Postgraduate Course: Poetry, Music and Translation (ELCF11007)

Course Outline
School	School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures	College	College of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	20	ECTS Credits	10
Summary	This option is targeted at the point where the concerns of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies overlap. It is distinctive in its focus on the relationship between poetry and music. It is also distinctive in that all the seminars except the first two are student-led. In each seminar, we work on a poem originally written in a language other than English, together with an English translation of that poem. The poem in question must contain explicit reference to music, expressed in a way that suggests a link between music and poetry. Each student on the course will be asked to provide such a poem and its translation, and to lead a seminar on that poem, beginning with the topics set out below. In each seminar, we have two regular topics for discussion. Topic 1: the reference to music. Why is it there? How and why is poetry presented as like music? In what ways is this convincing and unconvincing? And how do poetry and music resist assimilation to each other? Topic 2: translation. We will always be working with originals and translations. How does translation affect the reference to music, and the ways in which we can take the poem as musical? A third question will remain permanently in the background: what is the relationship between music and translation? After all, it is commonly said that music cannot be translated, in the way that language can. But it is also commonly said that poetry is music. What happens to the music in poetry, when poetry is translated? For the first two weeks, to give students time to find and circulate their material, the course tutor will provide the poems. The first poem to be studied will be Verlaine's 'Art poétique'.
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: use strategies in the discussion of literary translation that take account of the lessons of comparative literary study foreground the issues raised by translation when discussing poetry provide material for, present, and lead a seminar focusing on a single poem, within a well-defined theoretical context