SYLLABUS
English 262:32623D – Literatures of Memory, 1800-1950
TTh 12:30-1:45, VKC 203
Prof. Devin Griffiths
Office: THH 402K
Office Hours: Mon 1-3
Email:
Course Description:
Can books think? Can they remember? Our memory and our sense of the past is mediated by complicated neurological circuits, dispersed over millions of cells throughout the brain, generated through complex circuits of neurological impulse. And yet, when we are asked to describe our past, we tell simple stories and describe vivid scenes. This class will explore how English literature has shaped the stories we use to describe our selves, our past, and our environments. A key focus of this course will be to examine how insights drawn from cognitive science, psychology and sociology can help us to understand the British novel as a technology of memory – a tool that teaches how to make sense of what happened and how to remember it.
Books:
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (Penguin, 9780140433203)
George Eliot, Silas Marner (Penguin, 9780141439754)
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (Penguin, 9780141439617)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harvest, ISBN-13:978-0156907392)
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (Penguin Classics, ISBN-13:978-0142437964)
All other course materials: Available on the Facebook Site
Evaluation:
25% Midterm, 35% Papers, 30% Facebook participation, 10% quizzes and in-class discussion and participation.
Films: The Social Network, Unforgiven, Memento, Inception, The Virgin Suicides
Schedule:
I. Romantic Memories: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, “Tintern Abbey”; Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Adonais”
1/15: Class introduction, spot reading of Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
1/17: Lyrical Ballads, cont., “Tintern Abbey”
1/22: Shelley, “Adonais”
II. Revisionist History: Historical Fiction & Hazlitt’s “Spirit of the Age”
1/24: Selections from Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age.
1/29: Castle Rackrent I
1/31: Castle Rackrent 2
2/5: Castle Rackrent 3
2/7: Castle Rackrent 4
2/12: Film: The Social Network
III. Memory and technology: Silas Marner; Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.
2/14: Silas Marner 1
2/19: Silas Marner 2, “The Communist Manifesto”
2/21: Silas Marner 3
2/26: Film: Unforgiven
2/28: MIDTERM EXAM
V. Formal innovation and recall: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets.
3/5 & 3/7: To the Lighthouse, Part 1.
3/12: TTL Part 2, “Burnt Norton”
3/14: TTL Part 3
3/16: Film: Memento
VI. Mystery and Detection
3/28: The Woman in White I
3/31: The Woman in White 2
4/2: The Woman in White 3, Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
4/4: The Woman in White 4
4/9: The Woman in White 5
4/11: Film: Inception
VI. Neuroscience: Proust, Swann’s Way
4/16: Swann’s Way, “Overture”
4/18: SW, “Combray,” Richards
4/23: SW, “Swann in Love,” Freud
4/30: SW, “Place-Names”
5/2: SW, wrap-up, Film: The Virgin Suicides
Final Paper Due on Exam Date
Assignments
Facebook Presentations: Over the course of the semester, each student will produce a 4-minute video response to one of the week’s readings. It will be the responsibility of all other students to comment on that response by Thursday at 10 a.m. Extra credit for responses that address other responses & introduce outside sources.
Essays: Essays 1 and 2 will be short, 5-page close readings of specific passages from the work. The Final Essay will be a longer, 8-10 page research paper that approaches the close reading using 8-10 secondary sources. It may be based on one of the earlier two papers.
Course Policies
Plagiarism: As students at USC you are bound by the University honor code and required to respect intellectual property rights. Please review the University of Southern California policies respecting plagiarism, which prohibits reproducing the work of others without attribution as well as "self-plagiarism" (reproducing your own previous work without aacknowledgement). The policies can be read online at http://scampus.usc.edu/1100-behavior-violating-university-standards-and-appropriate-sanctions/. Another helpful guide can be found at http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/student-conduct/ug_plag.htm. Please ask me if there are any aspects of the University's policies which are unclear, or if you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism in our course. Plagiarism includes “self-plagiarism” (using work for another class without acknowledging), and copying citations/sources from another work.