HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Romance Studies

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: English

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Chiara Caradonna

Coordinator Email: chiara.caradonna@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours:

Teaching Staff:
Dr. chiara Caradonna

Course/Module description:
In this course we will explore the notions of fragment/note/draft in modern and contemporary European literature and film (mainly German, French, Italian). Often used as synonyms, these concepts have been widely used at least since Romanticism (if not earlier) to define and describe artistic practices of the unfinished and the incomplete. Instead of striving for an artwork that is considered complete and closed within itself such as the 18th and 19th century novel, modern artists across different genres and media opted for forms that openly showcased their incompleteness and lack of a definitive ending. This allowed them to reflect upon and question central tenets of artistic production such as the author’s authority and power over his/her text, creativity, genius, art’s immortality, the writing process etc. The course is divided into three main sections (fragment – note – draft), each investigating these three notions separately through concrete, striking examples so as to attune ourselves to the subtle differences that distinguish them from one another. We will pay particular attention to the effects, implications and consequences of these “forms of the incomplete” on the understanding and interpretation of the text, and inquire after their relation to broader historical and socio-political issues of the times they were and are employed in. To this end, we will also consider the works’ editorial history and take a peek into different manuscripts. Students will be encouraged to reflect on contemporary practices of the incomplete, and inquire after their own. Is fragmentation a necessity in the face of an unravelling world, can it be considered its trustworthy representation, or might it be a way to withstand the totalitarian strands of modernity?

Course/Module aims:

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
At the end of this course, students will be familiar with the modern theoretical debate around forms of notation from Romanticism to the 20th century from a transmedial perspective. They will be acquainted with several famous examples of writing and film-making that can be considered fragmentary and incomplete within the European literary canon. They will be able to apply the analytical tools and methods acquired to understand them to other texts/films that were not discussed in class. Students will also gain basic knowledge regarding the history of editorial practices, as well as the use and interpretation of literary manuscripts.

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Preparation of reading material at home and discussion in class; once during the semester "class duty", moderating the discussion and writing a class report.

Course/Module Content:
1. 29/10/24 – Introduction. Fragment/Note/Draft: history and definition(s).

2. 5/11/24 – Fragment 1. German Romanticism. A theory of the fragment.

3. 12/11/24 – Fragment 2. Walter Benjamin. One way street (1928). Fragments of Modernity.

4. 19/11/24 – Fragment 3. Roland Barthes. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (1977)

a. Separately – Film Screening: Claire Denis, Let the sunshine in (2017) [Date TBE]

5. 26/11/24 – Note 1. Roland Barthes. The Preparation of the Novel (1978-80). A theory of notation.

6. 3/12/24 – Note 2. Giacomo Leopardi. Zibaldone di pensieri. The notebooks. Scenes of Writing 1.

7. 10/12/24 – Note 3. Paul Valéry. Cahiers/Notebooks. Scenes of Writing 2.

8. 17/12/24 – Note 4. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Writing as Notation. Poetry and the Novel.

9. 31/12/24 – Note 5. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Film and Notation. Notes for an African Orestes (1969).

10. 7/1/25 – Class is cancelled and will be recuperated later

11. 14/1/25 – Draft 1. Editing a movie. Sicilia!, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1999 / Pedro Costa’s Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Oú git votre sourire enfoui?, 2001)

12. 21/1/25 – Draft 2. Stages of writing. Visit to a literary archive (TBE).

13. 28/1/25 – Conclusion. Summary and outlook. Discussion of final paper proposals.

Required Reading:
Roland Barthes. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments , trans. By Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York, 1978. [Excerpts]

Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel. Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France (1978-1979 and 1979-1980), ed. by Natalie Léger, trans. by Kate Briggs, Columbia University Press, 2010. [Excerpts]

Rüdiger Campe, “Writing; The Scene of Writing”, MLN 136 (2021), 971-983. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0075

Rüdiger Campe, “Writing Scenes and the Scene of Writing: A Postscript.” MLN 136 (2021), 1114-1133. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0082.

Walter Benjamin, One way street. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, trans. by Edmund Jephcott, Harvard University Press, 2016. [Excerpts]

Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”, trans. by Eric Prenowitz, in;
Diacritics 25 (1995), 9-63. https://doi.org/10.2307/465144 [Excerpts]

Rodolphe Gasché, “The Scene of Writing: A Deferred Outset,” Glyph: John Hopkins Textual Studies 1 (1977), 150-171

Rodolphe Gasché, “Foreword: Ideality in Fragmentation”. In: Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments. Ed. by Peter Firchow, Rodolphe Gasché, University of Minnesota Press, 1991, vii-xxxii.

Giacomo Leopardi. Zibaldone. Ed. by Michael Caesar, Franco D'Intino, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2013. [Excerpts]

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Petrolio. A Novel, trans. by Ann Goldstein, Pantheon Books, New York, 1997. [Excerpts]

Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Selected Poetry. A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. by Stephen Sartarelli, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2014. [Excerpts]

Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments. Ed. by Peter Firchow, Rodolphe Gasche, University of Minnesota Press, 1991. [Excerpts]

Paul Valéry. Cahiers/Notebooks. Trans. and ed. by Brian Stimpson, Peter Lang, Berlin, New York et al., 2000-2010. [Excerpts]


Filmography

Pedro Costa, Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Oú git votre sourire enfoui?), 2001.

Claire Denis, Let the sunshine in, 2017.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Notes for an African Orestes, 1969.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v&eq;rkpdVRu_OHc

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Sicilia!, 1999.

Additional Reading Material:
Gerald L. Bruns, Interruptions: the fragmentary aesthetic in modern literature, Modern and Contemporary Poetics. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2018.


Bryan Klausmeyer, Andrea Krauß, and Johannes Wankhammer, “Scenes of Writing: An Introduction.” MLN 136, no. 5 (2021): 965-970. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0074.

Camelia Elias, The Fragment: Towards a History and Poetics of a Performative Genre. Harvard: Peter Lang, 2004.

Vilém Flusser, Does Writing Have a Future?, trans. by Nancy Ann Roth, University of Minnesota Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttfvw

Carolyn Hamilton et al., Refiguring the Archive, Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V., Dordrecht, 2002.

Ann Janowitz, “The Romantic Fragment”. In Duncan Wu (ed.), A Companion to Romanticism, Blackwell, Oxford, 2017

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans. by Philip Barnard, and Cheryl Lester, SUNY Press, 1988.

David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man, The University of Toronto Press, 1962.

William Tronzo,The Fragment: An Incomplete History. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2009.

Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Referat 60 %
Active Participation / Team Assignment 20 %
Submission assignments during the semester: Exercises / Essays / Audits / Reports / Forum / Simulation / others 10 %
Attendance / Participation in Field Excursion 10 %

Additional information: