This course is not currently offered, please contact the school or faculty of your program.

Course description

The course aims to introduce students to masterpieces of Asian literary tradition, with a special focus on the cross-cultural and international dimension. From ancient times through to the present a number of literary texts, in prose and verse, and in oral and written forms, have been widely circulated not only within the culture they originated but across geo-cultural, and historical boundaries. These "great Asian texts", ancient or relatively recent, are by no means dead canons but well alive in a variety of forms, genres and languages in contemporary Asian and global cultures. The course aims to build up a sense of this broad context, and to give students the opportunity to read these "great texts" with the understanding that this brings. All texts will be studied in translation; the course does not presuppose any prior knowledge of any of the languages. This course may be cancelled if there are fewer than 20 enrolments.