This course is intended to introduce students to a range of theoretical approaches to Comparative Literary study. By the end of the course the student should be able to: -Know the current place of Comparative Literature within the Literary and Cultural Studies. -Develop the history of the discipline, its problems and subjects of study as well as its latest trends. -Articulate from the comparative perspective, the emerging processes, the consolidation and the predominance of national literatures. -Explain the international dynamics, essential elements to understand how modern literary and contemporary systems work. -Identify several ways of reading (Hemeneutics) and empirical analysis that Comparitive Literature uses to study cultural space, intersection and hibridization such as Colonial and Postcolonial Discourses, Images of the Other, Literary Travels, Multilingualism in National Literatures, etc. -Assimilate instruments of analysis to study the complex field of Inter-Art relations: Literature and Visual Arts; Literature and Cinema; Literature and Media, etc.

PROGRAM: -Presentation and definition of Comparative Literature within the Literary and Cultural Studies. -A brief history of Comparative Literature and the latest trends. World Literature. East & West and the concept of tradicion. -The construction of national literatures and the identity processes. Dialogical relationships between National literature and World literature. -How Comparative Literature influences identity processes such as: Images of the Other, Gender Studies and Postcolonial Literatures. -Inter-Art relations: Literature and Visual Arts; Literature and Cinema; Literature and Media. SYLLABUS: Unit 1.- Origins of the Comparative Literature Unit 2.- The Concept of Comparative Literature and Literary Genre Unit 3.- Paradigms of Comparison. Themes and Myths Unit 4. Methods and Perspectives on Comparative Literature Unit 5.- Literature and the Arts Unit 6.- Literature and Philosophy. On the Beautiful and the Sublime Unit 7.- Otherness and Identity. The role of the 'doppelgänger' in Fantasy Literature Unit 8. Imagology, Postcolonialism and Gender Studies READINGS AND AUTHORS A selection of texts from, among others, the following authors: Charles Baudelaire, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, César Vallejo, Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers.

1.- Practical lectures will focus the literary analysis of a particular text 2.- Theoretical lectures will focus the presentation of the theoretical framework