麻豆AV

Prerequisite: none

Description:听Spenser鈥檚 richly imaginative Faerie Queene is one of the single most widely influential texts in English literature, and constitutes a literary education in itself, since it critically surveys the resources of western culture鈥搃ncluding literature, mythology, iconography, philosophy, and theology--up to its point.听 While having major socio-political investments, this romantic epic is nonetheless a central exemplar of literary fantasy, romance, and allegory.听 This course would especially complement study of early modern literature and culture, and particular writers of the period such as Shakespeare and Milton, but would also facilitate study of any literary periods in which Spenser strongly influenced writers, readers, and critics, as he did from around 1580 to 1900.听 Knowledge of The Faerie Queene thus provides a highly valuable basis for any literary studies within that broad expanse of time.听 Yet allusions to and borrowings from this poet quite widely appear in twentieth-century literature too.听 He is one of the great fantasists, and would appeal much to anyone interested in such writings and their development.听 His poetry is also important for the history of epic, for the history of the sublime in literature in the English language, and for the so-called 鈥渓ine of vision鈥� therein:听 writers who claim some powers of special insight, such as Milton, Blake, Yeats, Eliot, and Wallace Stevens.

罢别虫迟蝉:听

The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, 2^nd Longmans edition, paperback
Course Reader
(All available at the Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street.)

鈥�Evaluation:听4 brief in-class quizzes of 10% each; term paper 50%; class attendance and participation 10%

Format:听Lectures and class discussion

Description:听鈥淵our Cantos, I now judge, to be the first and only serious use of the great technical possibilities of the cinematograph,鈥� wrote the media theorist Marshall McLuhan in a 1948 letter to the poet Ezra Pound. 鈥淎m I right in thinking of them as a montage of personae and sculptured images?鈥� McLuhan was right, but he had only part of the story, for the influence he detected cut more ways than one: montage鈥攖he dialectical juxtaposition of images鈥攚as less one medium鈥檚 gift to another than a multimedia joint discovery. Pound first articulated his theory of it in 1920, with his seminal essay on the Chinese ideogram, then put it into practice in 1922 with his editing of The Waste Land, the same year Ulysses was published; the next year Sergei Eisenstein wrote his 鈥淢ontage of Attractions鈥� essay, and the great age of Soviet film and 鈥渄ialectical montage鈥� began. Eisenstein鈥檚 first film and Pound鈥檚 first volume of Cantos both appeared in 1925, as did John Dos Passos鈥� Manhattan Transfer and Hemingway鈥檚 In Our Time. Eisenstein鈥檚 influential 1929 essay, 鈥淭he Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram,鈥� is strikingly similar in its terms, analogies, and arguments to Pound鈥檚 from 1920; while in a later essay, Eisenstein traced the formal genealogy of montage not to ideogrammatic poetry but to the novels of Charles Dickens, and from Dickens through D.W. Griffiths (whose 1916 Birth of a Nation codified the grammar of montage for commercial cinema). The very emergence of montage, in short, was dialectical, a synthesis of literature and cinema, of technology and the arts.

This course traces the aesthetic and ideological trajectory of montage from the 1920s through the late twentieth century. Key early figures will include Eisenstein, Pound, Dos Passos, Luis Bu帽uel, Dziga Vertov, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht; as we approach midcentury we鈥檒l turn to the American avant-garde, including poets and artists associated with Black Mountain College, 鈥渟tructural鈥� filmmakers such as Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren, and Ernie Gehr, and the use of 鈥渃ut-up鈥� techniques by novelists from William Burroughs to Kathy Acker. Topics will include the adoption of montage as critical and scholarly method (McLuhan, Hugh Kenner, Guy Davenport, et al); critiques of montage by Georg Luk谩cs, Andre Bazin, and Frederic Jameson, along with formal resistance to it among Italian neorealists and 鈥渙bservational鈥� filmmakers from Jean Rouch to Lucien Castaing-Taylor; and the long arc of montage from a 鈥渞evolutionary鈥� syntax (one that 鈥渂urst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second,鈥� as Benjamin put it) to a technique of Brechtian distance, associated with resistance to ideological and commercial manipulation, to a commodified grammar of advertising, fully appropriated by MTV in the 1980s, and thence to a mode of reading in a contemporary digital environment.听

罢别虫迟蝉:听Students must obtain the following texts. I don't care about which edition, but do bring hard copies, even photocopies if it comes to that; no use of devices is permitted in class.

• Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory
• Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
• Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry
• John Dos Passos, The Manhattan Transfer
• Walter Benjamin, Illuminations
• Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
• Donald Allen, The New American Poetry
• Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride
• William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
• Andre Bazin, What is Cinema?
• Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination

I ordered the cheapest editions in print; they're at The Word bookstore on Rue Milton. Most are also available in very cheap used or out-of-print editions from individual sellers through Amazon, BookFinder, Abe.com, etc., so if you鈥檙e looking to save money by all means go online and have at it. Wherever possible, I will also put copies on reserve at McLennan.

In addition, there is a supplementary course reader on sale at Copie Express.

Reccomended texts: (on reserve at McLennan)听

This list will expand over the course of the semester.

• Kathy Acker, Great Expectations
• James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
• Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
• Donald Davie, Articulate Energy. An Inquiry into the Syntax of English Poetry
• John Dos Passos, The 42^nd Parallel: The U.S.A. Trilogy
• Bruce Elder, The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson
• T. S. Eliot, The Annotated Waste Land
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
• Joseph Frank, The Idea of Spatial Form
• Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
• Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era
• Paul Metcalf, Genoa
• W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants
• Jean Toomer, Cane
• Paul Virilio, The Vision Machine
• William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain

Evaluation:听

• In-class participation: 25%
• Two brief response papers (500-1000 words, due dates at your discretion): 30%
• Final paper prospectus (1000 words): 10%
• Final essay (2000-3000 words): 35%

Format:听Lecture, discussion, and brief film screenings in roughly equal parts. Longer films will be screened on campus outside of class time, with reserve copies wherever possible made available on DVD at McLennan.听

Description:听Al Purdy (1918鈥�2000) is one of Canada鈥檚 best-known poets since 1960. With his Governor General鈥檚 awards, a statue in Queen鈥檚 Park in Toronto, a house (the Ameliasburgh A-frame) that is now a museum, a recent full-length film celebrating his life (Brian D. Johnson鈥檚 Al Purdy Was Here, 2016), and even a posthumous Twitter account (@statueofalpurdy), Purdy has achieved a remarkable visibility for a Canadian writer through his poetry alone. What were Purdy鈥檚 literary origins, what changes did his style undergo, and what effect has he had on Canadian poetry subsequently? One major link to the following generation that is now clear is that to Don McKay (b. 1942). McKay, winner of the 2007 Griffin Prize, shares much with Purdy: a childhood in eastern Ontario followed by experiences living across the country, extraordinary devotion to a career as a poet, reliance on and involvement with the Canadian small press rather than foreign publishers, an accessible free-verse style deeply informed by traditional poetics, and above all a romantic fascination with wilderness 鈥� with the mysterious, attractive alterity of other living things, especially animals, and of the land itself. The purpose of this course is to explore the work of two major recent poets in relation to each other and to the nature lyric, an old genre that Canadian nationalism and ecopoetics have renewed. Short selections from several other Canadian poets will help delineate the Purdy-McKay corridor: Archibald Lampman, E.J. Pratt, Earl Birney, Don Coles, Margaret Atwood, Jan Zwicky, Ken Babstock, A.F. Moritz, Dionne Brand, and Arleen Par茅. Atwood has provisionally assessed Purdy as, 鈥渁bove all, an explorer 鈥� pushing into nameless areas of landscape, articulating the inarticulate, poking around in dusty corners of memory and discovering treasure there, digging up the bones and shards of a forgotten ancestral past.鈥� This course will take up the challenge where Atwood leaves off, of evaluating Al Purdy鈥檚 place in Canadian literature.

