To introduce students to the structural elements of Fantasy literature, including a broad knowledge of its history, source traditions, and enduring subgenres. Major Themes of Fantasy: Archetypes and Myths, Motifs - journeys, theology, devices and aides, creation of alternate worlds, treatment of... Read more
The course will involve a detailed study of 3-4 texts and their corresponding adaptations into film. By means of close reading, analysis, and discussion, it will seek to identify the changes that take place during the process of adapting one art-form into another and ask why those modifications... Read more
Satire is a classical genre that has thrived over the centuries in almost all languages and cultures, and is found in a range of media. Life, in all aspects, everyday provides grist to the mill of satire, but does satire change anything? How do we define satire? Why is it considered the social... Read more
The aim of this course will be to read the poems of Indian English Writers (pre and post-Independence), with specific reference to the articulation of their identity. Some of the perspectives from which the poems will be discussed include the notion of home (childhood, family and ancestors);... Read more
This course aims to introduce students to the growing body of prose in English that has been emerging from post-independence India, with particular focus on the novel. In addition to examining the question, a highly-vexed one, of the 'Indian-ness' of such writing in linguistic and stylistic... Read more
To introduce students to the various periods of development of Indian theatre and the different sources of influence. The course will pay close attention to the interaction between the traditional and the contemporary. Through a close study of the written and performance texts the students will... Read more
Brief history of the development and importance of drama in Western and Indian contexts. Readings from both ancient and contemporary drama theorists. Generic differences between different forms of drama such as tragedy, comedy, realist, 'folk', Absurd, etc. Detailed study of important examples... Read more
What is literature? This is the central question that the course will address through representational readings from different genres. The focus will be less on any given genre and more on how it becomes possible for the student to reconstruct something called ‘literature’... Read more
This course takes as its point of departure the fact that the modern city constitutes a highly enabling locus for new kinds of aesthetic, particularly literary, activity. From the late-nineteeth century onwards, there has been a spurt of artistic and theoretical work crucially centred in the... Read more
Students would be introduced to the conditions, beginning in 19th century colonial rule in India, which led to the emergent Indian middle-class intelligentsia to experiment with European forms of literature but striving for an alternative expression. Indian languages became the medium through... Read more
