Justification
This concentration is an attempt to formalize a program of learning that I’ve been performing for my entire undergraduate career. I’ve been pulled in many directions, among multiple departments, while trying to hone in on their common thread. There have been strange echoes and correlations among courses in different fields — moments when many sides approach the same Platonic ideal from opposing vantage points. These convergences have fascinated me, and spurred me to begin a program of extracurricular reading that I’ve been pursuing for the past couple of years.
When I take my natural language classes, the inherent incompatibilities between English and Spanish always attract me. Jorge Luís Borges is famous for criticizing Spanish as an inexpressive language with limited vocabulary; he is entranced by the English words for “moon” and “haunted”; and has been quoted saying that his style derives from his grandmother’s dry English wit. I’m compelled by the notion that English offered Borges a handful of literary forms that he couldn’t find in Spanish, and that the uniqueness of his prose derives from the continual effort to adapt old forms to new languages. For me, Spanish offers exciting forms that English lacks. I’ve always been captivated by the speed and flow that Spanish sentences can acquire. In English, run-ons sound like run-ons, but in Spanish, because of subject/verb/object/adjective order, as well as the allowed prepositional linking of phrases, one can create beautiful paragraphs that embody the spirit of sheer velocity. I never read anything quite like it in English.
This concentration cannot be completed through an existing department at Brown, or even through a double or triple concentration. It involves linguistic theory, foundational computer science, literature in English and other languages, software engineering and hypertext studies. In each of the departments which these areas touch — Comparative Literature, Hispanic Studies, Computer Science, Literary Arts, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Modern Culture and Media — there are classes that tangentially approach the study of literary systems, and I’ve been pleased to take those classes, but each of the established concentrations has a focus on something quite different. The field with perhaps the closest mission statement is Comparative Literature. Anna Balakian writes of the highest goal of Comparative Literature: “the discovery of new relationships in literature through the breakdown of the national and ideological barriers that separate literary figures.” This concentration attempts to discover new relationships in literature by breaking down the barriers between paradigms that keep literary systems separated, and literary forms unused.