Texts:

• Al Purdy, Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962鈥�1996 (Harbour) (Students wishing to begin the reading early may start with all of the poems in the first half of this book, pp. 1鈥�75.)
• Don McKay, Camber: Selected Poems (McClelland & Stewart)
• Secondary readings and excerpts from other poets will be made available through 麻豆AV Library听

Evaluation:听oral presentation (20%); essay 1 (30%); essay 2 (40%); participation (10%)听

Format:听Lectures and discussions

Prerequisite:听No formal prerequisite.听 Because substantial attention will be paid to poetic and fictional form and style, however, this advanced course鈥檚 interests and discussions will be directed chiefly to English majors who have completed their required Poetics course.听 The professor鈥檚 training, approaches, and tastes are literary and will necessarily guide discussions, but the expertise of students in other disciplines will be needed as we also work to understand the literary Cohen as a cultural, historical, and musical phenomenon. 听This course is not open to U1 students.听 Students should consult the instructor at the email address above for permission to register.

All students wishing to take this course must attend the first class, even if they have not yet been able to register; latecomers will not be admitted to the course, whether they have registered on Minerva or not.

Description:听Leonard Cohen鈥檚 death, announced to the public one day before the election of Donald Trump to the United States Presidency, and following closely on his acclaimed last album You Want It Darker, not to mention his published letter to former lover Marianne Ihlen after her death, which casually predicted the nearness of his own, struck many fans as the final act of consummate grace in a career full of exceptional showmanship and exceptional pursuits of authenticity.听 Many fans, and the present instructor, felt that an essential presence had gone from their lives upon hearing the news.听 While such emotions are not the stuff of criticism, they might well prompt it; and they are particularly compelling because they imply in each audience member, and in his audience as a whole, a certain reading of Cohen and his works that can be studied, discussed, and written about.听 If for instance you accepted without qualms my paralleling of the terms 鈥渟howmanship鈥� and 鈥渁uthenticity鈥� above, you鈥檙e probably a Cohen fan, actual or potential.听 That鈥檚 a reading of Cohen on your part, one that we will find to be consonant with deep themes and concerns in his complete works.

In this course we will read and listen to as many of the works of Leonard Cohen as time permits, with an emphasis on the period up to and including The Future (1992) but, in this exceptional year, moving on to You Want It Darker (2016), possibly as a starting point.听 From seductive song lyrics to the most scandalously hilarious novel, brutal poems, and moving prayers yet published in Canada, Cohen鈥檚 work demands and rewards scrupulous reading, and the bulk of course time will be given to our discussion of its developing vision and technique.听 This close reading work will help us to separate Cohen as a writer from the 鈥淟eonard Cohen鈥� cultural phenomenon, an important critical task.听 At the same time, we will hope to chart some of the history of that phenomenon, from its emergence after 1961鈥檚 Spice Box of Earth, his attainment of international celebrity after he turned to performance and recording in 1967, its severe waning through the 1970s and early 1980s, its resurgence and reformation after I鈥檓 Your Man in 1988, and its global expansion after the tours of 2008.听 We will try to get at the phenomenon鈥檚 premises and machinery by looking at reviews, interviews, and documentaries, and we will read the biographies (Nadel or Simmons) for a glimpse of Cohen鈥檚 experience and manipulation of it.听 Lecture and discussion will attempt to situate the periods of Cohen鈥檚 work and of his fame in relation to relevant cultural contexts: Beat writing; the poetry of A.M. Klein, Irving Layton, and Michael Ondaatje; the Cold War; cultural representations of the Holocaust; the 1960s and their meanings and outcomes; modernism and post-modernism; the crisis of faith in modernity; neo-conservatism in the 1980s; celebrity and fandom.听 The professor is certainly not expert in all these areas, so students鈥� ideas, knowledge, and experience will be essential to the course鈥檚 success.

One trigger alert: there will be no further trigger alerts in this course.听 Cohen鈥檚 writing is often scandalous, sometimes deliberately so, sometimes unthinkingly.听 Images of violence and death, sometimes misogynistic, are constant in the earlier works, and they can be treated by the author and his personae with an unremitting indifference, even hilarity.听 Students who 鈥渓ove Leonard Cohen鈥� when they enter the course are often shocked to find some of his works ethically repellent.听 I am deeply interested in ethical questions and encourage their consideration by readers and in my classroom.听 If however you tend to approach literature seeking affirmation of your existing values and an untroubled landscape of experience that makes no call on your deepest existential vulnerabilities, I doubt this is the course for you.

罢别虫迟蝉:听

• Cohen, Leonard.听 Beautiful Losers.听 1966.听 Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991.
• ---.听 The Favourite Game.听 1964.听 Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994.
• ---.听 Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs.听 Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994.
• Course-pack: selected poems by A.M. Klein and Irving Layton; Cohen鈥檚 complete The Spice Box of Earth (1961); selections from The Book of Longing; articles and reviews.

鈥�Evaluation:听

• close reading of a single poem or song from Stranger Music, of at least twelve lines and not on the reading list; may include comment on music and Cohen鈥檚 performance if relevant; 5 pp., 20%
• one of (a) analysis of a Cohen song鈥檚 鈥渁fterlife鈥� (for example, cover versions, variant texts, use in other media or advertising)鈥斺�淗allelujah鈥� excluded; or (b) critique of reviews of a particular Cohen volume or album, with your own counter-review; or (c) comparative critique of two film documentaries on Cohen; or (d) reading of a Cohen album as album: song selection, song order, production values, art, marketing, design, etc.听 All 3-5 pp., 20%;
• major research paper, topics suggested by professor, but proposed topics welcomed; 12 pp., 50%
• par颅tic颅ipa颅t颅ion in discussions, 10%.听 If you have not taken a course with Professor Trehearne before, please note the following: perfect attendance is expected, and absences will be noted, but this part of your mark assesses active, useful participation in discussion and not attendance.听 Full attendance through the semester without speaking will earn 0/10.听 Do not take this class if you are not a comfortable participant in class discussions

