ENG 6344
“Muse of Fire”: Shakespeare and the Theatre of War Thursdays 10:00 – 1:00
Professor
I. Makaryk
Introduction From the earliest comedies, through the histories and tragedies to the late romances, Shakespeare’s works are peppered with references to as well as representations of war -- in part a reflection of England’s almost continuous military engagements in this period (in Ireland, France, the Low Countries, on the high seas, etc.). This course will study the imaginative energy, the “Muse of fire,” which war released in Shakespeare. Among the many issues of close study will be the relationship between war and genre, war and gender; the depiction of suffering, violence, and trauma; the creation of new iconic character types; the rhetoric of violence; performance and war; propaganda; class and power; and the physiology of soldiership. We will also explore a number of theories of the sociology and psychology of war, violence, and trauma that might be helpful in illuminating Shakespeare’s plays. While the course primarily seeks to examine the representation of war, it is also interested in inquiring how Shakespeare’s deep engagement with this topic might, in turn, make it possible to use his plays in later (including World) wars. Texts Titus Andronicus Henry VI (Parts I, II, III) Richard III Henry IV (Parts I, II) Henry V Troilus and Cressida All’s Well that Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Course reader of theoretical texts On reserve: Nick De Somogyi. Shakespeare’s Theatre of War (1998) Charles Edelman, Shakespeare’s Military Language: A Dictionary (2000) Theodor Meron, Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare (1998)
ENG 6363
Sequels, Intertextuality, and Systems in Eighteenth-Century Literature Wednesdays 1:00 – 4:00
Professor
April London
Introduction This course examines the widespread eighteenth-century practice of ‘overwriting’ prior texts. In a burgeoning but unstable literary marketplace, building on proven commercial success had powerful attractions. But overwriting also, and more importantly, allowed authors to engage issues relating to politics, gender, genre, and canon formation. In its function as a form of metacommentary, the sequel thus makes apparent authorial efforts to shape readers’ responses, to provide alternative contexts for interpretation, and to indicate changing material and ideological circumstances. Grading Direction of seminars, active participation in peers’ seminars, one-page presentation of conference proposal; final paper. Texts John Dryden, MacFlecknoe and Alexander Pope, Dunciad Alexander Pope, Epistle to Burlington and Mary Leapor, Crumble Hall Jonathan Swift, “The Lady=s Dressing Room@ and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, AThe Reasons that Induced Dr S to write a Poem call=d the Lady=s Dressing Room@ Jonathan Swift, “Description of the Morning” and “Description of a City Shower,” Mary Robinson, “London’s Summer Morning,” William Blake, “London,” and A.L. Barbauld, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven Jane Barker, The Galesia Trilogy Samuel Richardson, Pamela and Henry Fielding, Shamela and Joseph Andrews Sarah Fielding, David Simple and Volume the Last Sarah Scott, Millenium Hall and Sir George Ellison Frances Burney, Evelina, Elizabeth Inchbald, Simple Story, Amelia Opie, Adeline Mowbray Elizabeth Hamilton, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers and Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker and Walter Scott, Waverley
ENG 6373
Wordsworth, Joy and Romanticism Fridays 9:00 - noon
Professor
Ian Dennis
Introduction William Wordsworth famously celebrated “that serene and blessed mood, / In which the affections gently lead us on ...” While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. This course will examine representations of joy, pleasure and happiness in English Romantic Literature, and in Romantic-era culture more generally. We will look at themes of joy and pleasure as vehicles of transcendence or wisdom in poetry, fiction and non-fiction prose (especially Romantic literary theory). But we will also try to assess the market for joy, as it were, and the problems the Romantic artist has with satisfying this market, or with not satisfying it. That is, we will investigate a paradox of the Romantic Ideology: the conflict between a socially potent posture of alienation and equally mandated expressions or celebrations of joy. We will evaluate the frequently made argument that private transcendence and imaginary gratifications amount to a flight from history, prompted by the collapse of the French Revolution and of other attempts to achieve social apocalypse, or even reform. Is literary joy, indeed, even symptomatic of the putative “failure of Romanticism” itself? Other questions suggest themselves too. How does the well-known promotion of the status of lyric in the period relate to the occurrence of themes of joy and pleasure? Does the upward revaluation of childhood and youth, or of innocence, contribute to or ultimately