Detailed Syllabus
⋆｡°✩ The core literature texts you'll be studying each semester! Click here to view the compiled DSE+DSC pdf syllabus. Additionally you may buy books from Bookland (this is not a paid promotion, but I wish it was) or you may contact your seniors ✩°｡⋆
Semester I
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DSC-1: Introduction to Literary Studies
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Unit I: Reading the Novel
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Narratology: Form and Function of Narrative by Gerald J. Prince. NY: Mouton Publishers, 1982. pp 7-16 & pp 103-105
- 'A New Province of Writing,' in The Domain of the Novel: Reflections on Some Historical Definitions by A.N. Kaul. Routledge, 2021. pp 20-36 Unit II: Reading Poetry
- 'On His Blindness' by John Milton
- 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge' by William Wordsworth
- '341 After Great Pain' by Emily Dickinson
- 'Where the Mind is Without Fear' by Rabindranath Tagore
- 'Versification and Poetic Syntax', in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edition, by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy. NY and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. pp 2021-2065 Unit III: Reading Drama
- Tara by Mahesh Dattani
- 'The Nature of Drama', in Drama: An Introduction by G.J. Watson (London: Macmillan, 1983)
- It Must Flow: A Life in Theatre by Habib Tanvir
- 'Introduction', in Class by Gary Day. UK: Routledge, 2001. pp 1-18
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DSC-2: European Classical Literature
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Unit I
- The Odyssey by Homer Unit II
- Poetics by Aristotle
- Antigone by Sophocles Unit III
- Lysistrata by Aristophanes
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DSC-3: Indian Classical Literature
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Unit I
- Selections from The Mahabharata, from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa by Vyasa, trans. K. M. Ganguli (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2012). a) 'The Dicing' and 'Sequel to Dicing', Book 2, Sabha Parva Section XLVI-LXXII b) 'The Temptation of Karna', Book 5, Udyog Parva, Section CXL-CXLVI. c) 'Krishna's Peace Proposal', Book 5, Udyog Parva, Section LXXXIX-CXXXI Unit II
- Abhijnanasakuntalam by Kalidasa, trans. Chandra Rajan, in Kalidasa: The Loom of Time. Penguin Classics, 1989, reprint 2000. Unit III
- 'The Book of Vanci', Cilappatikaram by Ilango Atikal. trans. R. Parthasarathy (Columbia University Press, 1993; Penguin Books India, 2004).
Semester II
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DSC-4: 14th to 17th Century English Poetry
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Unit I
- 'General Prologue' and 'Pardoner's Tale' from Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Unit II
- 'Sonnet I' by Philip Sidney
- 'The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage' by Walter Raleigh
- 'Sunne Rising', 'The Canonization', 'The Good Morrow' by John Donne Unit III
- 'Book I', Paradise Lost by John Milton
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DSC-5: 16th & 17th Century English Drama
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Unit I
- Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Unit II
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare Unit III
- The Rover by Aphra Behn
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DSC-6: 18th Century Literature
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Unit I
- Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope Unit II
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Unit III
- The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Semester III
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DSC-7: Romantic Literature
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Unit I
- Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: 'Lamb', 'Tiger', 'Chimney Sweeper' (Songs of Innocence), 'Chimney Sweeper' (Songs of Experience)
- 'Tintern Abbey', 'London' by William Wordsworth
- 'Kubla Khan', 'Dejection: An Ode' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Unit II
- 'Ozymandias', 'Ode to the West Wind' by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- 'Ode to a Nightingale', 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', 'Ode to Autumn' by John Keats Unit III
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
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DSC-8: Victorian Literature
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Unit I
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- 'The Lady of Shalott' by Alfred Tennyson Unit II
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning Unit III
- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
- 'How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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DSC-9: Literary Criticism
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Unit I
- 'Of the Standard of Taste' from 'Four Dissertations', The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by David Hume, ed. Vincent Leitch, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001. pp 486-99
- Part 1: Section VII, Section XVIII; Part 2- Sections I- VIII; Part 3- Section XXVII, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful by Edmund Burke. ed. James T. Boulton, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987. pp 39-40, 51-52, 57-74, 124-25 Unit II
- 'Modern Fiction' (1919) by Virginia Woolf
- 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919) by T.S. Eliot Unit III
- Principles of Literary Criticism (1926) Chapters 1 & 2 by I.A. Richards
- 'The Heresy of Paraphrase', 'The Language of Paradox' from The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) by Cleanth Brooks
Semester IV
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DSC-10: American Literature
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Unit I
- Beloved by Toni Morrison Unit II
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- 'Bartleby the scrivener' by Herman Melville Unit III
- 'O Captain, My Captain', 'Passage to India' (lines 1-68) by Walt Whitman
- 'Crow Testament', 'Evolution' by Alexie Sherman Alexie
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DSC-11: Indian Writing in English
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Unit I
- The Clear Light of the Day by Anita Desai Unit II
- 'Freedom to the Slave', 'The Orphan Girl' by H.L.V. Derozio
- 'Introduction', 'My Grandmother's House' by Kamala Das
- 'An Indian Love Song', 'In Salutation to the Eternal Peace' by Sarojini Naidu
- 'The Strange Affair of Robin S. Ngangom', 'A Poem for Mother' by Robin S. Ngangom Unit III
- 'The Free Radio' by Salman Rushdie
- 'The Intrusion' by Shashi Deshpande
- 'Stains', Hot Death, Cold Soup: Twelve Short Stories by Manjula Padmanabhan. New Delhi: Kali for Women/Zubaan, 1996.