Format:听鈥婰ecture and discussion听

Description:听Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood share a closely aligned space in terms of Canadian literary history. Although Atwood began to publish her work almost a decade earlier than Ondaatje, both writers came of professional age during a period marked by profound changes in the Canadian literary landscape. That landscape will be explained in detail. Atwood鈥檚 poetry, fiction, and literary criticism transformed the way Canadians understood their national literature. After the publication of Survival, in 1972, a new set of values were introduced that challenged existing norms and set the stage for the arrival of new wave feminism in Canada. At the same time, Atwood was breaking down conventional notions of history, undermining ideas about literary canons, and critiquing received assumptions about sexual norms. Meanwhile, Ondaatje was importing some of the haunting exoticism associated with his childhood years in Sri Lanka. His Canadian poems were set in strange jungles. They explored bizarre transformations and imaginative realms. He liked characters who were 鈥渟ane assassins鈥� and he insisted that 鈥淢y mind is poring chaos / in nets onto the page.鈥� Both authors are drawn to difference, eccentricity, lawlessness, madness. Their characters fall off the map. Like Atwood, Ondaatje wants to revise history, undermine the way we see space, and challenge the status quo when it comes to representing memory, eroticism, desire. But above all, both authors redefine the nature of creativity. What does Ondaatje mean when he asks: 鈥淲hy do I love most / among my heroes those / who sail to that perfect edge / where there is no social fuel鈥�? We will find out. How could Atwood write a poem called 鈥淭his Is a Photograph of Me,鈥� only to reveal that it 鈥渨as taken / the day after I drowned鈥�? How can she be writing the poem, if she is dead? There are some interesting solutions to this mystery. But the poems are more than mysterious. In following the poetic careers of these two eminent writers, we will transform our own understanding of the nature of the creative act. Along the way, we will meet murderers, dreamers, executioners, madmen, seducers, deviants, and a host of others who are prepared to challenge us at every turn. This will not be innocent. It will not be easy. Confession may be involved. The first half of the course will be devoted to Ondaatje鈥檚 poetry; the second half will focus on Atwood鈥檚. Students should be prepared to write on a weekly basis, in order to effect the inevitable self-transformation.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Students registered for this course should obtain the two required texts well in advance of the course. These texts are only available online and from used booksellers.

Atwood, Margaret. Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995.
Ondaatje, Michael. Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems

Evaluation听(provisional): Tentative: participation (10%); attendance (10%); a series of short essays (60%); one group project (20%).

Format:听Seminar

Description:听This course explores major developments in American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century, tracing vectors of influence between individual poets as well as various 'schools' and movements. The approach is formal and technical, with gradually increasing cultural depth of field. We will examine meter, measure, montage, voice, image, syntax, parataxis, narrative, ornament, argument, and so on in ways that prompt consideration of the stakes of style (i.e. the ingenuity, daring, and payoff involved), and reveal aesthetic tensions as old as lyric itself (e.g. between stillness and the temporal, parts and the whole, closure and its alternatives, ritual and improvisation, laying claim to tradition and wrestling free of it) while pointing to their underlying cultural and ideological tectonics. The course is not strictly chronological but it does build toward a literary- historical picture, linking seminal collections by Ginsberg, O'Hara, Plath, Bishop, Jones/Baraka, Berryman, Ashbery, Niedecker, Kleinzahler, and Myles with selected poems, essays, and manifestos by contemporaries, theirs and ours (Robert Lowell, Charles Reznikoff, W.C. Williams, Theodore Roethke, Robert Hayden, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Guy Davenport, Clement Greenberg, Louis Zukofsky, Muriel Rukeyser, Edward Dorn, James Schuyler, Ronald Johnson, W.S. Merwin, Thom Gunn, Frank Bidart, Anthony Hecht, Jay Wright, Archie Ammons, James Merrill, Robert Creeley, Frederick Siedel, Jorie Graham, Claudia Rankine, Christopher Middleton, Fred Moten, Maggie Nelson, Nathaniel Mackey, Rae Armantrout). We will examine contending canons, note the influence of key critics (Bloom, Vendler, Kenner, Perloff), and consider the implications of a poem's setting鈥攊n formal readings or improvisatory performance, in anthologies, collected editions, sequences or otherwise unified volumes, and so on.听

罢别虫迟蝉:听Students must obtain the following collections (in addition to the reader on sale at Copie Express). I don't care about the edition but do bring hard copies, even photocopies if it comes to that; no use of devices is permitted in class.

Evaluation: TBD听

Format:听Lecture and discussion, in roughly equal parts.听

Prerequisite: at least three prior courses in English literature

Description:听The 1930s is often evoked for its turmoil: the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War, mass observation, mass organization, necessary commitment. This course will survey literature of the 1930s with a focus on novels by authors such as Henry Green, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Christopher, Isherwood, Virginia Woolf. Some consideration will be given to documentary writing, as exemplified by George Orwell鈥檚 excursions into the form. Certain motifs recur in literature in the decade of the 1930s: dislocation, travel, trains, crowds, demonstrations, fellow-travellers, factories, radios, 鈥渢he common man,鈥� cosmetics, orphans, class affiliation, lost youth, hotels, redecoration, vacations, cinema, soporifics. Narratives of the period respond to social forces and attempt to influence the direction of politics through committed writing. Often those politics required foreign allegiances of alliances. Thus writers of the 1930s bring to bear an international perspective on domestic situations. Literature of this decade allows multiple points of access into political and social milieus, without foregoing analysis of how narratives construct answers to hypothetical questions.

Texts:

• Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (Penguin)
• Elizabeth Bowen, To the North (Anchor)
• Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Oxford)
• Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale (Penguin)
• Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains
• George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Penguin)
• Henry Green, Party Going (Harvill)

Evaluation:听participation, essays, final exam

Format:听lecture and discussion

Description:听In this course, we study theatre and conversion in early modern England. A conversion is a 鈥渢urning in position, direction, destination鈥� (Oxford English Dictionary) within a field of possibilities that reconstitutes the field itself. Religious conversion is one kind within a field of interrelated forms that includes geopolitical reorientation, material transformation, commercial exchange, literary translation, class and sex change, and human-animal metamorphosis. We ask, how did the forms of conversion translate the horizon lines of knowledge and experience for early modernity, what were the lines of connection among the different forms, and how did theatre integrate, critique, and enable forms of conversion for its playgoers? We study plays by Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Thomas Middleton; related texts about conversion such as those by Augustine, Ovid, and others; and work on the history and theory of conversion.

The idea for the course emerges from a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project, 鈥淓arly Modern Conversions: Religions, Cultures, Ecologies of Cognition鈥� (). The links between the course and the project mean that students will not only be studying theatre and conversion in Shakespeare鈥檚 England but will also be taking an active part in the creation of a new way of understanding religion, culture, theatre, and individual and collective transformation.

罢别虫迟蝉:听(available at Paragraph Books)

• A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream, ed. Peter Holland (Oxford)
• The Winter鈥檚 Tale, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford)
• Anthony and Cleopatra, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford)
• Measure for Measure, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Oxford)
• Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay Halio (Oxford)
• Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. Sylvan Barnett (Signet)
• Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in Women Beware Women and other Plays, ed. Richard Dutton (Oxford)
• Other readings will be provided in electronic form.

Evaluation:听

Four short essays (3 pages double-spaced 40
Participation 15
Final paper (12 pages)听45

Format:听lecture and discussion

Expected Student Preparation:听Previous university-level course work offering some training in relevant areas: critical analysis of poetry; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture.

Description:听This course will examine William Wordsworth鈥檚 diverse poetic oeuvre as well as the major works of his central interlocutors, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth. The landmark works of these writers will allow us to explore the origins of the Romantic era鈥檚 many revolutions: aesthetic, cultural, scientific, political, and religious. Our study of Wordsworth and his peers will focus in particular on six literal and figurative forms of literary and cultural change: 1) the definition of poetry and the social role of the poet; 2) Archaism, ruins, and Gothic fiction; 3) originary myth, the sacred, and the poet as prophet; 4) transatlanticism, empire, and borders; 5) ecology, the local, and the 鈥渘ature poet鈥�; and 6) Romantic science, geology, and natural history.

