The readings for the course are also listed by session.
Dover Paperbacks
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Selected “Canterbury Tales.” Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN: 0486282414.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1995. ISBN: 0486284735.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. ISBN: 0486275434.
Pope, Alexander. “Essay on Man” and Other Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN: 0486280535.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. ISBN: 0486275574.
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1990. ISBN: 0486264785.
Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal” and Other Satirical Works. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. ISBN: 0486287599.
———. Gulliver’s Travels. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. ISBN: 0486292738.
Gilbert, William Schwenck. H.M.S. Pinafore. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000. ISBN: 0486411141.
Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess” and Other Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. ISBN: 0486277836.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Favorite Sherlock Holmes. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000. ISBN: 0486412423.
Christie, Agatha. Mysterious Affair at Styles. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1997. ISBN: 0486296954.
James, Henry. Daisy Miller. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1995. ISBN: 0486287734.
Sewall, Anna. Black Beauty. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999. ISBN: 0486407888.
Any edition of the following books may be used:
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot.
Pinter, Harold. The Homecoming.
Readings by Session
| Lec # | Topics | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Introductions, explanations, mutual question and answer Begin Chaucer |
Questions What is irony, anyway? A mode of language? A social attitude? A system of judgment or adjudication? We’ll try to classify “irony” according to its purposes, targets, and effects. |
| 2 | Medieval Literature: Middle English, secular and profane | Chaucer, Geoffrey. “General Prologue.” In Selected “Canterbury Tales.” Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN: 0486282414. |
| 3 | More irony of character and more social comedy of manners: This time infused with gender |
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.” In Selected “Canterbury Tales.” Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN: 0486282414. ———. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” In Selected “Canterbury Tales.” Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN: 0486282414. |
| 4 | The Bayeaux Tapestry |
Questions We’ll ‘read’ the visual text as a sequential [linear] narrative, with a purpose and with specific strategies for portraying an historical point-of-view. |
| 5 | Conclude Chaucer: Textual authority and the “experience” of the Wife of Bath | Chaucer, Geoffrey. Selected “Canterbury Tales.” |
| 6 | Humanism, Wit, and the English Renaissance |
Sonnets (Available on-line: specifics in class.) Shakespeare, William. Sonnets. |
| 7 | Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet |
Shakespeare, William. Sonnets. Questions The embedded sonnets; the ’literary’ character of Romeo and his ‘Pilgrimage’; the question why this play is a ‘comedy’? What does Juliet mean when she tells Romeo “you kiss by the book”? |
| 8 | The Augustan Age: Neoclassicism, Satire, Scatology |
Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” In “A Modest Proposal” and Other Satirical Works. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. ISBN: 0486287599. Pope, Alexander. “Epistle…Arbuthnot” and “Essay on Man.” In Essay on Man and Other Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN: 0486280535. |
| 9 | Johnathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels |
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, chapters I and IV, 1996. ISBN: 0486292738. Questions Travel narrative and linguistic displacement. Satire and specificity (How do we recognize the topics or targets of the satirist?). |
| 10 | Sense, Sensibility, Landscape |
Paintings by William Hogarth: Animal paintings by George Stubbs. British landscape paintings, 18th and 19th centuries: Paintings by Samuel Palmer: Questions We’ll read several Hogarth pictures in class together and work collectively to define ‘satire’. |
| 11 | Romanticism, Revolution, Aesthetics | Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1997. ISBN: 0486227642. |
| 12 | Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice |
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1995. (read to the point Lizzie visits Darcy’s house.) Questions Society as ‘regulated hatred’; The marriage of the Bennetts; Charlotte Lucas’ choice. |
| 13 | Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Poems by John Clare and Christopher Smart |
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1995. Clare, John. “To Mary,” “I Am,” “The Badger,” and “Gypsies.” Smart, Christopher. “My Cat Jeffrey.” Sections of Jubilate Agno. Questions Irony and structure: parallel constructions in the novel. |
| 14 | Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland |
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. Questions Terror, the sublime, and the child; Late 19th century concepts of the child; Education and parody: Alice’s conversations. |
| 15 | Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (cont.) |
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. Victorian Photography. |
| 16 | The Age of Reform, Restraint, Parody |
Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess” and Other Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993. Tennyson, Lord Alfred. “Tithonus,” “Ulysses,” and “Evolution.” Subsections of “In Memoriam.” Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Sonnets from the Portuguese. Questions Psychology as a narrative science; Self-revelation, comedy and perspective. |
| 17 | Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes stories |
Doyle, Arthur Conan. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” and “A Study in Scarlet.” In Favorite Sherlock Holmes. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000. Questions Sherlock Holmes and the ‘counterfactual’; Comedy, justice, and narrative resolution. |
| 18 | Film: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest | Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. |
| 19 | Henry James, Daisy Miller |
James, Henry. Daisy Miller. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1995. Questions Who is the central character (Witnerbourne or Daisy) and how does the resolution of that question affect our sense of the generic identity of the novella? The object of the satire? |
| 20 | Henry James, Daisy Miller (cont.) |
James, Henry. Daisy Miller. Stanley Spencer paintings: Cookham paintings, especially “Christ Carrying His Cross,” and others. |
| 21 | Post-Empire and the Fragmentation of History | Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. |
| 22 | Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot |
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Pictures by Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Tracy Emin. Questions What is “tragi-comic”? What ‘happens’ in this play? |
| 23 | Harold Pinter, The Homecoming |
Pinter, Harold. The Homecoming. See also Pinter’s Nobel Prize award speech, “Art, Truth and Politics.” |
| 24 | Questions | |
| 25 | Final Exercise Questions | |
| 26 | Assignment: Responses due | |
| 27 | Final Evaluations, Poems, Monty Python |
Poems by Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith, Thom Gunn, and Sylvia Plath. Larkin, Philip."Church Going," “The Whitsun Weddings,” and “High Windows.” Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Rabbit Catcher.” Smith, Stevie. “Not Waving but Drowning,” “Do Take Muriel Out,” “Drugs Made Pauline Vague,” “Nor We of Her to Him,” “Never Again,” and “Conviction.” Gunn, Thom. “Touch,” “Moly,” “My Sad Captains,” and “The Man with Night Sweats.” |
