Wintersemester 16/17: Literarisch-kulturelle Theorien Asiens: Eine Übersicht; Dr. Gautam Chakrabarti, Di 18-20 Uhr, Raum 217 IAAW
Literarisch-kulturelle Theorien Asiens: Eine Übersicht; Gautam Chakrabarti, Dr. phil.
„In a family where even the servants did not know how to speak the vernacular, Keshavdas became a slow-witted Hindi poet.“ (Keśavdās Miśra, Kavipriyā, 2.17, quot. Busch, Allison, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India, New York: Oxford U P Inc., 2011, p. 23.)
Dozent: Dr. Gautam Chakrabarti
Raum: 217
Zeit: Dienstag, 18-20 Uhr
Die Grundstruktur des vorgeschlagenen Kurses sieht, wie im Titel impliziert, eine komparative Betrachtung der verschiedenen, etablierten Theorien literarisch-kultureller Kritik in Asien (insbesondere im indischen Subkontinent, Japan, China, und dem Mittleren Osten) vor. Eine derartige Betrachtung aus der Vogelperspektive soll den Studenten die im Austausch und Synergie stehenden diskursiven Räume verschiedener „nationaler“ und transnationaler Literaturtraditionen und Kulturen Asiens (zumindest ein Stück weit) näherbringen. Dadurch soll aufgedeckt werden, dass und wie diese Traditionen aus für den Orientalismus typischer Sichtweise als passiv und beeinflusst (empfangend) verstanden wurden (und werden)—und dies vor allem im Feld literarisch-kultureller Theorien.
Nachdem die sozio-kulturellen wie politisch-ökonomischen Umbrüche und Entdeckungen der europäischen frühen Neuzeit im siebzehnten und achtzehnten Jahrhundert einen noetischen Sprung ausgelöst hatten, etablierten nationale und internationale (Macht-)Strukturen Europas (mit ungleichem Erfolg) politische und kulturelle Hegemonie in weiten Teilen der außereuropäischen Welt. Dies führte nicht nur zur räumlichen Ausdehnung europäischer („europhoner“) Sozial- und Kulturnormativität, sondern auch zur Herauskristallisierung verschiedenster „westlicher“ Konstruktionen und Verständnisse „östlicher“ Kulturen. Der Kurs zielt jedoch nicht darauf ab, diese zu kritisieren—wie beispielsweise Gegenstand des postkolonialen Zustands—sondern sucht die Beschäftigung mit Theoretikern und Texten, die verschiedenste Aspekte und Ziele literarisch-kultureller Produktion identifizieren, kategorisieren, planen und erläutern. Somit sollen kulturelle Gebilde als weitaus hybrider und polyzentrischer als gemeinhin anerkannt konfiguriert werden.
Im Kontext vergleichender literaturwissenschaftlicher Theorie sollen kurze Auszüge zehn grundlegender Theorietexte aus dem Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi (Brajbhāṣā), Bānglā, Arabisch, Persisch, Chinesisch und Japanisch—in ihren englischen Übersetzungen—gelesen werden. Zusammengenommen verkörpern und erforschen diese Texte verschiedensten Aus- und Abtausch zwischen Tradition und Moderne in unterschiedlichen Kulturkontexten Asiens.
Schlüsseltexte und -Kontexte: Kurze Auszüge (3–4 Seiten oder mehr) aus dem Tolkāppiyam (ca. 3. Jhdt. v.u.Z.–10. Jhdt. n.u.Z.), Bharatas Nāṭyaśāstra (The Science of Dramturgy) (ca. 200 v.u.Z.–200 n.u.Z.), Ānandavardhanas (820–90) Dhvanyāloka (The Illumination of Aesthetic Suggestion), Abhinavaguptas (ca. 950–ca. 1020) Abhinavabhārati, Keśavdās Miśra's (1555–1617) Kavipriyā (Handbook for Poets, 1601), Bhāratcandra Rāys {ca. 1705(-12)–60} Rasamañjari (The Spadix of Emotional-Aesthetic Essence), Abū Bakr ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānīs (ca. 1009/10–1078) Dalā'il al-i'jāz (The Proofs of Inimitability), Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Alī, aka Nizamī-i Arūzī-i Samarqandīs (fl. 1110–61) Chahār Maqāla (Four Discourses), Liu Xies (ca. 465–ca. 521) Wenxin Diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of the Dragon), und Motoori Norinagas (1730–1801) Kojiki-den (Commentaries on the Kojiki). Die Auszüge der Texte werden vom Dozenten nach Beginn des Kurses im Oktober für die Studenten verfügbar gemacht.
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch und Deutsch
Sprachbeherrschung: Englisch B1 (CEFR) oder höher, sofern möglich.
Beurteilung: Aktive Beteiligung an kursinternen Diskussionen, orale Präsentation (Referat), schriftliche Hausarbeit und regelmäßige Teilnahme (positiver Einfluss auf die Benotung, keine Bestrafung).
Asian Literary-Cultural Theories: A Survey; Gautam Chakrabarti, Dr. phil.