We will balance aesthetic appreciation with a healthy skepticism of Wordsworth鈥檚鈥攁nd his age鈥檚鈥攃laims to revolution. Some guiding questions: What are the formal, ethical, technological, and thematic ruptures (and continuities) between neoclassical and Romantic literatures and cultures? Were there aesthetic revolutions during the Romantic era? Did the Wordsworth circle drive or follow them? What poetic and fictional forms are most amenable to revolutionary thinking? Is the Romantic Movement that Coleridge and the Wordsworths inaugurated escapist or engaged, radical or reactionary? How do queer, feminist, laboring-class, disabled, and abolitionist writers and subjects participate in the period鈥檚 various representations of revolution? How does critical theory represent Wordsworth (and Romanticism) in our present time? In what ways has Wordsworth鈥檚 (and Romantic) poetry influenced the formation of the English canon and our modern practices of 鈥渃lose reading鈥�?

Certain formal and historical topics will recur throughout the syllabus: representations of war and imperial conflict; attempts to define the poetic imagination; depictions of affect, sensibility, and intimacy; theorizations of nonhuman ontologies and ecologies; embraces of sincerity and sobriety; critiques of empiricism, utilitarianism, and industrialism; originary turns to the history of science, the fragment poem, the lyrical ballad, and the locodescriptive lyric; and revisionary returns to the pagan, the sonnet, the ode, and the epic. Moreover, Wordsworth鈥檚 poetry generates and captures how his remarkably transformative epoch of literary history encompasses the proliferation of new aesthetic theories of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque.

罢别虫迟蝉:听

William Wordsworth,听The Major Works听(Oxford), including听Lyrical Ballads听(1798, 1800) and听The Prelude
W. Wordsworth, The Ruined Cottage听
W. Wordsworth,听The Pedlar
W. Wordsworth,听The Borderers
W. Wordsworth,听The Salisbury Plain Poems
W. Wordsworth,听Peter Bell
W. Wordsworth, The Excursion
Coleridge,听The Major Works听(Oxford), including听Biographia Literaria
Dorothy Wordsworth, journals

Evaluation:听Class presentations (30%); Participation (30%); Research Essay (40%)

Format:听Lectures and discussions

Description:听This course explores major developments in British poetry in the second half of the twentieth century, tracing vectors of influence between individual poets as well as various 'schools' and movements. The approach is formal and technical, with gradually increasing cultural depth of field. We will examine meter, measure, montage, voice, image, syntax, parataxis, narrative, ornament, argument, and so on in ways that prompt consideration of the stakes of style (i.e. the ingenuity, daring, and payoff involved), and reveal aesthetic tensions as old as lyric itself (e.g. between stillness and the temporal, parts and the whole, closure and its alternatives, ritual and improvisation, laying claim to tradition and wrestling free of it) while pointing to their underlying cultural and ideological tectonics. Though not strictly chronological the course does build toward a literary-historical picture of transforming Britishness, tracing the Movement poets鈥� atavistic response to high modernism, the British Poetry Revival鈥檚 engagement with the American avant-garde, the continental and expatriate orientation of sui generis poet-translators like Basil Bunting and Christopher Middleton, and the rising trajectories of Irish and Caribbean poetry against the backdrop of imperial decline.

The reading for the course centers on seminal collections by poets who came into their own after 1945. These are listed below as required texts. Major figures already high in the firmament at that point鈥擶.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Mina Loy, Hugh MacDiarmid, et al鈥攁re represented more cursorily in a supplementary course reader; as are other important contemporaries such as Charles Tomlinson, Donald Davie, Denise Riley, James Berry, J.H. Prynne, Gael Turnbull, Maggie O'Sullivan, E.A. Markham, James Fenton, and Anne Stevenson.听

罢别虫迟蝉:听Students must obtain the following collections (in addition to the reader on sale at Copie Express). I don't care about which edition, but do bring hard copies, even photocopies if it comes to that; no use of devices is permitted in class.

• Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
• Ted Hughes, The Hawk in the Rain
• Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
• Basil Bunting, Briggflatts
• Roy Fisher, A Furnace
• Elaine Feinstein, The Clinic, Memory
• Seamus Heaney, North
• Fred D鈥橝guiar, Mama Dot
• Thom Gunn, The Man with Night Sweats
• Alice Oswald, Dart
  
  I ordered the cheapest editions in print; they're at The Word bookstore on Rue Milton. Most are also available in cheap used or out-of-print editions from individual sellers through Amazon, BookFinder, Abe.com, etc., so if you鈥檙e looking to save money by all means go online and have at it. Wherever possible, I will also put copies on reserve at McLennan.

Recommended Texts (On Reserve At Mclennan):

• Worthwhile books of literary criticism are too numerous to list, worthless ones even more听so. Those listed below are brilliant, accessible, jargon-free and not overly specialized;听several rise to the level of works of art in and of themselves. A couple of them are听exemplary general textbooks on poetry, written with the discerning student in mind: their schemes for breaking down the subject at hand are worth studying, if only to remind you how arbitrary my own is, and invite you to devise your own. All are worth consulting when you're feeling critically or imaginatively stymied. I鈥檒l put copies of each鈥攁nd others as I think of them鈥攐n reserve at McLennan.
• Randall Jarrell, Poetry and the Age (1953)
• Hugh Kenner, The Art of Poetry (1959), A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers (1983), and A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers (1988)
• Helen Vendler, The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar (2015), Soul Says: on Recent Poetry (1996), and Poems, Poets, Poetry: an Introduction and Anthology (1996)
• Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination (1981) and Every Force Evolves a Form (1987)
• Thom Gunn, The Occasions of Poetry: Essays in Criticism and Autobiography (1982) and Shelf Life: Essays, Memoirs, and an Interview (1993) 听
• Christopher Middleton, Jackdaw Jiving (1998)
• Marjorie Perloff, Poetry On and Off the Page: Essays for Emergent Occasions (1998)
• Charles Bernstein, My Way: Speeches and Poems (1999)
• Kenneth Cox, The Art of Language: Selected Essays (2016)
• Seamus Heaney, The Government of the Tongue (1988) and The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (1995)
• August Kleinzahler, Sallies, Romps, Portraits, and Send-Offs: Selected Prose, 2000-2016 (2017)
• Denis Donoghue, England their England: Commentaries on English Language and Literature (1988) and We Irish: Essays on Irish Literature & Society (1986)
• Donald Davie, Purity of Diction in English Verse (1952), Articulate Energy: An Inquiry into the Syntax of Poetry (1955), and Under Briggflatts: A History of Poetry in Great Britain, 1960-1988 (1989)

Evaluation:听

• In-class participation: 15%
• Three close readings (500-1000 words, due dates at your discretion): 35%
• Final essay (2000-3000 words, due December 11): 25%
• Final exam (location and format TBA): 25%

Format:听Lectures and discussions

Prerequisite: None.

Expected Student Preparation: Previous coursework in American Literature before 1900, or in 19th-century British fiction, or permission of instructor. (This course is designed as a participatory seminar for advanced students of literature.)

