Professor Anderson
THH 436, x03744
Office Hours: W. 3:30-5pm
(or by appt.)
ENGL 530, 32781D
Spring 2009
THH 105
M 2-4:20pm
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Performing Character:
Eighteenth-Century Novels and the Drama
In the nineteenth century, the novelist William Thackeray would begin Vanity Fair with a prologue titled "Before the Curtain," in which the author becomes the "Manager of the Performance," the characters become puppets, and the first chapter begins as "the curtain rises." What does it mean to call characters in fiction an author's "puppets"? More than this—why would a novelist choose to describe his novel in theatrical terms? Where does this metaphor come from, and how does it affect our understanding of genre? Of fiction?
To answer these questions, we turn to the eighteenth century: we look at the "rise of the novel" as a phenomenon that had theatrical roots. Beginning with Cervantes' famously meta-fictional work, we examine novels and plays that reflect on their own conventions, or that reflect more broadly on the meanings of "performance." We will use these reflections to ask questions such as: what kinds of (conditional) credibility do these texts demand of their audience? What does it mean that both these genres frequently depict "character" or characters as self-consciously theatrical? How might contemporaneous acting theory thus influence our understanding of character, in either genre? How do the novel's reflections on the stage complicate—or illuminate—a long-embraced trajectory of generic development: that flat, "type" characters of eighteenth-century drama yield to the interiority and psychological depth of the novel's protagonists? Is a novel a performance? What kind? Whose?
Primary Texts:
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (Modern Library)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works (Penguin)
Thomas Southerne, Oroonoko (Regents)
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (Penguin)
Bertold Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (Grove)
Eliza Haywood, Fantomina (Broadview—or may access as etext: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/fantomina.html)
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (Norton)
Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies (Oxford)
Hannah Cowley, The Belle’s Stratagem, in Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists (Oxford)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Broadview—may use alternate edition)
An * indicates those texts contained in a course reader. The reader is available at the bookstore, and I will also place one copy on reserve at Leavey Library.
Assignments:
Keyword Analysis—Presentation and Write-up (30%):
This assignment is modeled after Raymond Williams’ book Keywords. More than a dictionary, Williams’ text is interested in the evolving or overlapping meanings of theoretical terms. These variations are often what indicate a term’s importance—what identify them as “keywords”—and Williams’ entries trace these variations to illuminate patterns in thought and culture.
I’ve similarly paired our reading for each week with a specific "keyword" that has resurfaced in contemporary theory, but that also has a particular bearing on our primary text for the week. Each of you will choose a word and write up your own 4-6 page analysis. Rather than giving an abstract, ahistorical definition, your task is to assess the evolving tensions or relationships among the uses of this term—of particular interest to me are the relationships between theatrical and theoretical applications of the term, between eighteenth-century and contemporary usages, and between the function of the term in our primary text, and the function assigned to your term by critics more broadly.
The results of your investigation will be shared collectively through an in-class presentation, and in a more formal, written essay. (The first such presentation will occur on February 2nd.) Your write-up (plus bibliography) should be posted on Blackboard by 6pm on the Sunday night prior to the day your word is assigned; this post then becomes part of the class's reading for Monday afternoon. The author of the essay will also speak for about 15 minutes in class on the trajectory of the assignment: how you decided what sources to consult, what particular challenges this keyword presented, what was left in the entry, what was left out, and why. Other students should come prepared to workshop the essay, with an eye to its future expansion for a seminar paper.
I would encourage all students to peruse Williams’ text as well as the 2005 New Keywords, both of which are on reserve at Leavey Library. Students should also check with me in the weeks prior to their assignment for bibliography suggestions.
Mini-Conference (30%):
On April 20th, the next to last week of class, we will hold an eighteenth-century symposium. Essentially, this will be a mini-conference. I will request a 150-200 word abstract of your talk three weeks before the conference date, and I will arrange the class into panels on the basis of your abstracts. On the 20th, you will present a fifteen-minute conference paper on a topic of your choice; I would suggest, though I do not require, that your talk draw on research from your keyword assignment.
Final Paper (40%):
Your final paper should be an expanded version of your conference talk. The papers are not required to be article length, but my comments will address areas for future development. Papers are due by noon on May 11. You may submit papers in my mailbox, THH 420. Alternately, you may email me your paper in MS Word as an attachment. If you submit your paper electronically, I will edit it using the comment function on Word and return it to you electronically. 15 pages.
In addition to these written and oral assignments, attendance at the two theater school productions, noted on the syllabus, is required.