undermine attempts to articulate human happiness? How do traditional literary forms, such as comedy, interact with Romantic conceptions of happiness? In addition to reading primary works, we will survey some of the more influential accounts of Romanticism and the Romantic Ideology to see what sorts of answers have been proposed to such questions. We will begin with Wordsworth, certainly look at Blake and Keats, but sample other Romantic era writers, major and minor. Students will also be asked to explore Romantic-era literature in search of further instances. Grading Seminar Presentations, 50%; Final Essay 50% Texts One text will be ordered in at the University of Ottawa bookstore: Wordsworth, William. The Major Works. Oxford: World’s Classics, 2000. Students will be expected to obtain their own copies of other readily available works. A course package may be prepared: please contact the instructor a few months before the course begins if you wish to begin reading early.
ENG 7301
“Man Alive”: Modern Literature and the New Humanisms Mondays 10:00 – 11:30 & Wednesdays 8:30 – 10:00
Professor
Dominic Manganiello
Introduction Ever since its beginnings in Homer, Western literature has always possessed the insight, wrote Erich Auerbach, that “man is an indivisible unity of body (appearance and physical strength) and spirit (reason and will).” By the annus mirabilis of 1910, however, human character, Virginia Woolf famously claimed, appeared to change, triggering a crisis in the philosophical concept of Man that in turn prompted artists to refigure the human in an anti-realist mode. Ironically, the implementation of this modernist narrative strategy, a process that involved, in Ortega ‘s words, “a progressive elimination of the human, all too human, elements” of the person, eventually led Foucault to announce, in Nietzschean fashion, “the death of man.” In spite of the dehumanizing impulse cultural critics detected at work behind much modern art, D. H. Lawrence could still dream in 1936 of bringing back “man alive,” that is, “the wholeness of a man, the wholeness of a woman,” in his fictions. The seminar will accordingly examine the valiant attempts of a significant group of twentieth-century writers to resuscitate the dead art of humanistic representation. The new quest for human integrity prepared the ground for various types of humanism, whether anthropocentric or Christian, to flourish in the same hedgerow. Questions relating to the roots of these competing visions of humanism and their aesthetic impact will provide a springboard for seminar discussions. Sessions will focus primarily on literary depictions of human nature that are grounded either in an “ethical realism” (Levinas) or in a “transcendental realism (Maritain). Grading seminar paper: 25% seminar work: 25% research paper: 50%
Texts J. Joyce, Ulysses (Penguin) [selections] V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Oxford) T.S. Eliot, Selected Poems (Faber) ------------. The Cocktail Party (Faber) G.K. Chesterton, Manalive (Dover) F. O’Connor, “The Enduring Chill,” “Parker’s Back” (in The Complete Stories) [Douglas & McIntyre] C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (Harper Collins) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Harper Collins) D.L. Sayers, Are Women Human? (Eerdmans) --------------. Gaudy Night (New English Library) A. Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Penguin) W. Berry, Remembering (North Point Press) M. O’Brien, Strangers and Sojourners (Ignatius)
ENG 7302
Imagining Modern London: The Capital as Text and Context Tuesdays 5:30 – 8:30
Professor
Keith Wilson
This course will consider the changing and yet resiliently enduring use of London, as both text and context, in modern British fiction. It will engage with such questions as the relationship between London as centre and London as margin; London as imperial embarkation point and as post-colonial destination; London as emblem of cultural cohesion and as site of apocalyptic fracture; London as external realist backdrop and as what Penelope Lively calls a "city of the mind". This will necessarily involve considering questions of historical moment, genre, audience, and authority (textual, intellectual, and political), and will lead to speculative conclusions about the source and nature of whatever cultural centrality London still has in the Twenty-first Century. Method Lecture and seminar. Grading Seminars/class contribution/weekly discussion points 50%; term essay 50%. Texts George Gissing, The Nether World (1889). Arthur Morrison, A Child of the Jago (1896). Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907). Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square (1941). Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (1949). Nell Dunn, Up the Junction (1963). Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (1985). Penelope Lively, City of the Mind (1991). Graham Swift, Last Orders (1996). Monica Ali, Brick Lane (2003). Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005).