Description:听Intensive study of a diverse range of shorter prose fictions produced by American authors over the course of the long nineteenth century鈥攃ulminating in close readings of some of the classic short stories produced in the early twentieth century, and ending with a quick look at some contemporary case studies that develop and test the potential in earlier models. Rather than tracing a singular evolution of the short story mode, we will explore a variety of authors whose works test the possibilities of the short form in very different ways. Each of these writers discovered early on that the short story is not simply a miniaturized novel but operates as a literary vehicle with its own distinctive powers and limitations. After an introductory review of recent scholarly work on the theory of the modern short story, and on the history of its development, we will survey a selection of foundational and influential short fictions that reveal the short story鈥檚 uses in relation to myth, romance, and the fantastic; to uncanny plots about ghosts and haunting; to evocation of suppressed emotional or psychic states; to representation of neglected cultural identities; to the impulses of regionalism; to urban experience; to crime and detection; and to self-reflexive interrogations of fictional form itself. Indeed the short story has often served for thoughtful and ambitious American writers not only as a simple form with which they could begin their literary training but as a privileged site for self-conscious experimentation with new modes of imagery, new subject matter, and new narrative techniques. Though it may sometimes be seen as minor, low-brow, and popularizing, always hidden in the shadow of the high art of the great American novel, the short story in fact frequently functions as a rarefied realm for serious ideological and formal critique鈥攁 testing-ground for the most advanced critical and self-critical thinking by American writers. We will focus on the foundational works of authors selected from the following list: Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Hale, Harris, Harte, Twain, Cable, Chesnutt, Crane, Gilman, Chopin, Jewett, London, James, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Anderson, Porter. More contemporary case studies may include works by authors such as O鈥機onnor, Updike, Salinger, Ford, Baldwin, Diaz, Mukherjee, Lahiri, Paley, and Carver.

Texts:听(Course-pack collections of short fiction TBA)听

Evaluation听(tentative): Participation in discussions, 15%; series of one-page textual analyses, 15%; two critical essays, 20% each; take-home final exam, 30%.

Format:听Lectures and discussions

Description:听This course spotlights the 1890s in British literature, testing received ideas about the decade鈥檚 dominant moods and memes against a range of fiction, poetry, and drama. The years between 1890 and 1900 are those of Stoker鈥檚 Dracula, Conan Doyle鈥檚 Sherlock Holmes, H.G. Wells鈥檚 War of the Worlds, controversy about the 鈥淣ew Woman,鈥� the 鈥渄andy,鈥� Aestheticism and Decadence, concerns about what George Gissing called 鈥渟exual anarchy,鈥� the late work of Thomas Hardy, the controversial journal The Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley and Art Nouveau, and both the meteoric success and the trials of Oscar Wilde.

Although the era to which the 1890s belong (called the 鈥�fin de si猫cle鈥�) is often understood as a transitional stage between Victorianism and modernism, a brief phase registering defiance of the Victorian aesthetics and mores of previous decades, this course maintains that the period deserves to be read as importantly distinct from both the Victorian and modernist eras鈥攚ith a cultural environment, leading concerns, guiding anxieties, structures of feeling, and aesthetic commitments of its own.

The decade was widely understood as deriving character from its 蹿颈苍-诲别-蝉颈猫肠濒别 position. Public discourse of the time suggested that as the nineteenth century drew to a close, the moment was ripe for speculation about what the new century might bring: commentators such as Holbrook Jackson read the era鈥檚 emphasis on iconoclasm, artifice, style, and adventure as auguring promising new beginnings. Yet others construed the times as characterized by a foreboding 鈥渟ense of an ending鈥� suggesting a culture in decline: in Degeneration (1892), Max Nordau diagnosed what he read as a diseased society through the 鈥渟ymptoms鈥� of aberrant behavior, bizarre art, and a taste for what Walter Pater called 鈥渟trange鈥� sensations. As we both explore the diversity and common threads among the literature we investigate, we will consider the nature of the decade鈥檚 rejoinders鈥攐ften critical, mischievous, defiant, exploratory鈥攖o earlier Victorian literature, as well as ways in which its cultural work paves the way for the innovations of modernism.

Texts:听(provisional):

Egerton, George (Mary Chavelita Dunne), Keynotes and Discords (1893-4)
Gissing, George, The Odd Women (1893)
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure (1896)
James, Henry, stories (鈥淐ollaboration,鈥� 鈥淭he Real Thing鈥�)
Shaw, G.B., Mrs. Warren鈥檚 Profession (1894)
Stoker, Bram, Dracula (1897)
Wells, H.G. War of the Worlds (1898)
Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
Wilde, Oscar, plays: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), 厂补濒辞尘茅 (1893)

We will also read short fiction (including the work of Henry James, as well as 鈥淣ew Women鈥� writers such as Mona Caird and Sarah Grand); excerpts from Gilbert & Sullivan; and poetry by Ernest Dowson, Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats. Contextual material will treat the work of Max Nordau, Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow Book, Walter Pater, Charles Baudelaire, and Algernon Swinburne.听

Evaluation:听two brief essays (4 pp.), Keywords project (3-4 pp.), longer essay (7-8 pp.), participation听

Format:听Lecture and听class discussion

Prerequisites: at least three prior courses in English literature鈥�

Description:听Without by any means attempting to exhaust its subject, this course surveys twentieth-century Irish literature: poetry, drama, and fiction. Discussion will focus on the correlation between Irish political history and Irish literature because the two domains cannot be kept separate. To that end, we will consider the relation of the Irish Republic to Northern Ireland, as well as the relation between Britain and Ireland. Modernity and postcolonialism will be discussed, as will the emergence of the Celtic Tiger in the 1990s and its failure early 2000s. We will discuss form (lyric, elegy, long poem, short story, drama, novel) and the utility that different modes of literary expression have. Short stories and poems will be interspersed with four novels and one play.

Texts:听

• James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September
• Edna O鈥橞rien, The Country Girls
• Colm Toibin, Blackwater Lightship
• Denis Johnston, The Moon in the Yellow River
• poems by W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Patrick Kavanagh
• short stories by Frank O鈥機onnor, Sean O鈥橣aolain, William Trevor

Evaluation:听participation, essays, final exam

Format:听Lecture and听class discussion

Prerequisites: none, however previous university-level course work in Shakespeare is desirable.

Description:听Ever since Shakespeare鈥檚 plays were written they have been rewritten, and in various and important ways. This course will examine a selection of theatrical adaptations from the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. We will begin with early responses to Shakespeare including John Fletcher鈥檚 The Woman鈥檚 Prize (1611), a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew, and Nahum Tate鈥檚 King Lear (1681), a particularly long-lived adaptation. We will consider Brecht鈥檚 use of Shakespeare in wartime Germany in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941) and Philip Osment鈥檚 This Island鈥檚 Mine (1988), a reimagining of The Tempest written for the Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company. The course will end with Canadian playwright Djanet Sears鈥檚 Harlem Duet (1997), a prelude to Othello. We will also think critically about adaptation as a literary and theatrical practice. An examination of these rewritings of Shakespeare both allows us to explore the multiple cultural traditions and performance practices which have made use of the Bard and also demands that we look at his plays in a new light to identify and analyse the elements of his work that hold continual fascination across time and space.

In addition to reading and discussing play texts, students will also participate in practical workshops in which we will seek to understand these adaptations through performance.

Texts:听Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (eds.), Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (London: Routledge, 2000); further readings on adaptation theory will be provided electronically; a scholarly edition of the complete works of Shakespeare or the individual plays studied will also be necessary.

Evaluation听(tentative):听attendance and participation 10%; research essay 20%; practical assignment 30%; final paper (choice of traditional essay or creative assignment with reflection) 40%

Format:听Lecture, discussion, group work, practical work

This course will allow students to undertake special projects, frequently involving background readings, performances, and essays.听

Description:听

• This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.
• Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.
• Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Application Deadline:听one week before the add/drop period ends.