Schedule of Assignments:
Jan 12: Introduction—Performance and Persistence: Characters across Time
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Part 1: Prologue, Bks. 1-2 (pp. 5-120); Bk. 3: Ch. 1-3, 6-8, 11-12 (pp. 120-47, 166-204, 227-54); Bk 4, Ch. 21-25 (pp. 506-47)
Jan 19: NO CLASS
Jan 26: Cervantes, Don Quixote
Part 2: Pro.; Bk. 1, Ch. 1-3, 8-15 (pp. 549-92, 618-73); Bk. 2, Ch. 5-10, 13-14 (pp. 730-83, 796-810); Bk. 3, Ch. 1-2, Ch. 9 (pp. 826-42, 875-86) Johnson, "People, Real and Fictional," from Don Quixote: The Quest for Modern Fiction*
Feb 2: Cervantes, Don Quixote Keyword: modernity
Part 2: Bk. 3, Ch. 10-19 (pp. 886-969); Bk. 4, Ch. 3, 7-10, 12-13, 15, 19-22 (pp. 993-1001, 1024-65, 1076-87, 1093, 1118-1142)
Borges, Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote*
Robert Bayliss, "What Don Quixote Means (Today)"*
[Discussion exercise: select and reflect on some modern iteration of DQ]
Feb 9: Behn, Oroonoko; Southern, Oroonoko Keyword: ritual
Victor Turner, "Dramatic Ritual / Ritual Drama" [handout]
Joseph Roach, "Oroonoko and the Empire of the World," from Cities of the Dead [handout]
Feb 16: NO CLASS
Feb 23: Behn, The Rover; "The Fair Jilt"; "The History of the Nun"*
Elin Diamond, from Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater;*
Janet Todd, from The Sign of Angellica* Keyword: mimesis
EVENT: The Rover, Bing Theater, Feb 26-March 1
March 2: Gay, The Beggar’s Opera [Joe Roach master class] Keyword: celebrity
Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
Joseph Roach, "Bone" from It*
EVENT: The Beggar's Opera, Scene Dock Theater, March 5-8
March 9: Haywood, Fantomina; Keyword: masquerade
Fielding, The Author's Farce*
Terry Castle, from Masquerade and Civilization;*
Joan Riviere “Womanliness as a Masquerade”*
March 16: NO CLASS
March 23: Fielding, Tom Jones, Bks. 1-9 Keyword: fiction
Catherine Gallagher, "The Rise of Fictionality"*
Lennard Davis, "Henry Fielding: Politics and Fact," "Preface," from Factual Fictions;* "Reconsidering Origins: How Novel Are Theories of the Novel?" [handout]
March 30: Fielding, Tom Jones, complete; ABSTRACTS DUE
View 1963 film; video clips in class
April 6: Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer; Keywords: performativity /
Cowley, The Belle’s Stratagem performance
Diderot, The Paradox of Acting*
Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution"*
Parker and Sedgwick, "Performance and Performativity"*
April 13: Inchbald, Lover’s Vows,* Keyword: theatricality
“Preface” to Lover’s Vows (Xerox)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Vol.1
Tracy Davis and Thomas Postlewait, “Theatricality: An Introduction”*
April 20: MINI-CONFERENCE
April 27: Austen, Mansfield Park complete Keyword [as a class]: character
Deidre Lynch, "Recognizing Characters"*
Lisa Freeman, "Staged Identities: Its Just a Question of Character"*
**Final seminar paper due on MAY 11th, by 12pm.**
Professor Anderson
, x03744
ENGL 530, 32781D
Spring 2009, M 2-4:20pm
Performing Character:
Eighteenth-Century Novels and the Drama
Contents of the Course Reader
1) Caroll Johnson, "People, Real and Fictional," Don Quixote: The Quest for Modern Fiction (NY: Twayne, 1990), 104-20.
2) Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," Labyrinths (NY: Penguin, 1964), 62-71.
3) Robert Bayliss, "What Don Quixote Means (Today)," Comparative Literature Studies 43.4 (2006): 382-97.
4) Deidre Lynch, "Recognizing Characters," The Economy of Character (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 1-20
5) Lisa Freeman, "Staged Identities: Its Just a Question of Character," Character's Theater (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 11-46.
6) Aphra Behn, "The History of the Nun," Oroonoko and Other Writings (NY: Oxford, 1994), 138-90.
7) Elin Diamond, "Gestus, signature, body, in the theater of Aphra Behn," Unmaking Mimesis (NY: Routledge, 1997), 56-82.
8) Janet Todd, "Introduction," The Sign of Angellica (NY: Columbia University Press, 1992), 1-10.
9) Joseph Roach, "Bone," IT (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007), 205-31.
10) Terry Castle, "The Masquerade and Eighteenth-Century England," Masquerade and Civilization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 1-51.
11) Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin (London: Methuen, 1986), 35-44.
12) Henry Fielding, The Author’s Farce, ed. Jill Campbell, in The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview, 2001), 1782-1824.
13) Catherine Gallagher, "The Rise of Fictionality," The Novel, Volume 1: History, Geography, and Culture, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 336-63.
14) Lennard Davis, "Henry Fielding: Politics and Fact," "Preface to the Paperback Edition," Factual Fictions (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1996), 193-211; xi-xiv.
15) Denis Diderot, The Paradox of Acting (NY: Hill and Wang, Inc., 1957), 11-71.
16) Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theater, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 270-282.
17) Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Introduction," Performativity and Performance (NY: Routledge, 1995), 1-18.
18) Elizabeth Inchbald, Lover’s Vows in The Plays of Elizabeth Inchbald, Vol. 2 (NY: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980), i-92.
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