Hi there,

My name is Jada and I am a second year student intending to major in anthropology. I selected this course because I have a newfound interest in foreign literature, particularly Central and Eastern European works. I just finished reading ‘A Little Life’ and my mind keeps going back to this one excerpt wherein Andy is complaining about an acquaintance’s pronunciation of Proust. Willem says something along the lines of “well, you aren’t going to be sitting around discussing Proust with him.” Look where I am now!

I am excited for this course because, while I love reading, I love discussing and contextualizing literature. It is so helpful to hear the connections that other people have made. Discussions are quite productive for properly understanding a text and often times others make unique connections that I might not have otherwise understood.

One part of the lecture that stood out to me was the fact that there’s no geographical bounds for the Romance World. While this ‘world’ doesn’t exist, linguistic heritage can continue to connect these literary works. Historically, cultural artefacts are often territorially linked, however, with the help of modernism, romantic literature can be viewed as more geographically ambiguous.

Whilst these works are connected with their Latin language origins, vocabulary varies between their different language. My favourite part of reading is the perplexing ways in which words can evoke such sentiment. In this aspect, the ways in which the words are strung are just as important as the words themselves. My partner can speak 7 languages, mostly romantic, and while learning bits and pieces of these, I have learned words for feelings that we don’t have in the English language. A bit of a tangent that could become borderline philosophical, but this is a constant dilemma in my mind when reading translated works.

I am looking forward to the assessment structure as well as discussing these works with all of you!