Application Form:听 engl-434_495_496.doc鈥�

Description:听The fairy tale as a literary genre has its roots in ancient and medieval mythological tales, folktales, romances and wonder tales. Fairy tales thus stand in a long tradition of storytelling but as a literary genre, the fairy tale itself is fairly modern; it may even be considered one of the precursors to the short story and the novel. Although fairy tales today are frequently considered part of children鈥檚 literature, fairy tales have not always been aimed at children, nor do they all end happily. These are fairly recent developments in the history of fairy tales, ones which tend to occlude their importance as a literary genre.

The literary fairy tale as a modern genre begins to appear in the sixteenth-century, when such tales were composed for an adult audience (a tradition beginning with tales by the Italian writers, Giovan Straparola and Giambattista Basile). In seventeenth-century France, Charles Perrault, whose fairy tales are among the most familiar in western European literature, was only one of several writers, mostly women, who wrote fairy tales for the literary salons of Paris in the ancien r茅gime. His contemporary, Madame la Comtesse d鈥橝ulnoy charmed her social and literary circle with her tale of the White Cat, among others, while Madame Leprince de Beaumont, into the eighteenth century, composed the story of Beauty and the Beast for the edification of young ladies.

Literary fairy tales aimed at adult audiences were in vogue into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when German Romanticism inspired the collecting efforts of the Brother Grimm. They have continued to be written into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The aim of this course is to examine the literary fairy tale as a narrative genre; to look at different manifestations of well-known tales, from its precursors to the present-day; and to explore how their themes are continually re-imagined, reconfigured and reinterpreted. Some of the authors to consider are likely to include Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Oscar Wilde, Mary de Morgan, and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. In the twentieth century, we see authors such as Elizabeth Bowen, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, and A.S. Byatt working in 鈥� and re-working 鈥� the genre.

罢别虫迟蝉:听

The Classic Fairy Tales. Edited by Maria Tatar. 2^nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2017.

Other texts to be distributed.

Evaluation:听Essay 25%; seminar presentation 15 %; attendance and participation 10%; proposal for final paper 10%; final paper 40%.

Format:听Lectures and discussions

Description:听In Canada's sesquicentennial year, ENGL 441 will explore Canada's history through its literary cuisine -- what writers have 'cooked up' to serve their readers.

In the course鈥檚 introductory first unit, students will be introduced to larger cultural narratives about Canada鈥檚 food traditions, a majority of which were prompted by Canada鈥檚 centenary celebrations. Through examining ephemera from Expo 1967, we will glimpse the euphoria as 1967 launched a period of intense introspection in which Canadians began to review and revise their culinary practices past and present 鈥� to reconceive food (sometimes retrospectively) as symbol of self, community and nation; to bestow upon humble food items (such as red fife wheat, the donut, tourti猫re, the butter tart, and, most recently, poutine) the burden of iconicity; and to reconfigure perishable food products into historical artifacts. This culinary introspection has continued through 2017, offering lively debate about what stories can and should be told about Canada鈥檚 cuisine(s). This unit will involve exploration of primary artifacts in 麻豆AV鈥檚 Rare Books and Special Collections, taking advantage of some Expo 67 exhibits in greater Montreal, and close scrutiny of cookbook excerpts.

In the course鈥檚 second unit, we will explore two distinct bodies of literature in parallel. On the one hand, we will look to a selection of nonfictional accounts of Canada鈥檚 foodways, both first-hand accounts (journals and diary entries) and analytical commentaries (drawn from the fields of historiography and social food studies). On the other hand, we will read literary works in which food choices and practices figure prominently that, when together, can also showcase moments of pivotal change and continuity in Canada鈥檚 foodways.

We will read these two bodies of work in a loosely chronological fashion, organized according to the period in which the action takes place rather than the date of publication. In order to place our readings in context, our class discussion will also signpost milestones in Canadian social, cultural, and culinary history. In this way, through comparative analysis, we will work to identify and interrogate narratives of Canada's evolving foodways.

In the course鈥檚 third unit, we will bring knowledge accumulated in the course鈥檚 first two units from primary and secondary texts relating to Canadian culinary history to bear on three literary works (one novel, one 鈥榖iotext,鈥� and one play). In this unit of this literature course, we will mobilize (postclassical) narratological frameworks for close textual analysis. In this third course unit especially, we will be alert to the formal elements of each text we read, paying close attention to the way food texts mobilize rhetorical, narrative, and genre-specific techniques to engage and nourish their readers. Towards the course鈥檚 conclusion, we will also consider how metaphors and figures for consumption figure in our understanding of how texts work more generally.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Thanks to the 麻豆AV Library, and significant work on the part of copyright librarian Alexandra Kohn, we have been able to keep book costs down for students. The majority of readings are available electronically. These materials have been made available for the purposes of this particular class in accordance with the relevant licenses and copyright regulations or by arrangement with the copyright holder.
There are only four full-length print texts, noted in bold below and on the schedule, and available from The Word Bookstore on Milton, cheque or cash only. Purchase supports both the independent book store, and the authors:

Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute (1945)
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (1993)
Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (1996)
Tomson Highway. Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout: A"String Quartet" for Four Female Actors. (2005) Vancouver, B.C: Talonbooks.

Evaluation:听Each unit of the class will mobilize a different class assignment, designed to enable students to achieve three specific learning objectives. Participation 10%; 3 course assignments, including one in-class presentation 90%.

Format:听Seminar (capped at 30 students)

Prerequisite: ENGL 342 Introduction to Old English or its equivalent (i.e. and introductory course in Old English).

Description:听贬飞忙迟! This course aims to build on students鈥� knowledge of Old English by engaging in a reading and translation of selected passages from Beowulf. The course aims to advance students鈥� knowledge of Old English grammar and poetic form. We will examine the poetic structure and rhetoric of the text, its heroic theme, the conventions of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and the numerous variations in the editing and translating of this great poem. We will also explore the cultural world of Anglo-Saxon England as it is represented in the text, some related poems (in translation), and some of the debates surrounding its dating and historical context. Classes will be conducted in an informal seminar fashion, as we tackle the translations and interpretations together.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Beowulf: An Edition. Ed. Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

Evaluation: Translation 40%; term paper 35%; seminar presentation 15%; participation and attendance 10%.

Format:听Seminar

Description:听Attending to the material culture of the later Middle Ages allows us to think of literature not just in terms of style (and the hierarchies of aesthetics that accompany such an approach), but also in terms of the materials that mediate texts to us and that conditioned the circumstances in which medieval texts were produced, read, and circulated in the first place. At the same time, we can study the ways that medieval people interpreted or formed part of the material world around them and expressed themselves in terms of the material. What do representations of medieval marvels, wonders, and miracles reveal about pre-modern conceptions of agency, reality, and the material? What happens when we read听Mandeville鈥檚 Travels听alongside medieval maps? How was medieval documentary culture taken up for poetic purposes? And how do print and digital editions condition our own interactions with medieval texts in different ways? The course will be organized around several general categories, including: 鈥淲ondrous Things鈥�; 鈥淭ravel and Collecting鈥�; 鈥淕eography and Landscape鈥�; 鈥淟iterature and Documentary Culture鈥�; 鈥淲orking with Medieval Manuscripts鈥�; and 鈥淎ntiquarianism and the Modern Archive鈥�. A primary aim of this course will be to introduce students to the study of original manuscript (i.e., handwritten) materials from the Middle Ages, including through hands-on workshops with medieval manuscripts in 麻豆AV鈥檚 collections. We will also place medieval materialist theories in conversation with modern Thing Theory, Actor-Network-Theory, and other post- (or anti-) Cartesian models.

