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Syllabus for Mr. Alwin Alexander.

Part-time Research Scholar of the Ph.D. programme July2010 Session

University of Kerela

Paper I- Research Methodology

Course Description:

This paper will pertain to the technicalities n the organisation and apparatus of

research project leading to the Ph.D. degree

Required Reading:

Joseph Gibaldi.M.L.A. Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New Delhi:

Affiliated East-West Press 2003.

Paper II - Area Study: Dialogic Criticism and Bakhtinian Critical

Theory

Course Description:

This paper involves the study of dialogic criticism modeled on the theory andcritical procedures of Mikhail Bakhtin. A brief study of the key ideas of

Bakhtinian critical theory is attempted in this study. Literary works are sites forthe dialogic interaction of multiple voices, according to Bakhtin. This multiplicity

makes itself evident through heteroglossia, polyphony and various speech genres

and utterances. This course includes a detailed study of these concepts. The issue

of the self and the other is also of primary concern for Bakhtin. The self is a

dialogic progression - a multiple phenomenon comprised of a centre, a not-centre

and the relation between them. It is radically dependent on others. Bakhtinsthoughts bout this dialogic relation between the self and the other will also be

studied. The concept of the carnivalesque is yet another idea central to the

Bakhtinian thought. By carnival Bakhtin implies the festival vitality of people,

where the free and familiar contact among them is made possible without regard

for hierarchies. Study of this oppositional and subversive trope will also form part

of the study.

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Required Reading:

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Characteristics of Genre and Plot Composition n Dostoevskys

Novels.Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

---. Dostoevskys Polyphonic Novel and its Treatment n Crtcl Literature.

Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

---. Discourse n the Novel. The Dialogic Imagination:Four Essays. Trans. Caryl

Emerson and Michael Holquist.Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

---. Epic and Novel. The Dialogic Imagination:Four Essays. Trans. Caryl

Emerson and Michael Holquist.Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

---. From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse. The Dialogic Imagination:

Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist.Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1996.

---. Introduction.Rabelais and His World. By Bakhtin. Trans. Helene Iswolsky.

Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1968.

---. The Problems of Speech Genres. SpeechGenres and Other Late Essays.

Trans. Vern McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.

Paper III: Nikos Kazantzakis Christ Recrucifiedand Gods Pauper: St.

Francis of Assisifrom a Bakhtinian Perspective.

Course Description:

This course includes detailed study of the works and the craft of Nikos

Kazantzakis the writer chosen for the research project. Kazantzakis works

are filled with life force and infectious spiritual restlessness. They convey

the very metaphysical and existential concerns that haunted him throughouthis life. The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin s also known to have been n

unorthodox believer whose theories have been tremendously influenced by

his religious affinities. Hence the veritable similarity between the creative

instincts of these two cannot be ignored. This course includes a critical

evaluation of Nikos Kazantzakis Christ Recrucifiedand Gods Pauper,

using the parameters of the Bakhtins theoretical formulations. Bakhtinian

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concepts of dialogism polyphony heteroglossia, self/other relationship

intertextuality and carnival are used to critically analyse these novels.

Required Reading:

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Bakhtin Reader. Ed. Pam Morris. London: Edward Arnold,1994.

Bien, Peter.Nikos Kazantzakis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Christ Recrucified. London: Faber and Faber, 1962.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Gods Pauper: St. Francis of Assisi. London: Faber andFaber, 1975.

Levitt, Morton. The Cretan Glance: The World and Art of Nikos Kazantzakiz.

Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980.