo storto (Milano: Mondadori, 2010).
OR: *Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake [2003] (London: Virago Press, 2004).
Michael Cronin, The Expanding World: Towards a Politics of Microspection (London: Zero Books, 2012).
Florian Mussgnug, “Planetary Figurations: Intensive Genre in World Literature”, Modern Languages Open, 1 (1), 2018.
Suggested preparatory reading
Ben Hutchinson, Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Deborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Edoardo, The Ends of the World (Cambridge: Polity, 2016).
John R. Hall, Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).
(reference books)
PART ONE: World Images: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Mary Shelley
*Mary Shelley, The Last Man [1826], ed. by Morton D. Paley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), or any other available edition.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Conversations with Eckermann on Weltliteratur” (1827), trans. John Oxenford (1850), in David Damrosch (ed.), World Literature in Theory (Oxford: Blackwell 2014), pp. 15-21.
John Pizer, “The Emergence of Weltliteratur: Goethe and the Romantic School” [2006], in David Damrosch (ed.), World Literature in Theory (Oxford: Blackwell 2014), pp. 22-34.
Barbara Johnson, “The Last Man” in Audrey Fisch, Anne K. Mellor and Esther Schorr (eds), The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 258-67.
PART TWO: Beyond Empire: H.G. Wells and Rabindranath Tagore
*H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds [1898], ed. by A. Sawyer (London: Penguin, 2005), or any other available edition.
Rabindranath Tagore, “World Literature” (1907), in David Damrosch (ed.), World Literature in Theory (Oxford, Blackwell 2014), pp. 47-57.
Patrick Parrinder, “The Fall of Empires” in Shadows of the Future: H.G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), pp. 65-79.
Bhavya Tiwari, “Rabindranath Tagore’s comparative world literature”, in Theo d’haen, David Damrosch and Djelal Kadir (eds), The Routledge Companion to World Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 41-48.
PART THREE: Notes from a Vulnerable Planet: James Lovelock, Günter Grass, Paolo Volponi
Excerpts from James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth [1979] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), or any other available edition.
EITHER: *Paolo Volponi, Il pianeta irritabile (Torino: Einaudi, 1978)
OR: *Günter Grass, Die Rättin (München: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1986), English translation by Ralph Manheim [1987] Italian translation by Bruna R. Bianchi [1987] or any other available translation.
Florian Mussgnug, “Species at War? The Animal and the Anthropocene” in Kevin Inston and Florian Mussgnug (eds), Rethinking the Animal-Human Relation, Special Issue, Paragraph, 42-1, 2019.
PART FOUR: Contemporary Perspectives: Mourning a Broken Planet
*Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).
Ursula K. Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meaning of Endangered Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), chapters 1 and 6.
EITHER: *Mauro Corona, La fine del mondo storto (Milano: Mondadori, 2010).
OR: *Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake [2003] (London: Virago Press, 2004).
Michael Cronin, The Expanding World: Towards a Politics of Microspection (London: Zero Books, 2012).
Florian Mussgnug, “Planetary Figurations: Intensive Genre in World Literature”, Modern Languages Open, 1 (1), 2018.
Suggested preparatory reading
Ben Hutchinson, Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Deborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Edoardo, The Ends of the World (Cambridge: Polity, 2016).
John R. Hall, Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).
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Università Roma Tre