By examining Cavafy’s work in all its permutations (as criticism, translation, adaptation), this course introduces students to a wide range of critical approaches used in World Literature, Gender Studies, and Translation Studies. The Cavafy case becomes an experimental ground for different kinds of comparative literature methods, those that engage social-historical issues such as sexuality, diaspora, postcoloniality as well as linguistic issues such as multilingualism, media and translation. How does this poet “at a slight angle to the universe” challenge contemporary theories of gender and literature as national institution? How can studying a canonical author open up our theories and practices of translation?
Among the materials considered are translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, James Merrill, and Marguerite Yourcenar, commentary by E.M. Forster, C.M. Bowra, and Roman Jakobson, poems by W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and Joseph Brodsky, and visual art by David Hockney and Duane Michals. Though this course presupposes no knowledge of Greek, students wanting to read Cavafy in the original are encouraged to take the 1-credit directed reading tutorial offered simultaneously.
