Spring 2001 Course Offerings: 1A-1B

CL 1A:1 16603 BANBAJI MWF 10 223 WHEELER

"Literature and Politics"

In this course we will discuss moral and political aspects of literary works. Through a reading of a series of literary and programmatic texts we shall explore the different ways in which literature tries to represent reality and to act upon it. In this context we will raise questions concerning the price that "politically effective" literature exacts in terms of oversimplifications and dogmatism.

Required texts

• Aharon Appelfeld, Badenheim 1939
• Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arthuro Ui
• Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno"
• Franz Kafka, The Trial
• Sophocles, Antigone
• W. Shakespeare, Hamlet

Requirements

Students will be expected to attend classes, to participate in class discussion, to read carefully the assigned works and to write around 30 pages of thoughtful prose. Additional informal writing assignments, as well as one oral presentation, are required as well.

CL 1A:2 16606 BALBUENA MWF 11 224 WHEELER

"Ornament and Artifice: Dandyism and Decadence"

This course will study the figure of the dandy, more specifically, that of the writer-dandy. A man who re-invents himself in reaction to society, the dandy claims the mask and the artifice, and makes his body the stage for his aesthetic ideas. Out of himself he fashions a "fictional Character," self-controlled, sober, impassible, elegant, refined.

Focusing on "writers-dandies" such as Barbey d'Aurevilly, Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Oscar Wilde, we will observe how dandyism and writing constitute two parallel attempts to live a novelistic, fictional life. We will discuss issues of identity-formation and gender construction in the background of 19th century Paris and literary "Decadence," but will center our analysis on Huysmans' Against Nature (À Rebours), the synthesis of decadent dandyism. Among the topics we will cover are the search for beauty in the aesthetization of daily life; denial of nature and quest for artifice; fashion, decoration and landscaping.

Some questions to be raised in the course are: Why is the dandy always a male? How does he construct and manipulate his masculinity? How does this construction affect the image and the role of women? Is there a correspondence among the language, the look and the lifestyle of the writer-dandy?

Required texts

• J.-K. Huysmans, Against Nature
• Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil (selected poems)
  Prose Poems
  Writings on Art (excerpts)
• Stéphane Mallarmé, "Prose for des Esseintes" and other selected poems
• Jules Laforgue, Spleen (selected poems)
  Moral Tales ("Hamlet," "Salomé")
• Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin (Preface)
• Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Lucio's Confession
• Oscar Wilde, "Pen, Pencil and Poison"
  "The Critic as Artist"
  "The Decay of Lying"
• E.A. Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"
  "The Man in the Crowd"
  "Philosophy of Furniture"
  "The Domain of Arnheim'
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet
• Ovid, Metamorphoses
• Andrea Lansford, The Everyday Writer
• A reader available at Instant Copying and Laser Printing at 2015 Shattuck (beside Burger King at the corner of University, phone 704-9700).

CL 1A:3 16609 WHITE TT 9:30-11 242 DWINELLE

This course will examine literary representations of fathers and their offspring, both children and creative productions. From contemporary lyric poetry to the Hebrew Bible, modernist short story to gothic novel, autobiography to film, these texts will serve as increasingly dysfunctional examples of father/child relationships and the ways those relationships are inscribed on the body, as well as implicated in the creative process. Students will be continually engaged in a process of engendering their own texts; the course will stress close readings as a method of textual analysis, and revision and peer editing as part of an intensive focus on writing skills.

Course requirements include regular participation in class discussions, peer editing and self-evaluation exercises, a weekly interactive (online) reading journal, and 5 papers (two of which will be substantial revisions).

Required texts

• stories from the Hebrew Bible (Abraham and Isaac; Isaac, Jacob, and Esau)
• Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
• from Rose, Li-Young Li
• from The Father, Sharon Olds
• "The Judgement," Franz Kafka
• "The Circular Ruins," Jorge Luis Borges
• The Liar's Club, Mary Karr
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, directed by Kenneth Branagh (film)
• Geek Love, Katharine Dunn

CL 1A:4 16612 IBBETT TT 9:30-11 223 WHEELER

"A History of the Senses"

Karl Marx wrote, "The forming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world." In this class we will investigate that history, looking at a range of writers who consider our senses and the way in which they mediate our encounters with the world. We'll also think about reading and writing as sensuous experiences in themselves.

