The renouncer also articulates a decisive link between politics and sexuality, almost always defining ethical politics in terms of a transcendence of desire, and sometimes in terms of an exclusion of femininity. In this course we will examine how some classic texts of Indian literature represent the renouncer and his relation to the political and cultural world. Beginning with excerpts from Sanskrit legal and poetic texts, we will read discussions of kingship in the works of medireview saints, as well as modern literary works such as Bankim Chatterjee's Anandmath, Bhagvati Charan Verma's Chitralekha, Anantha Murthy's Samskara, and Girish Karnad's Tale Danda. In the last part of the course we will also read selections from Gandhi's autobiography in order to understand his role as a modern renouncer. The writings of anthropologists and historians such as Louis Dumont, T. N. Madan, Romila Thapar, and Partha Chatterjee will help us in our investigations.
All readings are in English, no knowledge of Indian languages is required.
May be repeated as topics vary to a maximum of 3 units. The course deals with the politics of representation in the modern novel. Works for study in this course include Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Joyce's Dubliners, Breton's Nadja, Gide's The Counterfeiters, Barns' Nightwood, Saramango's The Stone Raft, Calvino's Invisible Cities, Eco's The Name of the Rose. Each seminar participant will select a contemporary short story writer who is alive or was born after 1940 and who has produced a substantial body of work. The seminar paper will interpret the work as a whole, describing its major characteristics, placing it within the short story tradition, and analyzing the major influences on the writer.