Modern Western Literature and Thought

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MODERN WESTERN LITERATURE AND THOUGHT

OF THE WEST SINCE 1800

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 251g

Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30—5:50

THH 121

Professor Gloria Orenstein

Office: Taper Hall 174

E-mail:

Voice mail: 213-740-0100

In this survey of western literature and thought from the 18th century through the beginning of the 21st century we will read key texts in a variety of genres, placing them in their historical, literary and intellectual contexts. We will visit movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, including Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Existentialism, Feminism, and The Theatre of the Absurd. Authors and works we will read include: FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND by Dostoevsky, THE METAMORPHOSIS by Kafka, A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN by Virginia Woolf, NADJA by Andre Breton, SELECTED WRITINGS by Gertrude Stein, a selection from THE SECOND SEX by Simone de Beauvoir, RHINOCEROS by Ionesco and AUSTERLITZ by W.G. Sebald. Most of our texts are included in the huge second volume of LITERATURE OF THE WESTERN WORLD, VOLUME II: NEOCLASICISM THROUGH THE MODERN PERIOD, which is the main text for the course. I have added a few other books that are not in that anthology or to supplement the short excerpts found in the anthology.

Videos of works we will be reading will be shown whenever such visual material is available. When appropriate, I will ask you to bring your computers to class, and we will enlarge visual material from an appropriate database in art or film in order to project these, often rare items, onto the screen in the classroom.

ADVICE, GUIDANCE, AND WARNINGS

Please keep a copy of each of your papers, exams, and projects—just in case. Always back up everything so that you have an extra copy of your work. Please realize that the university has strict standards with regard to academic integrity (plagiarism, cheating, purchasing of papers etc.) Any broach of academic integrity may be subject to failure. You must cite all your sources of research and citation in footnotes. There will be NO GRADE NEGOTIATIONS. If you have any problem complying with the deadlines established for exam, papers or projects, you must present a medical or other acceptable excuse in written form prior to the due date. No adjustments will be made for personal agendas such as vacation travel etc. If you have any special needs in terms of time or pace of your work, please submit a physician’s explanation at the beginning of the semester. All students, especially those for whom writing or writing in English may present a problem are advised and encouraged to visit THE WRITING CENTER (TAPER HALL 3rd floor) for one-on-one tutoring. I can attest to the fact that students who have attended sessions at THE WRITING CENTER on a regular basis have often raised their grades by two or three letters. Attendance at all lectures is mandatory. Your grade will be adversely affected by your absence.

THE BOOKS IN THE COURSE ARE CARRIED BY THE CAMPUS BOOK STORE. OTHER TEXTS I WILL USE WILL BE XEROXED AND HANDED OUT IN CLASS.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS

There will be a Midterm essay exam and a final Paper and Project. Deadlines for each of these will be announced in class and must be observed. All irregularities will affect your grade in some way.

THE PROJECT: The Final consists of a Project and a Paper that accompanies it. We are fortunate to be working with the IML, a media lab,located on Taper Hall’s basement level, where you will receive instruction in the creative use of a variety of programs. The project will be the creation of a DVD based on the works and movements we have covered in the course. I will discuss this in more detail in class. The paper will elucidate the ways in which you refer to the works read, the techniques advocated by the writers, and the themes of their works, showing how your own Project reflects those ideas and strategies and also improvises your own version of them, relating the works to each other and to our era. This, too, will be explained in class. Starting in the third week we will go on Tuesdays, every other week to the IML media lab in Taper Hall, down in the basement. There we will be assigned a room with a large number of computers, and a T.A. from the CinemaSchool will teach that class. You will learn various amazing programs for creating a fascinating visual presentation, which we will show to the class on the last day of the semester, always relating the presentation to the works read and movements studied in our course. The topics covered in the lab will include research and argumentation, animation and sound in PowerPoint and other programs, and Photoshop. The final Project and Paper will carry more weight in your grade than the Midterm—a percentage distribution will be announced later, but think of the final project and paper as counting at least twice as much as the Midterm. It is possible that you will want to do your project jointly with another student or with a group. Then, we will talk about how that will be graded, and obviously your individual papers will result in different grades for each of you. On the other hand, the collective work on the DVD will result in the same grade for all. The one problem with this kind of work is that sometimes one student will contribute more than the others to the final product, and it is difficult to ascertain who did what amount of work. Thus, you must all agree to tell me the distribution of work—between research, editing, etc.—who did what aspect of the work, so that the grade is a fair one, reflecting an equal distribution of the work contributing to the whole.

PERSONAL NOTES AND STORIES

1. When I was an undergraduate, I wrote my senior Honors Thesis on Eugene Ionesco’s plays. The manuscripts were given to me by my French Professor, a personal friend of the playwright. Not many people had heard of Ionesco at that time. My professor used to tell us anecdotes about his friends Eugene and Sam (Samuel Beckett)—that was back in the fifties. For me it has been thrilling to watch the development of these two important authors. I invite you to discover the talented authors of your time, and to suggest using one of their works in your final project—just to see how you confront something that is completely new—that people have not yet critiqued academically. See how you do with something totally original.

