CL 202D 16641 McCARTHY TU 3-6 80 HAAS PAV
Approaches to Genre: Drama
"Staging the Comic Family"
Domestic comedy has a very clear, though not necessarily very distinguished, line of
descent through the Western literary tradition. Although the forms of plots
(lost-and-found children, bed tricks, thwarted courtship) and characters (hen-pecked
husbands, callow youths) have been remarkably persistent, the values and social practices
that these forms embody have varied widely in different periods and different sub-genres.
Further, this type of comedy has special interest since in many societies it has been
situated at the boundary between popular culture and high culture (perhaps achieving its
effects through its very triviality) and so can offer an opportunity to explore the
relationship between literary and extra-literary discourses. In this seminar we will
survey some of the major theories of comedy and its social functioning, while reading
plays that represent a variety of sub-genres and some of the critical periods in the
development of the genre (republican Rome, Renaissance England and Italy, Restoration
England, late-nineteenth-century London and Paris). In each case, the plays will be read
as far as possible in the context of the historical conditions of production and the
audience. Final selection of the plays read and periods/literatures studied will depend on
the interests of the students.
Tentative list of authors studied:
Menander, Plautus, Terence
Shakespeare, Jonson
Machiavelli
Moliere
Congreve, Wycherly
Wilde, Feydeau, Labiche
CL 212:1/ 16632 J. DUGGAN/ TH 2-5 308 DOE LIB.
ArtHist 257 H. STAHL
"The Medieval Book"
An introduction to research in western medieval manuscripts, principally twelfth to
fifteenth century, using primarily original works and facsimiles in the Bancroft, J. Paul
Getty Museum, and other California collections. The manuscripts to be studied will be
religious and secular, literary and scientific, institutional and private, and almost all
aspects of the book will be considered, from codicology and paleography to programs of
illumination and marginal decoration. The course is intended to provide students with an
introduction to the history of the book, the basic skills for manuscript research (both
textual and visual), and a familiarity with current issues in interpretation. Among our
ongoing concerns will be: textual and picture criticism, economic and social implications
of new production practices, image and text, the construction of the author and reader,
gender and patronage, anthologies and programmatic content. There will be several short
exercises (transcription, attribution, cataloguing) and a substantial research paper.
Students from all fields of study are welcome. However, because of the nature of the
material, enrollment is limited; interested students should come to the first class
meeting and may wish to consult in advance with one of the instructors.
Thursdays, 2-5, the first meeting on January 20 will be in Doe Library Rm 308B.
CL 212:2 16635 BRAET W 3-6 335 LE CONTE
"Comparative Arthurian Literature"
This course proposes to acquaint the participants with a number of representative
Arthurian texts. After an introductory lecture, the seminar intends to follow a double
track: the development of Arthurian loci in general will alternate with a special focus on
Tristanian narremes. A selection of texts and excerpts translated from the Middle Dutch,
Middle English, Old French, Middle High German, Old Irish and Welsh will be made available
in modern English. Preparation of the required reading, individual presentation of one
text/aspect and active participation in the group discussion are highly desirable.
CL 223 16638 ALTER TH 3-6 123 DWINELLE
Studies in the Nineteenth Century
One of the major directions of social, cultural, and demographic transformation in
nineteenth-century Europe (and to a lesser degree, and in a somewhat different way, in
nineteenth-century America) was the dramatic expansion of great metropolitan centers, in
part through an extensive migration from the provinces to the cities. The seminar will
consider how the novel registered this new urban world, both its energies and its social
pathologies. We will ask to what extent the novel served as an effective vehicle for
representing the new urban realities, how it might have provided a critical perspective
for seeing them, and how it might have had the effect of creating a new mythology out of
the materials of the modern
metropolis. The course will scrutinize in detail the fictional worlds of five novels,
without imposing any predetermined theoretical framework.
The books we will consider are COUSIN BETTE, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,
THE SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION, and THE HOUSE OF MIRTH.
CL 240 16644 BERNSTEIN TU 3-6 337 LE CONTE
"Modernism and the Imagination in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna"
Robert Musil saw his Vienna as both uniquely itself and "nothing but a
particularly clear-cut case of the modern world," and this seminar will explore how
some of the central problems of both literary modernism and of modern political, social,
and sexual history can be seen with particular vividness in the Austria of 1900 to 1914.
Although its subject might also be called "The Last Days of Imperial
Mitteleuropa," I am not especially concerned with reading the various works for their
foreshadowing of the First World War, nor for their relationships to various
literary-historical taxonomies (e.g., "the Bildungsroman," "the age of
suspicion," etc.).
Instead, we will be probing a set of related themes across a number of genres whose
deeper family resemblance will only emerge as our discussion itself unfolds. The central
text of the seminar will be Musil's Man without Qualities which we will be reading
in its incomplete entirety. In addition, there will be a considerable amount of
supplementary material available for discussion, depending in part on the particular
interests of the class, including, for example, readings from Freud, Kafka, Schoenberg,
and Herzl. We will also be listening to music, especially the operas of Richard Strauss
and Arnold Schoenberg and looking at art from the period. Regular and active in-class
participation and a willingness to engage in copious reading are the principal
prerequisites for the course.
Required texts
Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften or The Man Without Qualities
Joseph Roth , Radetzkymarsch or The Radetzky March
Arthur Schnitzler, Der Weg ins Frei or The Road Into The Open
Carl Schorske, Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture
CL 253 16647 KRONFELD M 3-6 80 HAAS PAV
CL 265 16650 SPACKMAN W 3-6 214 HAVILAND
"Gender, Sexuality, and Fascist Discourse"
In this course we will examine the growing body of work that finds questions of gender
and sexuality to be essential to our understanding of fascist discourse, where
"discourse" is understood to include not only verbal artifacts (literary and
non-literary) but non-verbal practices as well (spectacle, ritual etc.). The course is
designed to accommodate students who work in a broad range of national literatures and
cultures, and to encourage interdisciplinary work. It will be organized in three modules.
We will begin by returning to several psychosexual or gendered interpretations of fascism
itself (Reich, Sartre, Theweleit, Mosse), and read them within a review of interpretations
of fascism in general (Sternhell, De Felice, Laclau, De Grazia, among others). In the
second module, we will read a series of recent analyses of fascist discourse (including
Burke, Jameson, Kaplan, Hewitt, Schnapp,) that will provide us with a set of questions and
methods that will then be examined in relation to specific instances of fascist discourse
in the third section of the course. In that module, each seminar participant will present
a case-study from his/her own field of expertise, whether that field be conceived of as
"national," "generic," or suggested by the participants themselves.
Requirements of the course: one short response paper, one in-class presentation, one
20-25 page seminar paper.
CL 360B 16689 FLYNN F 12-2 123 DWINELLE
