Hi everyone! My name is Pulkit Aggarwal, I am a 5th-year economics student in the Bachelor of International Economics (BIE) program. I am taking this course for my Faculty of Arts literature requirement and I’m kind of glad this requirement exists because we get to explore literature and ideas from different regions and time periods, especially those we have had no prior exposure to (such as romance studies for me).
I am excited about this course in particular because “romance studies” covers multiple (modern) language groups, and as such, I’m hoping we get to explore a variety of ideas and literary styles. At the same time, I was fascinated by the linguistically common feature of these romantic languages pointed out in the first week of classes – that what they have in common is their deviance from Latin to an extent that they developed as their own languages. In this sense, of betrayal of tradition, perhaps the romance languages are, indeed, romantic. Also, the idea that there is no specific geography that can be traced for the “romance world” is quite interesting (and was surprising at first) to me. I think the lack of an originating place allows for a kind of liberty in thought and writing that should be exciting to read.
In these stressful pandemic times, I was glad to see the unique grading structure for this course that allows us to set (hopefully realistic) expectations for ourselves, instead of having no control over what or how much we study in a course. I’m looking forward to the journey of the romance world with you all. 🙂
