CLL 151 - (LT) Studies in Literature

Semester Hours: 3

Current Special Topics:

Realism and Human Value:

Literature is one of many ways that human beings can represent their perception of reality and what is most significant and valuable in their lives. As perception and values undergo changes, often the form of literature­­ changes as well. In the nineteenth century, one of the most important forms of literature is Realism. This course will look at several realist texts to develop an understanding of what defines the genre. We will also look at the way that these nineteenth century writers think about the way people use language to represent reality in order to construct ways of understanding identity and human value.

Ghostbusters! Hauntological Explorations of Ghost Stories in World Literature:

This course introduces an international selection of ghost stories in literature (and film) as a means of understanding literary analysis as a model for critical thinking and interpretation with a view across other disciplines. Using a philosophical notion of ‘hauntology,’ the course will raise questions about the existence an elusive Other or Others beyond surface appearances. The course explores each text or work as a haunted house in order to find out what’s hidden out of sight in the upper or lower ‘stories’! The answers vary with the setting and intellectual-historical context(s), whether psychological, social, economic, political or historical or related to issues of class, race, family, sexuality, trauma, etc. in the near or distant past. Consistent with Comparative Literature as a discipline, the works will range through World Literature and from ancient to modern ghosts.

Vampires and the Gothic Imagination:

The subject of this course will be the literary study of the representations of vampire in the context of the Gothic imagination in European literature, media and art. Our course will consider this period of writing – roughly 1750-1900 – as one of great identity fluidity and psychological change. We will study the major themes in Gothic literature: horror, sexual ambivalence, death, liminality (those shadowy gray areas of the unconscious mind), the supernatural, monsters and decadent romance. This fiction often contains cemeteries, castles, asylums, madness, curses, and the uncanny, these are the primary foci of this course. Among other frightful works, readings include selections from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Greek Literature in a Comparative Context:

This course is interactive with the city of Athens, in particular, and the landscape of Greece, in general. Greek, as well as other writers from around the world, not to mention all types of artists, treat the Greek landscape, the myths surrounding it, and its history, in a special way, as if t had the power to generate both a certain type of moral intelligence and aesthetic pleasure. We will explore works treating Greece as a theme, Greek works, naturally set in their own environment, works which treat the sites we are visiting.

The Avant-Garde:

This course examines the theory and practice of four defining avant-garde movements between the two world wars which sought to create “a revolution of the mind”: Futurism, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism redefined the style and politics of art. We read manifestoes, poetry, an expressionist play, a surrealist novel, see an expressionist film and look at paintings, photomontages, collages, found objects, which defy reality; and analyze the style and politics of the groups. Works include Futurist, Dada and Surrealist Manifestoes, the expressionist play, The Son and the expressionist film, Metropolis, the surrealist novel, Nadja, and poetry and art reflective of the movements and their impact worldwide.

Confronting the Absurd:

Human beings are natural storytellers, and one of the reasons we tell stories is to understand our place in the universe and maybe even to convince ourselves that we have some control over it. But, sometimes, the stories we tell fail to accomplish this. The universe refuses to behave the way we want it to. It resists our description of it. And that frequently causes us to begin to question our understanding of the meanings of things, of our place in the bigger picture. Anchored in a careful reading of Albert Camus’ The Plague, this course will look at literature and philosophy that attempt to help us understand why we look for meaning where we do and, more important, the ways that we can make sense of our lives even when the universe seems to respond to our desire for certainty with mystery, riddles, and, perhaps worst of all, silence.

Literary Stylistics:

Literary stylistics examines how readers interact with literary works, how they understand and are moved by them. we consider how meanings and effects are generated in the three major literary genres, carrying out stylistic analyses of poetry, drama, and prose fiction in turn. We will analyze brief texts and extracts from English literature, adopting an approach to the analysis of literary texts which can be applied easily to other texts in English and in other languages.

Literary Stylistics provides a clear and broad-ranging introduction to stylistic analysis – covering all three literary genres in detail. The course provides an overview of stylistics as a whole and discusses the links between linguistics and literary criticism and shows the practical ways in which linguistic analysis and literary appreciation can be combined, and illuminated, through the study of literary style.

We will cover all the major theories, concepts and methods required for the investigation of language in literature, from meter to metaphor, dialogue to discourse. It also captures the latest major developments in stylistics, such as corpus, cognitive and multimodal approaches to the study of style,

The course begins with samples of stylistic analyses. Detailed analysis of each genre follows in subsequent modules, with writing assignments designed to develop skills in stylistic analysis. The course also includes a series of checklists of style features to look for when analyzing literary texts.

Cross-listed as: LING 181S  

Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
May be repeated when topics vary.

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Fall 2025

January 2026

Spring 2026