We recognize a poem or work of fiction as literature by comparing it to other texts we deem literary, from which we have constructed a general definition. The literature that we still read today is usually highly valued for its originality, but that measure is of course a relative one, and many times what was once innovative now seems commonplace. Our general definition of literature expands every time we welcome a departure from the norm, absorbing the force of the new. And perhaps that makes literature as a concept rather unwieldy, or even devalues it, because it is too inclusive—or that could mean that our definition becomes refreshingly democratic.
Allusions, generic conventions, thematic similarities, character types, and parody allow for continuity of a literary tradition, thereby helping us to define literature, but they are also evidence that texts borrow from one another. To an extent this borrowing is tolerated and even expected. But how much and what kind of borrowing is too unusual, and how does unusual borrowing make us rethink the value of the specific texts and the definition of literature? How does borrowing change our regard for the works that become the lenders? In the face of borrowing, how do we reassess the values we associate with literature, such as originality?
We will pursue those questions throughout the quarter by reading several examples of unusual borrowing. First we will read a section from Don Quixote and consider how Cervantes draws from the picaresque tradition to create what some have called the first modern novel. Next we will explore the highly allusive poetry of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and consider how some critics viewed the intentional difficulty of their modernist poems as a mark of literary achievement. Kathy Acker parodies and plagiarizes Arthur Rimbaud and William Faulkner in service of postmodern angst, and we will read her novel In Memoriam to Identity to consider how borrowing can be creative with and critical of lender texts, as well as disrupt tradition. We will conclude with Derek Walcott’s book-length poem Omeros, exploring how its cross-cultural and cross-historical borrowing transposes Homer’s Odyssey to an island in the Caribbean, formerly a colony of France and Britain. In addition to these four principal texts, we will read related shorter fiction and poems from a variety of periods and national traditions (including summaries and excerpts from lender texts), and criticism and theory pertaining to intertexuality and literary history.

Texts:

• Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote 1605, 1616. Trans. Edith Grossman. Harper Perennial, 2005. [0060934344.]
• Acker, Kathy. In Memoriam to Identity. 1990. Grove, 1998. [080213579X.]
• Walcott, Derek. Omeros. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992. [0374523509]
• Course reader available at Ave Copy.