We will spend considerable time in class improving basic writing skills. Students will write a number of short essays (2-6 pages) over the course of the semester.

In addition to the books listed, there will be a reader with short selections from writers in various traditions - philosophy, cultural studies, popular science, and art history.

Required texts

• Ovid, Metamorphoses
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
• Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (selections in reader)
• M.F.K. Fisher, An Alphabet for Gourmets
• Patrick Süskind, Perfume
• Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book

CL 1A:5 16614 VITALE MWF 10 2320 TOLMAN

"The Unconscious and Literature"

This course will attempt to investigate what it could mean for a text to have an 'unconscious', and how this might impact the ways in which we read literary texts. Through a series of readings we will attempt to trace the historical development of the unconscious as a concept, as well as demonstrate ways in which this notion pre-dates its development into psychoanalysis, the so-called 'science' of the unconscious. In doing so, this course will attempt to show how the notion of the unconscious can be used to open a text to a variety of possible readings. Through this type of reading, it may be possible to unearth the way in which certain texts depend upon often hidden forms of racial, gender, and class prejudice.

Students will be required to produce approximately 30 pages of written work, divided between two longer papers and several shorter ones. Students will be allowed to revise drafts of the longer papers. Participation, attendance, and an oral presentation will also be part of the student's grade.

Required Texts

• Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare
• The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka
• The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• Black Skins, White Masks, Frantz Fannon
• Course Reader Includes selections by Hoffman, Freud, Breton, Dali, Woolf, Brecht, Lacan, and Butler

Course Requirements

• 4 Short Papers [2-3 pg.]
• 2 Long Papers [5-7 pg., draft and revised versions]
• Oral Presentation

Grade

• Participation 20% (includes 2-3 surprise reading quizzes)
• Final Paper 25% (10% draft, 15% revised)
• Mid-Semester Paper 20% (10% draft, 10% revised)
• Short Papers 20% (5% each)
• Presentation 15%

CL1B:1 16618 LIU MWF 9 223 WHEELER

"Ignorance and Power"

This course examines the device of "ignorant" characters in divergent national literary traditions and historical periods. We will begin with Bakhtin's famous study of the functions of the rogue, the clown, and the fool in the novel and their "right not to understand" stupid conventions-- "their right to be Other." We will then complicate the argument by bringing two theories of power into dialogue: Foucault's analysis of "knowledge as power" and Sedgwick's formulation of "ignorance as power." Finally, we will discuss Marx's theory of commodity fetishism in conjunction with the film The Matrix to consider the role of ideology in the production of knowledge as well as the production of mass ignorance. Literary texts for this course will be delightfully diverse, ranging from Vergil's ancient epic to contemporary trashy fiction.

Required texts

• Faulkner, William, Absalom! Absalom!
• Hsiao Li-hung, A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers
• Kafka, Franz, The Trial
• Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
• Plautus, Four Comedies
• Sheldon, Sydney. The Rage of Angels
• Vergil, The Aeneid
• Selected critical essays by Foucault, Marx, Sedgwick, and Bakhtin.

Films

• The Matrix
• Swordsman II: Asia the Invincible
• Maybe, Maybe Not (Der bewegte Mann)
• Clueless

CL 1B:2 16621 KITTS MWF 10 242 DWINELLE

Laughing Matters

Humor, it has been observed, is like guerrilla warfare. Success depends on traveling light, striking unexpectedly, and getting away fast. Yet how do we spot the contradiction between a funny veneer and serious issues at stake? In this course we will look at literature, music, film, and television from several national and historical contexts that get to the heart of the matter through clever manipulation of techniques which startle and amuse us. We all know that what is funny to one person or group can be irrelevant to others. What social, psychological, and cultural processes work to make something funny? Which tones or issues speak to you? In addition, to fulfill the R&C requirement, we will hone our skill in argumentative writing by emphasizing the process of revision and working closely with peers, tutors, the teaching assistant, or instructor. One long research paper will be required in addition to three shorter papers. Students will also have the chance to show off humorous talents of their own in oral presentations.