Texts:听TBA; several course texts will be read in the original Middle English, but no prior knowledge of Middle English is required.

Evaluation:听

a) Short reading and workshop responses: 35%
b) Final research project + project proposal: 35%
c) Presentation: 10%
d) in-class translation: 5%
e) Participation: 15%

Format:听Seminar discussions

Description:听The object of our seminar is to define, at a theoretical level and through at least four applied case-studies, the fraught terms / keywords 鈥榯heatricality鈥� and 鈥榩erformativity鈥� (and their cognates) to determine not only why, how, and to what ends each term can / might be defined and used, but also to arrive at an understanding of to what extent they are sovereign and / or complementary as Josette F茅ral argues that they are. The seminar is dedicated to the building up of a vocabulary of keywords in the spirit of Raymond Williams, keywords that relate both directly and indirectly to cultural studies (especially film) and drama, theatre, and performance studies, along with digital performance studies, and perhaps video games. 听See the KEYWORDS PROJECT:

Although the critical vocabulary of the seminar is complex and demanding, it will be discussed, seminar-fashion, at a level that is appropriate for a 400-level course. Note that this course is reading / screening intensive. 听Please plan accordingly.听 听

罢别虫迟蝉:听Three essays (two by Josette F茅ral; one by Freddie Rokem) come from a special online issue of SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 31.2 & 3 (2002), ed. Josette F茅ral. This is a theme issue on theatricality and performativity and has an excellent list for further reading (pp. 280-87) which will prove to be fruitful in preparing your presentations and their subsequent short (8-page) essays and your scholarly essay, a term-long project.听 Other essays / chapters, either online or in your Course Pack, will be by Rebecca Schneider, Jacques Derrida, Richard Schnechner, Eugenia Barba, J. L. Austin, Frantz Fanon, Diana Taylor, Philip Auslander, David Savran, Andrew Quick, Daniel Mroz, W. B. Worthen, Kate Dorney, Arlette Farge, Judith Butler, Ricarda Franzen, Dwight Conquergood, Steven High, Judith Pascoe, Paul Maloney, Susie Mee, Paul Schmidt, and Sharon Marcus.

The case-studies will include plays / films of Baz Luhrmann鈥檚 Romeo + Juliet (together with reading privately and collectively out-loud in class, Shakespeare鈥檚 R + J, in a Folger Shakespeare Library online version, and Craig Pearce and Luhrmann鈥檚 final director鈥檚 script); Anton Chekhov鈥檚 Three Sisters; the Wooster Group鈥檚 Brace Up!; Georg B蠇chner鈥檚 Woyzeck together with Werner Herzog鈥檚 film treatment; Federico Garcia Lorca鈥檚 The House of Bernarda Alba together with Mario Camus鈥� film rendering; and Marina Abramovi膰鈥檚 The Artist Is Present. There might also be a guest workshop presentation, in which students will be involved, by Professor Daniel Mroz, relating, in part, to ideas elucidated, historicised, theorised and delineated for performance exercises in a selection from his (brilliant) book, The Dancing Word.听

Evaluation:听Consistent and consequential participation in the ongoing intellectual and creative life of the seminar: 15%; Presentation on a play, theoretical / historical essay, or case-study; this will lead, as an exercise in consequentiality, to the writing of an 8-page (double-spaced) distilled critical argument: the presentation (which might instead be a workshop) and the paper will be worth 35%; 听16--page long (maximum) double-spaced major scholarly essay (choice of individually-negotiated essay topics), developed throughout the course of the term: 50%.

Format:听Lectures, discussion, group work, performance work, individual research, and presentations / performances / demonstrations, film screenings.听

Description:听This course will approach the form of autobiography in the Enlightenment through a brief survey of the European tradition of autobiographical texts from antiquity to the Renaissance. Classic models such as Plato鈥檚 Apology, Marcus Aurelius鈥檚 Meditations, and Saint Augustine鈥檚 Confessions will help us appreciate the motivation and methods of later writing in autobiographical form. Our readings will include not only 鈥渞eal鈥� autobiographies but also first-person narratives in philosophy and literature that provide a background for understanding the emergence of the novel in the 鈥渓ong鈥� eighteenth century (1650-1850). A basic assumption of this course is that the modern novel absorbs and adapts conventions of spiritual autobiography and the presuppositions of selfhood in other forms of first-person storytelling such as dramatic monologue, letter writing, and the diary. We will analyze particular autobiographical narratives to develop a critical vocabulary that should enable us to conceptualize key problems in the evolving relationship between truth and fiction in the history of first-person narrative. Our study of these problems in the representation of inner experience and the sociohistorical conditions of subjectivity will focus on claims to truth or authenticity in relation to the logic of eros, confession, and self-construction.

Texts:听The required reading for this course will include selections from most or all of the following books, which will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). (The list of texts below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in January 2018.)

• Plato, Aristophanes, and Xenophon, The Trials of Socrates (Hackett)
• Plato, Plato on Love (Hackett)
• Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations (Oxford, Penguin, or Hackett)
• St. Augustine, Confessions (Hackett or Oxford)
• Benvenuto Cellini, My Life (Oxford)
• Michel de Montaigne, Essays (Hackett)
• John Bunyan, Grace Abounding (Oxford)
• Daniel Defoe, Roxana (Broadview or Oxford)
• Denis Diderot, The Nun (Oxford)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther (Norton)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (Oxford)
• Benjamin Constant, Adolphe (Oxford or Penguin)
• Stendhal, Love (Penguin)
• Roland Barthes, A Lover鈥檚 Discourse: Fragments (Hill and Wang)

Evaluation:听Paper (60%), presentations (20%), and participation (20%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies). Two or three optional film screenings may be offered in this course, depending on the interest and schedules of the participants.

Format:听Seminar

Prerequisites: ENGL 230 and ENGL 269 and/or permission of the instructor.听

Limited enrollment.听 Permission of instructor required.听 Admission to the course will be by application and interview. Sign-up sheets for interviews will be posted on the door of Arts 240 the first week of April. A written application is due two days before your interview - see format below.听

Description:听The preparation of the dramatic text for production:听1) script analysis, research, planning, 2) auditions and casting, 3) the rehearsal process (with a strong focus on the actor/director relationship), 4)technical elements, 5) performance.

Texts:听

• The Directors Eye by John Ahart (Meriwether Publishing, 2001).
• The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau (Theatre Communications Group, 2005).
• Actions: The Actors' Thesaurus by Marina Caldarone (Maggie Lloyd-Williams, 2004).

*Written Application:听Submit answers to the following questions to myrna.wyatt.selkirk [at] mcgill.ca two days before your interview. Subject Heading: Directing for the Theatre Class Application.听 In your application please use both the number and subject for each response:

1.听听 Directing Experience (include scenes and relevant leadership roles):
2.听听 Acting Experience:
3.听听 Improvisation Experience (not essential for this course):
4.听听 Theatre courses taken at 麻豆AV or elsewhere:
5.听听 Any other relevant experience:
6.听听 What will you bring to this course? Discuss special attributes and personality traits.听 Talk about your ability as a collaborator.
7.听听 What do you hope to get out of this course?
8.听听 Expected year of graduation and Major(s) and Minor(s):
9.听听 Have you taken ENGL 230?听 ENGL 269?

