Literature is as old as human culture and civilization. Its beginnings go back to the
primeval human desire to make sense of and reproduce the meanings and sounds of
the external universe and those in the internal universe, for example, what our Rishi-s
did in the Rigveda. Every new genre of literature is borne out of an attempt to organize
or reform human societies such as the fables of the Buddha in the Jatakas, or the odes
of Confucius in the Shijing. Three acts of literature, firstly narration as in Homer’s Iliad,
secondly enactment as in Bharata’s Natyashashtra, and thirdly song and dance as in
the Chinese opera Zaju or the Baiga dance-song of the Baiga tribes of Madhya Pradesh
have been the dominant modes of literary expression across the world cultures.
This course World Literature and Literary Cultures: Genres and Texts offers an
introduction to the key literary forms and texts from around the world, both traditional
and modern. The course is premised upon the universality of literary experience. Even
before the category of “world literature” came to be discussed after its famous coinage
by the German writer Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), universalism was the driving
impulse behind expression of all literary cultures. Therefore, it is not surprising that the
Indian book of fables The Panchatantra travelled across the Arabian seas to Persia and
the Arab world in the 6 th century CE, and from there to the European countries, and also
to Tibet and other South East Asian countries to become a quintessential text of “world
literature.”
The first section of the course would introduce literary genres and texts from the
ancient world civilizations, India, Greece, China and Persia. The major literary genres
discussed with literary examples would be Natya (Theatre), Itihasa (Epic), Katha (Fable)
(India), Tragedy (Greece), Shi, Poetry and Youji Wenxue, travel literature (Chinese).
The second section of the course would introduce genres and compositions from
early second millennium to the advent of European modernity in the literary cultures of
Asia such as India, Iran, Japan, and China. An important objective of this section would
be to analyze the influences of these literary cultures and their genres on the literary
cultures of Europe, for example, Haiku and Tanka (Japan), Noh Theatre (Japan).
The third, and the final, section of the course would deliberate upon the category
of “world literature,” in modern, postcolonial and global contexts. The course at this
point will revisit the prediction of Goethe that “national literature” was a thing of past,
and the future belonged to “world literature.” In the first part of this section, the course
would introduce key genres and texts of modern literature from Russia, France, the US
and England as expressions of modernity and the associated socio-political attributes of
their literary cultures. In the second part of this section, postcolonial literatures from
India, Ireland, and the Americas would be introduced.
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