WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2015-2016       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Parody: Russian and Western, Theory and Practice

RUSS 267
Spring 2016 not offered
Crosslisting: REES 267
Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory

Parody is a form of artistic expression that is difficult to define but that has played a major role in literary history, largely through its power of critical revision, that according to the Russian formalists is a driving force in literary evolution. Linda Hutcheon's formulation, that parody is "repetition with critical distance, which marks difference rather than similarity," provides perhaps the broadest and most fruitful point of departure. The course will consider various definitions of parody offered by Russian and Western literary theorists. The major case study will be a close reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky's magnificently parodic novel THE DEVILS, along with the target texts to which the novel responds and with which it plays (works by Pushkin, Turgenev, and others). Serious literary parody as employed by Dostoevsky will be compared to parody as pure humor (Woody Allen, MAD magazine). The course will also include discussion of recent legal issues raised by parody, in the cases of 2 Live Crew/Roy Orbison (which led to a Supreme Court decision in which Justice David Souter offered his own definition of parody) and GONE WITH THE WIND/THE WIND DONE GONE.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA REES
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (CSCT)(CWRC)(REES-MN)(REES-Lang/Lit/C)

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459