Syllabus
Tuesday, January 26
Readings: Callistratus, Descriptions (3rd century CE), trans. A. Fairbanks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1931), pp. 395ff, 419ff; Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy (1957), trans. Richard Howard, (New York: Grove Press, 1959), pp. 7-12 (xeroxes in class).
DESCRIPTION, QUEST ROMANCE, & ALLEGORY
Thursday, January 28
Readings: Chretien de Troyes, Yvain/ Le chevalier au lion (12th century), pp. 295-328;
Silke Horstkotte, “Ekphrasis as Genre, Ekphrasis as Metaphenomenology,” (sections 2 & 4) in Literary Visualities: Visual Descriptions, Readerly Visualisations, Textual Visibilities (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, Inc, 2017), pp. 132-137 and 142-144. (library EBook only).
Tuesday, February 2
Readings: Chretien de Troyes, Yvain/ Le chevalier au lion (12th century), pp. 329-380.
Michel Beaujour, "Some Paradoxes of Description," Yale French Studies, vol. 61 (1981). pp 27-59 (JStor).
DESCRIPTION & the FICTIONS of ETHNOGRAPHY
Thursday, February 4
Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Preface and Chapters 1-11 (pp 33-136);
Mieke Bal, Narratology, An Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, pp.19-43 with emphasis on pp. 36-43 (reserve).
Tuesday, February 9
Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, Chapters 12-26 (pp. 136-270)
M. Bahktin, The Dialogic Imagination: four essays, (UTexas, 1981) pp. 84-85 and pp. 146-166, (E-Book: full text available)
Thursday, February 11
Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, Chapters 27-Appendix
M. Bahktin, The Dialogic Imagination: four essays, (UTexas, 1981) 224-236, (E-Book: full text available).
DESCRIPTION & (R)EVOLUTION & MEDIA
Tuesday, February 16
Gustave Flaubert, A Sentimental Education (1869), Part 1 (pp 5-109) ;
T. J. Mitchell, "What is an Image?" in Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, pp. 7-46 (reserve).
Thursday, February 18
Flaubert, A Sentimental Education, Part 2, Chapters 1-2, (pp. 113-183);
Roland Barthes, "The Reality Effect" in The Rustle of Language (Berkeley: University of California Press) pp. 141-148 (pdf).
Tuesday, February 23
Flaubert, A Sentimental Education, Part 2, Chapter 3 – Part 3, Chapter 1, (pp 184-365);
Michel Riffaterre, “Descriptive Imagery" in Yale French Studies, vol. 61 (1981), p. 107-125 (JStor).
Thursday, February 25
Flaubert, A Sentimental Education, Part 3, Chapter 5-end (pp 366-460).
DESCRIPTION, LABOR, LANDSCAPE & GENRE
Tuesday, March 2
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Ubervilles, (1891) PHASE 1-2 (pp 13-114);
Elaine Scarry, “On solidity” and “On the place of instruction” in Dreaming by the Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp 10-39 (reserve).
Thursday, March 4
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Ubervilles, PHASE 3 (pp 115-168);
Elaine Scarry, “Work and Body in Hardy and other 19th C. Novelists” in Representations, vol. 3, 1983, pp. 90-123 (JStor).
Tuesday, March 9
BREAK (Cancel one class during period March 1-12)
Thursday, March 11
Hardy, Tess of the d’Ubervilles, PHASE 4-6 (pp 169-386);
James Krasner, The Edges of Sunlight: Visual Selection in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative (1992), pp. 73-107 (reserve).
Tuessday, March 16
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Ubervilles, PHASE 7 (pp 387-420).
DESCRIPTION and the ROMANCE of COMMODITY CAPITALISM
Thursday, March 18
Emile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise/ Au Bonheur des Dames (serialized publication in France, 1882; first English translation 1883), introduction by Kristin Ross, Chapters 1-7, with emphasis on 3-7 (pp 54-184).
Tuesday, March 23
Emile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise/ Au Bonheur des Dames, Chapters 8-14, with emphasis on 10-14 (pp 240-383);
Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds, chap 3. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp 58-106 (reserve).
DESCRIPTION, MOCK EPIC & EMPIRE
Thursday, March 25
Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931) (Harcourt and Brace, 1959), pp 7-107
Klitgard, “The Interludes” in On the Horizon: A Poetics of the Sublime in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (Academica Press, 2004), pp. 137-157 (pdf).
Tuesday, March 30
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, pp 108-235
Dora Zhang, “Naming the Indescribable: Woolf, Russell, James, and the Limits of Description” in New Literary History, Winter 2014, 45:1, pp 51-70 (pdf).
Thursday, April 1
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, pp 236-297
Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Time” in Critical Inquiry, vol. 7, no. 1, 1980 (JStor).
DESCRIPTION, LABOR, TABOO & REPETITION
Tuesday, April 6
Gertrude Stein Three Lives (1909), “The Good Anna,” pp. 3-56; introduction by Ann Charters (New York: Penguin, 1990).
Stein, “Composition as Explanation” in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. Carl Van Vechten (New York: Vintage 1962, orig. 1945) (online).
Thursday, April 8
Gertrude Stein Three Lives (1909), “The Good Anna,” pp 3-56;
Jeff Solomon, “Three Lesbian Lives” in So Famous and So Gay (Minneapolis/London: University of Minneapolis Press, 2017), pp. 139-165 (pdf).
SPRING BREAK, April 10-18
DESCRIPTION, EMBODIMENT & EMPATHY
Tuesday, April 20
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (New York: Scribner, 2017), pp 1-90;
Yesmina Khedhir, “Ghosts Tell Stories: Cultural Haunting” (pdf).
Thursday, April 22
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing, pp 91-168;
Ellen Esrock, The Reader’s Eye, Visual Imaging as Reader Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994), pp. 151-205 (reserve).
Tuesday, April 26
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing, pp 169-285.
Thursday, April 28
Final EXAM: You will perform a reading from any one of the novels read this semester for the conference, explaining why you have made the selection you did in light of the questions for the course.
Texts
The primary texts for this course are on sale at the bookstore. Please buy these editions--this greatly facilitates close reading in conference. Secondary texts will either be handed out as xeroxes, or available as pdfs. or through the Reed library online.
Written Assignments
There are three kinds of assignments, which you will cycle through, writing in alternate weeks. The first is a synopsis of the theoretical reading in no fewer than 3 and no more than 6 bullet points (250 words max). The second assignment is a close reading or explication of a single paragraph from either the theoretical or literary reading. The third assignment is a 4-page paper that will include three elements: a close reading of a descriptive paragraph of your choice; an argument about how this passage is related to the text as a whole; and finally, an account of how your argument is related to one of the theoretical ideas put forward in the secondary reading. The passages from both the text and the theory you have chosen to work with must appear at the head of the paper, single-spaced. Otherwise the order in which you choose to arrange the required elements of any given paper is up to you.
Keep in mind that secondary texts are chosen primarily for their theoretical interest and may not address the primary texts explicitly. The secondary readings are not intended to “explain” the primary texts but rather to provoke your own critical and theoretical thinking. You will need to speculate actively both about how a particular theorist would read the primary text and also about what literary phenomena you have observed that the theorist does not or could not account for. This is an open invitation to create and articulate literary theory of your own.
Active participation in conference discussions is required. You must e-mail me your written assignments no later than 3PM on the day they are due. Prepare to present all written assignments orally (informally) in conference. Late assignments are accepted only in case of emergency. Those diagnosed with Covid will be excused from conference for 2 weeks and will be allowed extra time for writing assignments if necessary.