Introduction to Comparative Literature

An introduction to poetics, its history and some of its fundamental works and terms, from antiquity to the medieval, modern and contemporary periods. Our readings are drawn from philosophy and linguistics as well as literature. Subjects to be discussed include the senses of poiesis; performance; mimesis; the definition of verse; the poetics of prose; represented speech and thought; the concept of the vernacular; poetics and rhetoric; the grammar of poetry; poetry and the inhuman.