Evaluation:听Class Participation and Attendance; Scene rehearsal and performance; Metaphor/Action Board; Research; Production Book (script analysis, and annotated script) and a journal of the entire process (including final reflections); Workshop Production听

Format:听

Average enrollment: 10听students

Prerequisite: In order to do well in this class, students should have taken a university-level English course (in an English department) in which the textual analysis of literature and/or film was part of the methods of evaluation.

Description:听The course problematizes silence and the mute figure in film and literature. The focus is not on silence as a sign of repression or oppression but silence as a productive site which has the effect of amplifying voices, anxieties, and forces around it. That is to say, we will ask what interests are filled in to replace the silence of the mute. One could say this is a course about cultural ventriloquism.听 We will of necessity discuss the fetishization of truth, identity and voice. The theoretical framework is drawn from some of the ideas of Michel Foucault on the productivity of power via silence; as well there are a few short readings on silence and voice which adopt a Foucauldian perspective. We will read some fiction and screen films in which there is a mute character.听

Texts:听

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Seal Wife, Kathryn Harrison
• Mister Sandman, Barbara Gowdy

Short story:

• Karen Russell, 鈥淎ccident Brief,鈥� The New Yorker (June 19, 2006)

Films:

• The Piano (dir. Jane Campion, 1993)
• Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
• Johnny Belinda听 (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1948)
• Talk to Her (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2002)
• Sweet and Lowdown (dir. Woody Allen, 1999)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo鈥檚 Nest听 (dir. Milos Forman, 1975)

Evaluation听(Tentative): short essays on each text (80%); short essay on a short story (10%); participation in class discussions (10%)

Format:听Lecture, discussion, screenings

Preparation:听Students should have taken ENGL 275, ENGL 277, and at least one 300-level Cultural Studies course

Description:听This course will use the work of Joss Whedon to consider the various ways in which a text can be 鈥渁uthored,鈥� and it will question how the notion of authorship changes across different media forms. In addition to reading a variety of critical texts, we will examine a wide range of Whedon's work in order to address questions of style, theme, genre, and representation. By the end of the semester, students will have learned to challenge and expand dominant notions of authorship and take the dynamics of media history into account when confronting creative work in any medium.听

Texts:听Online readings will be provided by the instructor.

Films and TV Series:

Toy Story听(1995)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer听(1997-2003)
Angel听(1999-2004)
Alien: Resurrection听(1997)
Firefly听(2002)
Serenity听(2005)
Dr. Horrible鈥檚 Sing-Along Blog听(2008)
Dollhouse听(2009-2010)
The Cabin in the Woods听(2012)
The Avengers听(2012)
Much Ado About Nothing听(2012)
In Your Eyes听(2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron听(2015)

Evaluation:听Weekly Blog (35%), Course Engagement (25%), Pop Quizzes (5%), Final Project Proposal (5%), Final Project (30%

Format:听Discussion with some short lectures, weekly screenings with discussion

Note: Registration for this class is by application only. Interested students should send me an email with the subject heading 鈥渁pplication to ENGL 484鈥� stating their interest in the course and qualifications. In most cases, students will be expected to have earned a solid 鈥淏鈥� or better in a film or literature course, but strong students from other fields will be considered. Students interested primarily in fulfilling a degree requirement will be directed elsewhere, as there are many ways to complete requirements. 20 applicants will be admitted. All admitted students are expected to make the course a priority, keeping up with work and attending every seminar meeting.

Description:听This advanced course will test Garrett Stewart鈥檚 recent claim that, in the past few decades, narrative has come to suffer from 鈥減lot exhaustion,鈥� from an inability to render contemporary social forces and lived experience in the form of a coherent, forward-moving story with a satisfying resolution. Homing in on two of the more striking tendencies in recent fiction鈥攖he time-manipulation narrative and the inward turning meta-narrative鈥攚e will consider to what extent these narrative strategies confirm our worst dilemmas in the way Stewart suggests, and to what extent they offer new ways of conceptualizing the relations that make up our world. Possible films include Memento, Primer, Before the Rain. Possible novels include Life After Life, Remainder, The Intuitionist.

Texts:听a coursepack of narrative theory in addition to selected novels.

Evaluation:听

journals 35%
paper proposal 5% 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听
term paper 35%
participation 25%

Format:听Seminar

Description:听Costumes do not exist in a vacuum.听 They are a response to social and political factors specific to the era in which they were created.听 They are inextricably linked to the art and architecture of their day as they are to the current political and moral beliefs.听 A micro mini skirt comments on the sexual mores of the 1960鈥檚 as succinctly as any treatise on sexual liberation.听 The structure of this course will alternate between instructor information and student response.听 The instructor will present the costume history of each specific era through slide format, example pieces, and embodied learning.听 In the next class, students will present their oral projects which respond to the specific era.听 They will answer questions such as:听 What is the common aesthetic between furniture and clothing design of the Victorian era (or 鈥淗ow the heck did they sit down in that鈥�?). 听How does the music of the 1920鈥檚 effect dance, and in turn, clothing styles? How do the political and economic realities of the day impact upon the clothing of the 1930鈥檚?听

Historical overview of costumes will be enhanced by embodied learning and an inquisitive look at the link between clothing and the culture that created them.听

Texts:听none required.听 Expect one museum entrance fee during the semester.

Evaluation听(subject to change): attendance/participation 10%, oral presentations 40% (two presentations worth 20% each), short paper 10%, two quizzes worth 10% each, creative project or final paper 20%.

Format:听Alternating lectures by the instructor and oral presentations by the students.

听

Description:听This course examines the unique formal and aesthetic qualities of the North American graphic novel, with particular emphasis on visual analysis.听 Considerable attention will therefore be paid to close reading and to the analysis of formal and stylistic elements that distinguish comics as a unique artistic phenomenon.听 The course does not provide an historical survey of comics, nor does it evince interest in popular genres.

The texts will be chosen based not only on historical impact, verifiable influence or general popularity with readers but also with an eye to comics that experiment and expand the boundaries of the medium. 听

The course will be organized into approximately four thematic groupings: revisionist narratives within the mainstream, memoirs and confessionals, new journalism, and auteur comix.

Writers and artists to be chosen from include: Will Eisner, Debbie Dreschler, James Sturm, Lynda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, Eddie Campbell, Art Spiegelman, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Alison Bechdel, David Collier, Ben Katchor, Marjane Satrapi, Rutu Modan, Jason Lutes, Jeff Smith, Joe Sacco, Carla Speed McNeil, David B., Chris Ware, Los Bros. Hernandez, Nick Abadzis, Rick Veitch, Phoebe Gloeckner, Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb, Adrian Tomine, Jack Jackson, Craig Thompson, James Kochalka, Tom Gauld, Ed Piskor, Jeff Lemire, Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, Kate Beaton, Gene Luen Yang, Faryl Dalrymple, Matt Kindt, Stephen Collins, Sarah Glidden, Alex Robinson, and Scott McCloud.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation:

One formal analysis: 25%
One mid-term essay: 30%
One final essay: 30%
Class Participation: 15%

Format:听Lectures and discussions

Prerequisites:听By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Description:听

• This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.
• Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.
• Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Application Deadline:听one week before the add/drop period ends.

Application Form:听 engl-434_495_496.doc鈥�

Prerequisites:听By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Description:听

• This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.
• Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.
• Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Application Deadline:听one week before the add/drop period ends.

Application Form:听 engl-434_495_496.doc鈥