“In a family where even the servants did not know how to speak the vernacular, Keshavdas became a slow-witted Hindi poet.” (Keśavdās Miśra, Kavipriyā, 2.17, quot. Busch, Allison, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India, New York: Oxford U P Inc., 2011, p. 23.)
The structural underpinnings of the proposed course, as implicit in the title, envisage a comparative consideration of the various well-established theoretical traditions of literary-cultural critique in Asia, especially in the Indian Subcontinent, Japan, China and the Middle East. Thereby, one hopes to be able to give a bird's eye-view, which might serve to acquaint the students, even if rudimentarily, with the mutually-reflexive and synergising discursive and analytical spaces within various Asian 'national' and transnational literary traditions and cultures, which are, when seen through 'Orientalist' prisms, often perceived to be in the 'receiving' mode, especially in the sphere of literary-cultural theorisation. After the socio-cultural and politico-economic upheavals and discoveries of early-modern Europe caused a noetic leap in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European national/imperial constellations established, with different degrees of success and longevity, their hegemonic political and cultural sway in large parts of the non-Europhone world. This led to not only the spatial expansion of Europhone societal and cultural normativities, but also to the crystallisation of various 'Western' constructions and understandings of 'Eastern' cultures. The aim of the present course is not, however, to critique the same—as, for example, undertaken by scholars of the postcolonial condition—but to engage with theoreticians and texts that seek to identify, categorise, strategise and explicate various aspects and goals of literary-cultural production, thereby, perhaps, configuring cultural entities as being more hybridised and polycentric than is generally assumed to be the case. We will be studying, within the domain of comparative literary theory, short excerpts from ten seminal Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi (Brajbhāṣā), Bānglā, Arabic, Persian, Chinese and Japanese theoretical texts—in their English and/or German translations—which, between themselves, embody and investigate different exchanges and trade-offs between tradition and modernity in various Asian cultural contexts.
Key Texts and Contexts: Short selections (occasionally, even 3-4 pages) from the Tolkāppiyam (ca. 3rd century BCE-ca. 10th century CE), Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra (The Science of Dramaturgy) (ca. 200 BCE-ca. 200 CE), Ānandavardhana's (820-90) Dhvanyāloka (The Illumination of Aesthetic Suggestion), Abhinavagupta's (ca. 950-ca. 1020) Abhinavabhārati, Keśavdās Miśra's (1555-1617) Kavipriyā (Handbook for Poets, 1601), Bhāratcandra Rāy's {ca. 1705(-12)-60} Rasamañjari (The Spadix of Emotional-Aesthetic Essence), Abū Bakr ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī's (ca. 1009/10-1078) Dalā'il al-i'jāz (The Proofs of Inimitability), Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Alī, aka Nizamī-i Arūzī-i Samarqandī's (fl. 1110-61) Chahār Maqāla (Four Discourses), Liu Xie's (ca. 465-ca. 521) Wenxin Diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of the Dragon), and Motoori Norinaga's (1730-1801) Kojiki-den (Commentaries on the Kojiki). Students are advised not to worry if some of these texts are not readily-available: the Lecturer will make selections from them, as needed, available after the commencement of the course in October.
Course Language/Unterrichtssprache: English and German
Desirable (but NOT mandatory) language proficiency: Level B1 and above, for English, of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Evaluation: Interactive participation in class-discussions, verbal presentations, the end-of-semester essay and regular attendance; the last-named will factor as a positive incentive, in terms of grade-weightage for regularity, and not in a punitive sense.
About Gautam Chakrabarti:
Gautam Chakrabarti is an Assistant Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature and "Berlin and German Studies" at the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), where he has been a Dahlem Research School (DRS) HONORS Postdoctoral Fellow (2014-15) with the project “'Non-Committal Involvements': Literary Detectives and Cold Warriors across Eurasia". He has also finished, at the FUB, his PhD on "Familiarising the Exotic: Introducing European Drama in Early Modern India" (2011-14, submitted on 30.07.2014, defended with the highest grade, namely "Summa Cum Laude“, on 03.11.2014), under Prof. Joachim B. Küpper, within the ERC-Project "DramaNet". He has studied English Literature and Culture Studies in Jadavpur University (MA, 2000) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (MPhil, 2005), India, and has taught the same in various colleges of the University of Delhi (2003-10, tenure from 2005). He was a Visiting Lecturer in English language, literature and culture and Hindi in a couple of universities and institutes in St Petersburg, Russia, in Autumn-Winter, 2008-9. In Spring-Summer, 2009, he made a conference-cum-fieldwork-tour of various universities and archives in Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany and Russia, for a research-project on "Literature and Politics in the Cold War"; and is also interested in Indic Studies, Jewish literary-cultural history and Ethnomusicology, themes on which he hopes to work in the future. He has also lectured in the University of Tartu (2006-7), the Moscow State University, the Russian State University for the Humanities and the Institute for Oriental Studies, Moscow, the University of Tartu, Estonia (2009), the Universitas Karolinas, Prague (2009), and the Jagellonian University, Kraków, (2011-12) on the above topics, Indian writing in English and Indian cultural history.