2. On another note—in the sixties I went to the theatre and noted that the plays by Sartre and Pinter that we saw in Boston had a very amazing actor in them. I mentioned that we MUST remember that actor’s name—as he will definitely become famous. The name was Dustin Hoffman—back before he was known at all. If there is anything I would like you to come away with it is this: you are the literary critics and historians of your own time and of the future. The writers you will be reading in the future are just beginning to be published now—and in different technologies—perhaps on the web or on other device that don’t even exist at present. The literary environment is undergoing radical changes. Bookstores are closing (I can tell you about some wonderful ones from LA. that have closed since I moved here like Midnight Special and Sisterhood Bookstore). More electronic media are coming into use such as the Kindle, which enables you to travel carrying hundreds of books with you on a tiny reading machine. You can chronicle your times—the changes in the literary environment. You can blog your responses to changes. Salons and writers’ groups are burgeoning everywhere. Feel free to seek out the newer literary venues where the most recent or experimental forms are being produced or performed in whatever media or genre will be created in your time. You can tweet your discoveries to your “friends” on Twitter or Facebook or other tweets and books that come along. I wish you much joy in your discoveries, and I hope that this course will map out some of the territories traveled over the centuries, but that you will now steer your own course through new and uncharted literary landscapes, looking for talented creators in your own generation. Naturally, it is hoped that this course will be the first of many more to come in Comparative Literature and the Arts and in the diversity of world literatures that comprise our global heritage.

I strongly urge you to read freely in the literature of the centuries we will cover, and to visit museums, art collections, and galleries in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Visit the bookstores in the area and attend readings of works by new authors. Perhaps you will want to attend openings of art exhibitions or to see a play from the repertoire of western “classics” that may be produced this Spring in L.A. Take advantage of this opportunity to explore all the new forms of experimental writing that are emerging in your generation. The internet may lead you to participate in interactive, creative experiments in the development of other new genres that these technologies make possible. In this way you will observe first hand the way that literary and art history mutate and evolve.

A FINAL THOUGHT: If you are moved to do this, take your video camera (iPhone or other device with a camera) to some of these events, and compile an archive of the footage you video of the events in literature and the arts that have impressed you. Put them away for some thirty years, and then take them out and see what treasures you have preserved for posterity, and how you may have collected some historically relevant visual data about artists and writers who will be important in the future. If I had only owned a video camera in the days when I was meeting all the Surrealists in Paris, I could have in my archive incredibly important documentation. You have the technology to do important things that have never been done before. As they say in our time: GO FOR IT!!! AND ENJOY THE JOURNEY!!!

A FINAL THOUGHT ABOUT THE COURSE

I hope that this survey of western literature will enable you to understand the ways in which we, of the twenty-first century, have been formed intellectually by traditions ranging from Neo-Classicism and the Enlightenment (which I will go over briefly in the first few lectures by way of Introduction) to Romanticism, the Scientific and political Revolutions, Realism, Modernism and the Avant-Garde movements. Implicit in the study of these ideas and artistic creations is also a critique of many of the ideological assumptions of western civilization that have led to the excesses which today result in abuses, be they of logic, of science, of the irrational, or of the control and domination of both women , minorities and nature, itself. Thus, I hope to create a critical context in which to place these traditions so that you will come away from the course with a comprehension of the underpinnings of western creativity. At the same time I hope that this course will provide you with a framework that will enable you to interpret the innovative developments of the future that reference many of the movements of the past from new standpoints. I invite you to follow the current book review sections of various papers and journals, and to seek out works that inspire you—to follow the development of young writers, who may just be publishing their first works now. This is your moment to discover the emerging talents of the present that will develop into the classics of the future. Become a talent-scout/sleuth, and an activist in your study of the Humanities. Mostly—enjoy the ride.

APPROXIMATE CALENDAR

WEEK ONE Tues. Jan. 12 Introduction to the course: Read TARTUFFE by

Moliere for enjoyment

Thurs. Jan. 14 Introduction to the 17th cent. (Neo-classicism)

Film of TARTUFFE by Moliere

WEEK TWO Tues. Jan. 19 Introduction to the 18th Century: Read

CANDIDE by Voltaire for enjoyment

Thurs. Jan 21 The Enlightenment : Philosophy and History

WEEK THREE Tues. Jan. 26 First Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. Jan. 28 Introduction to Romanticism: History and

Aesthetics

WEEK FOUR Tues. Feb. 2 Mary Shelley: read FRANKENSTEIN

Thurs. Feb. 4 FRANKENSTEIN continued

WEEK FIVE Tues. Feb. 9 Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. Feb. 11 Film on Frankenstein in the history of cinema

WEEK SIX Tues. Feb. 16 Introduction to REALISM: History, Themes etc.

Thurs. Feb. 18 NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND by

Dostoevsky. Read in Anthology.

WEEK SEVEN Tues. Feb. 23 Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. Feb. 25 Introduction to MODERNISM

WEEK EIGHT Tues. March 2 Film on Modernist Movements

Thurs. March 4 Intro to Dada and Surrealism

WEEK NINE Tues. March 9 Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. March 11 NADJA by Andre Breton

WEEK TEN Tues. March 16 Spring Break

Thurs. March 18 Spring Break

WEEK ELEVEN Tues. March 23 Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. March 25 Intro to Virginia Woolf

WEEK TWELVE Tues. March 30 A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

Thurs. April 1 Film on Virginia Woolf

WEEK THIRTEEN Tues. April 6 Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. April 8 Modernism Movements

Continued: Futurism, Gertrude Stein and

Cubism

WEEK FOURTEEN Tues. April 13 The Theatre of the Absurd: Ionesco and

Beckett

Thurs. April 15 Film of THE BALD SOPRANO–Ionesco

WEEK FIFTEEN Tues. April 20 Media Lab, THH Basement

Thurs. April 22 AUSTERLITZ by W.G. Sebald

WEEK SIXTEEN Tues. April 27 Final Media Lab for viewing DVDs

Thurs. April 29 Course wrap-up