East Asia and the Nobel Prize for Literature

(4 Credits)

What does the Nobel Prize say about the state of literature in East Asia, and about the idea of the prize itself? What does it suggest about the idea of national literature, world literature, and the role of literary prizes in negotiating these fraught categories? This course will combine close literary analysis with a broader theoretical discussion of these issues. While engaging critically with works produced by East Asian laureates (and potential laureates), we will simultaneously interrogate the Nobel Prize itself and the particular questions it raises about the categorization, function, and assessment of literature in today’s world.