Birmingham, United Kingdom

Comparative Literature and Critical Theory

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: humanities
Qualification: MA
Kind of studies: full-time studies, part-time studies
Master of Arts (MA)
University website: www.birmingham.ac.uk
Comparative
In linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality, or degree. See comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well as positive and superlative degrees of comparison.
Comparative Literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study of international relations, but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as to understand cultures 'from the inside'". While most frequently practiced with works of different languages, comparative literature may also be performed on works of the same language if the works originate from different nations or cultures among which that language is spoken.
Critical
Critical or Critically may refer to:
Critical Theory
Critical Theory is a school of thought that stresses the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture by applying knowledge from the social sciences and the humanities. As a term, Critical Theory has two meanings with different origins and histories: the first originated in sociology and the second originated in literary criticism, whereby it is used and applied as an umbrella term that can describe a theory founded upon critique; thus, the theorist Max Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them".
Literature
Literature, most generically, is any body of written works. More restrictively, literature writing is considered to be an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage.
Theory
A theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. Depending on the context, the results might, for example, include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek, but in modern use it has taken on several related meanings.
Theory
During the period that began with classical Greece and ended with late pagan antiquity, philosophy was more than merely a theoretical discipline. Even when Aristotle identified philosophy with "theory," his purpose is to argue ... that a life of theoretical activity, the life of philosophy, was the best life that human beings could lead.
Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living (1998)
Theory
Their ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading or was himself seeking arguments to refute other theories, especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began to read or sought for himself a solution of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as spirit, will, freedom, essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873-1877), Tr. C. Garnett (New York: 2003), Part 8, Chapter 9, p. 728
Literature
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is—to teach; the function of the second is—to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.
Thomas De Quincey, Essays on the Poets, Alexander Pope.
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