How difficult would comparative literature be?

Bearing in mind i didn't study English at A-Level, how difficult do you think studying comparative literature at a degree level would be?

I have a conditional for Film & Philosophy but the whole idea of employment prospects scares me considering Film isn't really seen in a great light. I like the idea of comparative analysis between two texts and CL seems to encompass this whilst concerning both literature + film.

If anybody studies CL would they like to tell me a little bit about their studies?

Reply 1

demiurge

I pursued a B.A. in Comparative Literature with a minor in Art History. Like yourself, I was also interested in film theory, but my University lacked the rigourous training in that discipline. I studied at an US accredited school, so it might be a little different here, because most people don't command more than one or two languages in the USA. Comparative Literature is not a difficult or an extremely demanding degree. I'ts a very expansive program that studies about everything related to culture; from classical and canonical works of literature, to literaty theory (contemporary), the arts, film, semiotics, comparative history and the relations of all these disciplines to philosophy.

The main difficulty I had was to understand the postmodern jargon, usually francophile or german, that most professors command in their classes. There's a strong correletion between Comparative Literature (which is the newest of the humanities disciplines) and French Literaty Theory or Postmodern thought in general. Below I will try to make some suggestions to overcome and enjoy your CL studies:

1. Read all the material assigned in class since day one. Comparative literature courses material's usually stack up very quickly and you don't want to take an exam with only half the material read and analyzed.

2. Remember that some classes are more important than others depending on your interests :smile:

. Try to excell at those you really enjoy and avoid the courses that are not that appealing to your future line of research.

3. Take French or German as your second language. Even though they might be tougher than Portuguese or Italian (I took Italian because I'm a native Spanish speaker), in the end you will need them more since most Comparative Literature programs are very franco/germanic oriented.

4.Know who your professor is. If you know where they studied, what research interests they have and their theoretical leanings, you should be able to counteract more effectively in class.

5. Get ready to learn all the names and terms related to literaty/cultural studies: from Foucault to Goethe, to Derida, Bataille, Habermas,Heidegger, Kant, Walter Benjamin, etc. (without forgetting the classics like Cervantes, Shakespeare, Kafka and so son).
Get to know these authors and expect to do many, many quotations on your comparative literature exams.
Specific terms will include: deconstructivism, modernism, baroque,renaissance, marxian theory,sructuralism and so on and so forth.

6. Use the internet. It's a great tool to undersant all these terms better, and how can you apply them to your research papaers. Be aware that all websited are not the same in terms of quality.

Good luck with your studies,
Amorales

Reply 2

Miss_Scarlet

I am on a literature based course in a couple of languages and I have to say I find the English side of it quite demanding and I don't usually like the types of text we have to read...
this is coming from someone who got top marks in their English high school exam courses...

but it depends what you like, maybe you'd like it more than me. I prefer writing to the reading side of it unfortunately.

Reply 3

made_of_fail

it's literature. it's never going to be too difficult, though plowing your way through all that bullshit seems a grim task to me

also, thought i should let you know that both degrees come with equally dismal employment prospects

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