Required texts

Literature

• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
• Gloria Steinem, "If Men Could Menstruate"*
• Dorothy Parker, "A Telephone Call"*
• Joel Chandler Harris, "Miss Cow falls victim to Mr. Rabbit"*
• James Thurber, "The Owl who was God"*
• Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron
• Baudelaire, selections from "Le Spleen de Paris"*
• Nicolai Gogol, "The Nose"*
• Carlo Goldoni, The Servant of Two Masters*
• Humor theory*

• Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace or New St. Martin's Handbook

Film

• Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times
• Roberto Benigni, Life is Beautiful
• Franco Brusati, Bread and Chocolate

Music

• Mozart/Da Ponte, The Marriage of Figaro*

TV

• The Simpsons
• I Love Lucy Show

CL 1B:3 16624 RUPP MWF 10 222 WHEELER

"Hidden Versions - Per and Others"

This Reading & Composition course will cast a cautious eye at some effects of sequestration. Strange things happen when a circumscribed piece of experience is turned into a designated unknown. Various knowledges will beset it and vie with each other over how this mystery bit is to be managed. They may try to make it serve purposes of quarantine, mystification, titillation, prophylaxis, even ecstasy. These effects have most likely to do more with its avid contenders than the hidden bit as such. Whether it is hidden because dangerous or dangerous because hidden may become hard to tell--which may account for some of its curious appeal. What sort of maintenance does the taunting (or daunting) correlation of danger and the hidden require? Should it be cherished or eschewed in the interests of clarity and sanity? How do we know what or if something is there? How to tell and whose version to trust? If there is no way out of what Lacan called 'paranoid knowledge,' then how do we fare within? We will read some shorter and longer fictions and alleged non-fictions so as to take part in this vexing game of hunt the slipping. Their common denominator may be nothing but their interest in sequestration - in designating a chapter hidden rather than merely censored. Not tethered to a fixing explanation or judgment (such as declaring the hidden bit the perverse or deviant which can be shirked and scapegoated on to a select constituency), left turning in a dispossessed limbo, the bit may exude infectious attraction and menace as everyone's signifier of the strange and odd. A curious strain of the demonic-mystical pervades our texts, a strain that links the secreted to sacrifice, suicide, and terminal theatricality--of which the hidden bit may turn out to be entirely innocent!

Shorter Texts (in reader)

• Kenneth Burke, "Version, Con-, Per-, and In- (Thoughts on Djuna Barnes' novel Nightwood).
• Jane Bowles, "Camp Cataract."
• Radclyffe Hall, "Miss Ogilvy finds herself."
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Ethan Brand."
• Jean Genet, Thief's Journal (excerpt).
• Various essays on literary tropism, Freud's unconscious, modernist decadence and sexology.

Longer Texts (Books ordered)

• Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
• Henry James, Turn of the Screw
• Nathanael Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter
• Chester Himes, Primitive
• Colette, The Pure and the Impure

CL 1B:4 16627 TINSLEY MWF 11 242 DWINELLE

"Imaginary Homelands, Strange Homecomings:
Unexpected voyages home in world literature"

In a century of mass travel and mass migration--frequent fliers, car trips, raft rides, wire jumping--most of us will find ourselves, at one point in our lives, strangers in a strange land. And the more drastically landscapes shift... the more we travelers may cling to ideas of home. But if, in the space and time of travel, both voyager and native land transform: how can anyone ever go home? What happens when the "homeland" also becomes an unrecognizable or hostile landscape? Or--what happens when travel itself begins to feel like home? This course aims to provide students with an introduction to critical reading and writing while exploring answers to these questions. Beginning with Salman Rushdie's concept of "imaginary homelands" and our own experiences of travel and return, we will dialogue with poetry, songs, essays, short stories, and novels dealing with this subject: enunciating personal perspectives on travel, homecoming, and what it means to live in more than one "home."

