Department of Comparative Literature

University of Zagreb

The Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Zagreb has always been distinguished by keeping up to date with methods and issues in literary scholarship, constantly implementing new approaches, and introducing new courses in the curriculum. The program covers all subjects generally understood as relevant for the study of literature and culture. The program consists of courses in the history of world literature, the comparative history of Croatian literature, literary and cultural theory, and theater and film studies. Courses in literary and cultural theory also include fields such as gender studies, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, semiotics, the sociology of culture, and media studies. All courses are elective and change each semester.

Courses in literary and cultural theory focus on three main problem areas:

a) key terms and concepts in the theory of literature: literary history and criticism; stylistics, poetics and rhetoric; versification; tropes and figures; classification: genres, forms, poetry and prose, oral and written, popular literature; key terms and concepts in literary analysis: motif, theme, plot, composition, narrator, focalization, character, idea; stylistic and structural analysis of the literary text; narratology;

b) major trends in literary scholarship: main issues in contemporary scholarship; positivism, Russian formalism, the Prague structuralist school, new criticism, psychoanalysis and archetypal criticism, phenomenology and existentialism, Marxist and sociological approaches, the aesthetics of reception and reader-response criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, post-structuralism, new historicism and cultural materialism, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and queer theory; and

c) key terms and concepts in the comparative study of literature: world literature and comparative literature; issues in the comparative history of literature: thematics, literary exchange, literary morphology; the theory of translation; comparative literature around the world.

Contact Information
Željka Matijašević, Professor
Maša Grdešić, Professor

University of Zagreb
Odsjek za komparativnu književnost, Filozofski fakultet
Ivana Lučića 3
Zagreb,
Croatia

http://www.ffzg.unizg.hr/kompk/index.php?show=page.php&idPage=23
komparativna@ffzg.hr
+38514092115

Region
Balkans and Southern Europe
Europe

Academic Program
Ph.D.
M.A.

Year Established
1956

Fellowships and Potential Scholarly Affiliations
Department of Comparative Literature Guest Professorships