Magical Realism and Modern Myth
Spring 2014
COML 117a
Prof. ShermanClass Schedule:
email: Mon, Wed, Thur 12:00-12:50
office: Rabb 136Mandel Center G12
office hours: Wed. 10:00-11:00, 1:00-3:00, and by appt.
This is a course on literature and film that cultivates the reality of the unreal, the consequentiality of mythical thought for modern rationality, and the supernatural as an everyday event. We will explore how magical and mythical realisms unsettle, in 20th- and 21st-century fictions from across the globe, the sense of the world as objectively describable. And we will consider in particular how these recent literary modes reveal the tense negotiations between indigenous, traditional cultures and forces of economic and cultural modernization over notions of time and space, life and death, desire and selfhood.
As such, the learning goals for this course are:
- to conceptualize magical realism and mythical realism, as they can be both distinguished from and affiliated with other experiments in literature and film (the fantastic, surrealism, postmodernism)
- to explore literature’s capacity to construct various counterintuitive notions of reality and of relations between subjective experience and the material world
- to consider the cultural politics of anti-realism in literature, particularly in post-colonial contexts
- to understand the relation between the literary imagination and historical narrative, i.e., magical realism as a response to historicism
- to think comparatively, across cultures, about using supernatural elements in novels and film
Required Books (at Brandeis Bookstore):
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Ben Okri, Stars of the New Curfew
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Required Films (on LATTE):
Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel
del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth
Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Rules and Requirements:
- Laptops may be used in class only for accessing relevant course materials on LATTE. If you use a laptop for other purposes (email, web browsing), you will be asked to leave the class and be considered absent for the day. Bring other materials (e.g., paper, pens) for taking notes.
- All assignments must be completed and submitted to receive course credit. Late work will be penalized by one plus/minus for each day past due date.
- Three unexcused absences lowers the final course grade by one plus/minus, and each additional absence by another plus/minus.
- Plagiarism will be penalized by failure on the assignment or course, appearance before a university committee, and/or expulsion.
- Students who wish to have reasonable accommodations made for documented disabilities or Brandeis athletic obligations should speak to me immediately.
Grades and Assignments:
Thoughts and Questions:Ten brief weekly comments and questions about readings, due on LATTE the night before class. Schedule to be distributed. Credit/no credit. 2% each.
Class Presentation: One 5-10 minute presentation during section about readings. Grades based on clarity of ideas, insights about texts, and effectiveness of questions to class. 5%
Essays: Three 5-7 page essays, topics to be distributed. Due 2/13, 3/20, and 5/5. 25% each.
Schedule:
Mon. 1/13
Introduction: origins of a concept
Wed. 1/15
Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” [LATTE]
Thur. 1/16
Borges, “The Immortal, ” “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,” “A History of Eternity” [excerpt], “The Maker” [LATTE]
Mon. 1/20: Class Cancelled for Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Wed. 1/22
García Márquez, “Big Mama’s Funeral,” “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, ” “Blacamán the Good, Vendor of Miracles” [LATTE]
Thur. 1/23
Meet in sections
Mon. 1/27
Christopher Columbus, “The Green and Beautiful Land” [LATTE]
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, “The Unique Monkey” [LATTE]
Gaspar de Carvajal, “Encounter with the Amazons” [LATTE]
Borges, “The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires” [LATTE]
García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1-105)
Wed. 1/29
García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (106-228)
Thur. 1/30
Meet in sections
Mon. 2/3
García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (229-319)
Wed. 2/5
García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (finish) and 1982 Nobel Lecture, “The Solitude of Latin America” [LATTE]
Thur. 2/6
Meet in sections
Mon. 2/10:
Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel [LATTE]
Wed. 2/12
del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth [LATTE]
Thur 2/13: Essay One Due
Meet in sections
2/17-2/21: Classes cancelled for midterm recess
Mon. 2/24
Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Book One)
Wed. 2/26
Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Book Two)
Thur. 2/27
Meet in sections
Mon. 3/3
Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Book Two, cont.)
Wed. 3/5
Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Book Three)
Thur. 3/6
Meet in sections
Mon. 3/10
Achebe, “Chike’s School Days,” “The Sacrificial Egg,” “Dead Men’s Path” [LATTE]
Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (191-238)
Wed. 3/12
Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (239-307)
Thur. 3/13
Meet in sections
Mon. 3/17
Okri, Stars of the New Curfew (“In the Shadows of War,” “Worlds that Flourish,” “In the City of Red Dust” )
Wed. 3/19
Okri, Stars of the New Curfew (“Stars of the New Curfew,” “When the Lights Return,” “What the Tapster Saw”)
Thur. 3/20: Essay Two Due
Meet in sections
Mon. 3/24
Carter, Nights at the Circus (Book One: London)
Wed. 3/26
Carter, Nights at the Circus (Book Two: Petersburg)
Thur. 3/27
Meet in sections
Mon. 3/31
Carter, Nights at the Circus (Book Three: Siberia)
Wed. 4/2
Morrison, Beloved (3-67)
Thur. 4/3(note: no sections)
Morrison, Beloved (68-124)
Mon. 4/7
Morrison, Beloved (125-235)
Wed. 4/9
Morrison, Beloved (finish) and 1993 Nobel Lecture [LATTE]
Thur. 4/10
Meet in sections
Mon. 4/14
Zeitlin, dir., Beasts of the Southern Wild
4/15-4/22: Classes cancelled for Passover
Wed. 4/23
Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Thur. 4/24
Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Mon. 4/28
Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
** Monday, May 5, noon, my mailbox: Essay Three Due **
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