Required texts

• Homer, The Odyssey
• Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew
• Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow
• Myriam Warner-Vieira, Juletane
• Maryse Conde, Crossing the Mangrove
• Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven
• Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Matigari
• Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines
• Marion Bloem, The Cockatoo's Lie

CL 1B:5 16630 WALTER MWF 11 225 WHEELER

"The Family Body"

Genealogy maps interrelations in the figure of the family tree, inviting us to think of the family as a sort of living thing. Imagine, then, that the jagged network of lines and names branching out across the page represents, like an equation in physics, an actual body. The life of this body-the family body-consists of blood relations and a strong belief in the bond of blood and memory. The works in this class all address the struggle of individuals to live in and among this filial body, to protect it or harm it, to yield to its will or to try to control it. Warning! these are challenging books. If you do not like difficult reading, this is not the class for you.

Required texts

• Hesiod, Theogony
• Aeschylus, Oresteia
• Freud, Dora
• Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
• Morrison, Beloved
• Rulfo, Juan, Pedro Páramo
• Shakespeare, Hamlet

Films

• Ran (Kurosawa, 1984)
• The Ice Storm (Lee, 1998)

Additional readings

• Selected poems of Plath.
• If time, selections from Genesis.

CL 1B:6 16633 BLANCO TT 8-9:30 224 WHEELER

"At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky"

At the crossroads of the earth and sky, we see each other and ourselves as having come from somewhere significant, some place; and being in transit, or on the way, to somewhere else. This class explores the ways our notions of place (home, native land, foreign country) inform this encounter: how does the fact of being from someplace (and / or being separated from that place) orient the journeys we make through life, both physical and spiritual? How does "home" become a central point of departure and return for understanding one's personal (or cultural) identity? Or how do the associations that meaningful places evoke --a memory of love, a promise of almost religious significance, or the fear of encountering the dark heart of our innermost nature--unmake and recreate our best-laid plans? Can one create a home away from home in an otherwise foreign environment? Conversely, can anyone really ever "go home?"

On a larger level, these departures and returns are intimately related to the telling and exchanging of stories: stories of unexpected chance and circumstance, stories of the "natives" we meet from other places, and stories of how we become changed, transformed by such encounters. How are places related to the telling of a story; whether that story is a story of one's past, the realization of a hidden purpose in one's life, or a mystery to be solved? What experiences do we accumulate and exchange at the crossroads of the earth and the sky, where we reflect on the passage of time and its meaning, as we journey from one stage in our lives to the next?

In addition to class attendance and participation, the student's grade will be based on quizzes and three writing compositions of increasing length (5, 7, and 12 pages respectively).

Required texts

• Homer, The Odyssey
• Shakespeare, The Tempest
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• Willa Cather, My Antonia
• Cristina Peri Rossi, The Ship of Fools
• Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller
• Short stories, essays, and songs by Leonard Cohen, Isak Dinisen, Italo Calvino, and Walter Benjamin (provided in course reader)

CL 1B:7 16636 SHWARTZ/ GRALLA TT 9:30-11 205 DWINELLE

"Striptease"

Under an alluring paper-thin veil, the narrative beckons the reader, winking knowingly, full of secrets and half-hidden revelations. This course will take up the striptease acted out by texts and performances when they deliberately stage themselves provocatively. As the gauzy layers are peeled back, we may find that a narrator or artist has let more slip than (s)he intended, or that the naked shape pinned in the spotlight exposes our desires as readers/ viewers. At other times, we may discover that a carefully controlled act of seduction has turned suddenly into a performance of protest and violence, in which we are forced to view far more than we ever expected.

By interacting with novels, short stories, plays, poems, critical writings, films, visual art, performance art, and dance, we will examine both veiled characters and defiantly intimate authors/artists in order to perform our own analyses: how can we strip down the narrative/ performance itself?

Required texts

• Oscar Wilde, Salome
• Tanizaki, Quicksand
• Goodman, After Apocalypse
• Also films and course reader: authors/artists to be (un)covered include Atwood, Balzac, Barthes, Boccaccio, Egoyan, Flaubert, Hitchcock, Ono, Sherman, and Yuskavage.