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DSC-12: Indian Writing in English Translation
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Unit I
- 'The Shroud', Penguin Book of Classic Urdu Stories by Premchand. ed. M. Assaduddin, New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2006.
- 'The Quilt', Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of Ismat Chugtai by Ismat Chugtai. tr. M. Assaduddin. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2009.
- 'Rebati', Oriya Stories by Fakir Mohan Senapati. ed. Vidya Das, tr. Kishori Charan Das, Delhi: Srishti Publishers, 2000. Unit II
- Andha Yug by Dharamveer Bharati. tr. Alok Bhalla, New Delhi: OUP, 2009.
- 'Light, Oh Where is the Light?' & 'When My Play was with thee', Gitanjali: A New Translation with an Introduction by Rabindranath Tagore. trans. William Radice, New Delhi: Penguin India, 2011.
- 'The Void' & 'So Very Far', The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry by G.M. Muktibodh. ed. Vinay Dharwadker and A.K. Ramanujam, New Delhi: OUP, 2000. Unit III
- 'I say unto Waris Shah', Modern Indian Literature: An Anthology, Plays and Prose, Surveys and Poems by Amrita Pritam. ed. K.M. George, vol. 3, Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992.
- 'Dali, Hussain, or Odour of Dream, Colour of Wind' & 'The Land of the Half-Humans', The Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast by Thangjam Ibopishak Singh. tr. Robin S. Ngangom, NEHU: Shillong, 2003.
- The Stepchild by Joseph Macwan. Trans. Rita Kothari, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2004.
Semester V
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DSC-13: Twentieth Century Poetry & Drama
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Unit I
- 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', 'The Hollow Men' by T.S. Eliot
- 'Leda and the Swan', 'The Second Coming' by W.B. Yeats Unit II
- 'Still Falls the Rain' by Edith Sitwell
- 'Memoriam' by Anne Michaels
- 'Whitsun Weddings', 'Church Going' by Phillip Larkin
- 'Hawk Roosting', 'Crow's Fall' by Ted Hughes Unit III
- Waiting for Godot (1952) by Samuel Beckett
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DSC-14: Twentieth Century Novel
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Unit I
- Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad Unit II
- Sons and Lovers (1913) by D.H. Lawrence Unit III
- Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
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DSC-15: Dalit Writings
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Unit I
- Joothan: A Dalit's Life by Om Prakash Valmiki. trans. Arun Prabha Mukerjee, Kolkatta: Samya, 2003. Unit II
- The Grip of Change, and author's notes by P. Sivakami. trans. P. Sivakami, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2016. Unit III
- 'White Paper', Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature by Sharankumar Limbale. ed. Arjun Dangle, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1992.
- 'The last will of a Dalit poet', Listen to the Flames: Texts and Readings from the Margins by Jayant Parmar. eds. Tapan Basu, Indranil Acharya, A. Mangai, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017.
- 'New Custom', The Exercise of Freedom: An Introduction to Dalit Studies by Ajay Navaria. trans. Laura Brueck, eds. K. Sathyanarayana, Susie Tharu, New Delhi: Navayana Publishing, 2013.
- 'Black Ink', Listen to the Flames: Texts and Readings from the Margins by Sanjay Kumar. trans. Raj Kumar, eds. Tapan Basu, Indranil Acharya, A. Mangai, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Semester VI
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DSC-16: Modern European Drama
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Unit I
- Ghosts (1881) by Henrik Ibsen Unit II
- Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) by Bertolt Brecht Unit III
- Rhinoceros (1959) by Eugene Ionesco
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DSC-17: Literature and Disability
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Unit I
- Trying to Grow (1991) by Firdaus Kanga Unit II
- Sight Unseen (1999) by Georgina Kleege Unit III
- 'Helen and Frida' The Kenyon Review, Summer, 1994, New Series, 16.3, 1994. pp 1-7 by Anne Finger
- 'Poem 1' and 'Poem 4', The Mind Tree: A Miraculous Child Breaks the Silence of Autism by Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay. Arcade Publishing, 2003.
- 'Happy Birth-day'. Disability Horizons. Posted 14th May, 2018 by Hayleigh Barclay
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DSC-18: Women Writings
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Unit I
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker Unit II
- 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- 'Sultana's Dream' by Begum Rokheya
- Excerpts from Amar Jiban by Rassundari Devi. trans. by Enakshi Chatterjee, Women's Writing in India. Vol 1, ed. Susie Tharu and K. Lalita, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1989. pp 192-202 Unit III
- 'I cannot live with you', 'I'm wife; I've finished that' by Emily Dickinson
- 'Lady Lazarus', 'Daddy' by Sylvia Plath
- 'Advice to Women', 'Bequest' by Eunice De Souza