ENG 7321
Canadian Long Poems: From E.J. Pratt to Contemporary Practitioners Thursdays 5:30 - 8:30
Professor
Seymour Mayne
Introduction In this seminar we will examine the development of the long poem, focusing on key texts from the early modern period to the late twentieth century. Drawing on Dorothy Livesay's poetry and her controversial formulation of the documentary poem as a uniquely Canadian genre, we will study the narrative, sequential, and serial works of Pratt, Birney, Klein, Marriott, Page, Dudek, Cohen, Atwood, MacEwen, Ondaatje and others. The course will follow a chronological survey of the long poem, with a view to exploring the poetics and practice of some of the key exponents of the poetic form. Method Seminar and discussion; use of archival and audio-visual material. Grading Seminar presentation and report, class participation 50%; term paper 50% Texts The following texts are either in print and/or on reserve at Morrisset. Many are also available from book dealers specialising in Canadiana: Atwood, Margaret. The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Oxford University Press, 1970. ______________. Power Politics. Anansi, 1971. Birney, Earle. One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems. Ed. S. Solecki. Harbour Publishing, 2006. Cohen, Leonard. The Spice-Box of Earth. McClelland and Stewart, 1961. ___________. Death of a Lady's Man. McClelland and Stewart, 1978. Dudek, Louis. Europe. Porcupine's Quill, 1991. Klein, A.M. Selected Poems. Eds. Z. Pollock, S. Mayne and U. Caplan. University of Toronto Press, 1997. Livesay, Dorothy. The Documentaries. Ryerson Press, 1968. _____________. The Self-Completing Tree: Selected Poems. Dundurn (Beach Holme), 1999. MacEwen, Gwendolyn. The T.E. Lawrence Poems. Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 1982. Marriott, Anne. The Circular Coast: Poems New and Selected. Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 1981. Ondaatje, Michael. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems. Anansi, 1970. Page, P.K. Hologram: A Book of Glosas. Brick Books, 1994. Pratt, E.J. Selected Poems. Eds. S. Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Z. Pollock. University of Toronto Press, 2000.
ENG 7381
Concepts of Culture in Literary Theory Mondays 5:30 – 8:30
Professor
Bernhard Radloff
Introduction The concepts of “culture,” and “cultural production,“ as well as the related concept of “life,” underlie much of contemporary literary theory including New Historicism, Cultural Poetics and other “materialist” approaches. The goal of this course is to examine the provenance of this discourse in the anthropological theories of Karl Marx, Victor Turner, René Girard, and Clifford Geertz. The literary focus of the course will be the impact of these cultural anthropologies on the study of Shakespeare, with particular reference to Stephen Greenblatt, Jonathan Dollimore, and Naomi Conn Leibler. Our objective is to arrive at a critical evaluation of the concepts of culture and cultural production in literary theory. Method Seminar and discussion Grading Paper 1: 20% Seminar and Report : 30% Final Paper: 40% Protocol: 10% Texts Coursepack containing selected essays of Greenblatt, Turner, Girard, Geertz and Gans Works by Greenblatt, Dollimore, and Leibler, as well as Marx, on Reserve Any edition of Shakespeare containing the tragedies.