CL 1B:8 16639 POPKIN TT 9:30-11 225 WHEELER

"Fictions of Violence"

What is the relationship between representations of violence in media and fiction? By juxtaposing media representations of violence with fictional narratives, this course will examine both the differences and similarities between these forms of representations, as well as the ways in which fiction and media influence one another. We will interrogate how mediated images lend an air of fictionality to the images they represent; and how fictional narratives often carry the weight of reality. We will pay particular attention to the aesthetics and politics of race, gender and sexuality in these representations of violence. We will also look closely at the way in which shame limits, and animates, these representations. Readings to include texts by Leo Tolstoy, Elie Weisel, Gayle Jones, Toni Morrison, Slavenka Drakulic, a reader with both journalistic and theoretical articles, and films including Wag the Dog, Pulp Fiction and Life is Beautiful.

CL 1B:9 16642 HOCHBERG TT 9:30-11 125 DWINELLE

"All in the Family"

What is a family? Why is so much attention given to the family? What are the historical and political aspects which determine the nature of our modern perception of the family? Does the family mean different things in different cultures? Parents, children, siblings, love, jealousy, home, household, intimacy, responsibility, and the looming taboo which threatens to destroy all familial happiness: incest. What is it all about? Through a reading of major literary texts, some legal texts, chapters from the Hebrew bible, psychoanalytic essays, and of course, watching some Archie Bunker scenes, we shall address these questions and more.

Required texts

• Sophocles, Antigone
• Shakespeare, Hamlet
• Flaubert, Madame Bovary
• Toni Morrison, Sula
• In addition to these texts there will be a reader containing writing of Freud, Hegel, Kristeva, and Gilman, poetry by Rich and Dickinson, and short stories by Flannery OConnor, Poe, and others. Readings following the films class screenings will also be included in the reader.

CL 1B:10 16645 YANSON TT 11-12:30 205 DWINELLE

"In Search for the Self: Representation and Communication"

The definition of the Self is the main topic of this course. We will consider the representations of the Self in different cultural and historical circumstances. We will also try to determine whether individuality has always been an important characteristic of the hero/ heroine, or whether it is a historical construct. Throughout the course, we will be looking carefully at different modes of the authorial representations of the characters, such as external descriptions, inner monologues, dialogues, indirect characterizations. The goal of the course is to develop the students' analytical skills and to introduce them to the elements of literary criticism.

Required texts

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Homer, Odyssey
• Louise Gluck, Meadowlands
• Aristotle, Poetics
• Shakespeare, Hamlet
• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
• Ingeborg Bachmann, Three Paths to the Lake
• Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

CL 1B:11 16648 VARGAS TT 11-12:30 125 DWINELLE

The provinces, the countryside, the periphery...the regions outside the metropolis have traditionally played an important role in the formation of national culture and identity. This course will examine various aspects of this process by examining such issues as the relationship between the self and the land, the dichotomy between urbane writers and marginalized subjects, as well as the role of the provinces in the conceptualization of history. Specifically, we will explore the viability of the concept of a "teluric consciousness" as a tool in analyzing historical and literary works.

Required texts

• El Cid
• Herodotus, The Histories (excerpts)
• al-Jahidh, The People of Khurasan, essay from The Book of Misers
• "The Frontier in American History", essay
• Gabriela Mistral, selected poetry
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
• Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Graciliano Ramos, Barren Lives

CL 1B:12 16650 HAFFNER MWF 10 2326 TOLMAN

What's in the Box?, or, Detecting Bodies

In the recent movie Jumanji, the success of one of the characters' two thousand hours of psychoanalysis, she says, depends on Robin Williams's having been hacked to pieces by his father in 1969 and hidden in the house's nooks and crannies. Unfortunately for her, he has really been stuck in the "Jumanji" game box, and now he's out and ready to continue playing. Why should that "really" somehow be more real? How is "what's in the box"-an elephant/rhino stampede, giant mosquitoes, a relentless manhunter-related to what's going on outside? What's "really" inside the box?

