"Intimate Strangers" examines theories and literary representations of otherness. Devils, monsters, and beasts signal a split between conscious and unconscious, familiar and unfamiliar, same and other. They mark a zone where fantasy flourishes, a threat to established categories, an invitation to think again. Are these figures tokens of fracture within the human psyche? Do they represent what we wish to repudiate, repress, or project onto outsiders? Or do they signal the possibility of a real encounter, a dialogue that transcends our subjective awareness of the world? Can they grant new forms of knowledge? What are the myths or ideologies through which authors and readers, consciously and unconsciously, interpret otherness, and hence our place in the world?

Primary texts have been chosen on the basis of formal and ideological affinity. New layers of relations will emerge, across time and space, but we will also consider how representations of otherness are affected by changing historical and cultural circumstance. We will explore different critical approaches to literature (ethics, psychoanalytic criticism, deconstruction, archetypal criticism, critical animal studies, genre theory) and assess their relevance to comparative literary studies.

Each weekly session consists of a one-hour lecture and a one-hour seminar. Both are compulsory. Lectures explore different philosophical and critical approaches and engage with historical and cultural context. Seminars concentrate on close textual analysis. Primary texts will be made available in English or English translation, as appropriate, but may also be read in the original language. Secondary literature will be read in select form, through extracts chosen by the course tutor.

Key Texts

Section 1: Devils, temptations and monstrous men

Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958)

*Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Purple Hibiscus (2003)

Section 2 : Monstrous births and “mad” women

Rachel Cusk Medea (2015) and Euripides Medea (413BCE)

Jean Rhys The Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

*Ann Boyer The Undying (2019)

Section 3: Beyond the human: Aliens and beasts

*Octavia Butler Dawn (Exogenesis 1) (1987)

Yoko Tawada The Last Children of Tokyo (2018)

Sartre Les Mouches (The Flies) 1943

*These are longer books – please give yourself enough time to read them!

Please note: This module description is accurate at the time of publication. Minor amendments may be made prior to the start of the academic year.