Some think it's a matter of detection. What does the one in the role of detective detect? How is the box's content gendered or sexualized? How does the box's content gender or sexualize the act of detecting, of knowing, the detective's psychic organization(s)? Is it the detective's job to discover the contents, or is the process of detection the ruse allowing the detective to avoid "knowing too much"? If such knowledge is excessive, what could it be excessive to? Why are bodies and body parts always floating around like they just don't fit in? How does Hamlet fit in? For answers, look in the box...

Requirements

• (50%) 250-500-word essay due each week
• (30%) one 2500-word final paper
• (20%) class attendance and participation.
• ALERT! You can't pass the course if you miss one third or more of the class meetings.

Texts

This course will emphasize good writing style, good sentence construction, and lucid, text-based argumentation. Excerpts from The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker will be in the course reader.

written

• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art (chapters 6-9)
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
• Sigmund Freud, Three Case Histories (Collier, MacMillan ed. only)
• Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw" (course reader)
• Edgar Allan Poe, "The Purloined Letter" (course reader)
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Oxford edition only)
• Virgil, The Aeneid (course reader)

films

• Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
• Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990)
• Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
• Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
• Fargo (Joel Coen, 1995)
• Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995)
• Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)
• Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

some additional optional articles in the course reader on the web site at http://128.32.99.184

CL 1B13 16876 STARR-REID TT 930-11 2326 TOLMAN

"Reading in a Social Matrix"

As with all Comp. Lit. 1AB sections, we will read critically a variety of literary works from various historical and cultural milieux, and work zealously to hone students' skills in written composition. Students are encouraged to suggest issues to engage in these texts, both in class discussions and in their own written work. The selection of texts for this section of 1B lends itself, on a thematic level, to questions of communal belonging and exclusion. Texts embody cultures in that they create imagined social worlds, and in that they are created within social worlds in which they have social functions. Texts inscribe social insiders and outsiders; they reveal social and personal origins, yet keep some aspects secret; they function to favor some classes of persons while violating or disappearing others; they propose hierarchies of ethical value within their social settings. Individual characters, as well as readers, must navigate and negotiate the separations and obstructions inscribed in the texts in order to be or become themselves in relation to the texts. The complexities offered within the literary works and within the students' own processing and experiences will provide sufficient grist for completing the exigencies of the Reading & Composition requirement.

Course requirements Weekly short homework and in-class writing, timely completion of readings, thoughtful engagement in class activities, a brief diagnostic paper the third week, plus three six- to nine-page formal essays throughout the semester.

Texts

• P. Virgilius Maro, The Aeneid
• Marie de France, Lais
• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
• Michel de Montaigne, Essais (selections)
• Tzvedan Todorov, On Human Diversity (selections)
• Derek Walcott, Omeros

H1B 16615 LISOWSKI TT 9:30-11 224 WHEELER

"Pasts and Histories"

The relationship between present and past-between what is taking place, what has taken place, and what stories are told about what has taken place-will structure our discussion and writing work in this course. Driving each of the six central texts below is a struggle between the demands of the past and the characters in the present. Students will work through a careful sequence of paper assignments, including at least one non-expository paper and one comprehensive final paper. Students' previous work in one or more foreign languages (a course prerequisite) will make possible an extension of our comparative reading into advanced comparative essays or in-class student presentations on other texts.

I: Violence and the Past
Retribution/Possible Freedom from Retribution
Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Toni Morrison, Beloved

II: Narration of the Past
Looking Back to the Past, Drawing (from) the Story
Seamus Heaney, Selected Poems
Homer, Odyssey

III: Maturity and the Past
Discovering the Past/Growing Up into the Present and Future
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Shakespeare, Hamlet

Required texts

• Aeschylus. The Oresteia. M. Ewans, tr
• Toni Morrison. Beloved
• S. Heaney. Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996
• The Odyssey of Homer. R. Lattimore, tr. New York: HarperCollins, 1965.
• C. Brontë. Jane Eyre
• Shakespeare, Hamlet. G. R. Hibbard, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Recommended text

• Strunk and White. The Elements of Style. New York: Pearson, 1959.