John Plotz, Fall 2014

English 245a

Thursdays 2-5, Rabb 236

office hours: 12-1 M W and by appt.

Naturalism between Realism and Modernism, 1880-1930

This course aims to explore the genealogy of Naturalism in the wake of Marx, Darwin and Zola's"experimental novel," drawing on TorilMoi's account of Idealism's declineand Jameson's account of Naturalist pessimism. Authors include Hardy,Gissing, Twain, Crane, Norris, James, and Lawrence. Naturalism, in Britain as well as in France and America, inaugurated a significant rupture in the norms governing both fictional mimesis and the depiction of temporality. Naturalist fiction (and the theater it flourished alongside) is more than a narrow subgenre of post-Zola works; it is rather a new set of connected ideas, modes, and techniques responding to Darwinian thought as well as new ideas about determinism, contingency and political freedom that pervasively shaped fiction between 1859 and WWI. Partially by exploring how the social and physical sciences of the day shaped naturalist literary thinking, this class explores the interplay between literature and other cultural realms. It also explores the interplay between American, British and Continental literature at a time when nationalist ideology seemed to preclude the rich sort of cosmopolitan dialogues that actually took place.

Class Expectations

Each student will make a short argument-based presentation once during the class (sign-up circulates September 4th). After the presentation, the rest of the class will be responsible for mailing feedback, advice, and queries to the presenter (s) within two days of the presentation. A short graded paper will emerge from these presentations: these papers will be due one week after the presentation.Those papers may help form the basis for the long seminar paper, which will be due at the end of the semester.

As a way of structuring our discussion on critical and theoretical topics, each assigned article will be presented orally by one member of the class (signup sheet will be circulated). In addition, each student is responsible for posting, every week, a brief response to some aspect of the week’s readings (critical or primary) by Wednesday night at 10 pm.There will be some flexibility in the syllabus throughout, depending on our progress and the direction of student interest; please check Latte each weekend to ensure that the readings have not been modified. In the latter part of the class, student interest will drive revisions to the syllabus. And ample time in the last two weeks will be devoted to workshopping and presenting final papers.

Introductory week: Thursday August 28

G Lukacs, “Narrate or Describe” (pp. 110-127 only)

M. Winkler “Naturalism”

[[recc. : M. Winkler “Realism”]] both Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012)

Anthony Trollope, The Warden (1869) chapters 1-3

  1. September 4th
  2. Finish The Warden
  3. Ian Watt,The Rise of the Novel (Ch. 1)
  4. Catherine Gallagher, “The Rise of Fictionality” (2006)
  5. [Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar” from Mimesis]
  6. [Franco Moretti, from Way of the World; esp pp. 42-56: episode, conversation, ending]
  1. September 11Emile Zola, Germinal (1885)
  2. Zola“The Experimental Novel” (1880)
  3. Raymond Williams, “Naturalism” (1976, in Keywords)
  4. Brian Nelson, “Emile Zola: Naturalism” (Cambridge Companion…. 2012)
  5. Donald Pizer “The Problem of Definition” from The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism (1995)
  6. Frederic Jameson, from The Antinomies of Realism (1-15, 15-27)

[recc. 45-77 “Zola, or, the Codification of Affect”]

  1. September 18
  2. Henrik Ibsen, HeddaGabler
  3. [[Suggested: A Doll’s House [1879]]]
  4. TorilMoi, “Rethinking Literary History: Idealism, Realism and the Birth of Modernism”(2006; Henrik Ibsen, pp. 67-104, plus 316-319)
  5. Frederic Jameson, from The Antinomies of Realism(138-163 “Realism and the Disintegration of the Genre” )
  6. June Howard, “Sand in Your Mouth: Naturalism and Other Genres” (2011)
  7. David Baguley, “The Entropic Vision” [and “Theories: Realism, naturalism, genre”] from Naturalist Fiction (1990) [or potentially 9/23]
  8. [Bernard Shaw from: “Quintessence of Ibsenism” ]
  9. James Joyce on Ibsen (1900)
  10. Tuesday September 23 [Brandeis Thursday]
  11. Hardy Tess of the D’Urbervilles, [Phases 1-4, chs. 1-34]
  12. Thomas Hardy, “Candour in Fiction”
  13. Charles Darwin, tbd
  14. Gillian Beer, “Finding a Scale for the Human” from Darwin’s Plots (3rd ed. 2009)
  15. Raymond Williams, “Wessex and the Border” Country and the City (1973)
  16. [John Barrell, “Geographies of Hardy’s Wessex” (1982 orig.)
  17. E. M. Forster, [on Hardy, from] Aspects of the Novel]
  18. [Elaine Scarry, “Work and the Body in Hardy and other 19th century Novelists”
  19. October 2 [with Gallagher]
  20. Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles [to end]
  21. [James Buzard, tbd]
  22. Catherine Gallagher (1998) "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Thomas Hardy's Anthropology of the Novel"
  23. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galiston, from Objectivity
  24. Lee Clark Mitchell, “Taking Determinism Seriously” and “Naturalism and the Excluded Self” in Determined Fictions (1989)

[October 9 NO CLASS]

  1. October 13 [Brandeis Thursday; no class October 16]
  2. Norris, Frank. McTeague(Penguin, 0140187693) (1899)
  3. Frank Norris, “A Plea for Romantic Fiction” (Boston Evening Transcript, December 18, 1901); “The Responsibilities of the Novelist” (1902)
  4. Walter Benn Michaels, “The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism” The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism (139-180, 1990)
  5. Jennifer Fleissner, “The compulsion to describe” 37-74 in Women, Compulsion and Modernity (2004);
  6. [also, Fleissner “Gender Preservation and Futurity in McTeague, 201-232]
  7. possibly extend Norris or Norris and Crane to a second week at this point]]
  8. October 23
  9. Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Norton, 978-0-393-95137-0) (1889)
  10. Mark Seltzer “Case Studies and Cultural Logistics” in Bodies and Machines (1992)
  11. John Frow“Preface” and “1. Figure” from Character and Person (2014)

[“Type” also from Character and Person]

  1. Seth Lerer “Hello Dude”
  2. Stephen Crane, TBD
  3. [David Zimmerman, “Introduction” in Panic! Markets, crises and Crowds in American Fiction (2006)]

[possibly extend Twain to a second week at this point]]

  1. October 30
  2. Henry James, What Maisie Knew (Penguin 0141441372) [1895]
  3. Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884)
  4. Kittler,tbd
  5. Cameron,tbd
  6. Bersanitbd
  1. November 6
  2. Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (Oxford World’s Classic,978-0199536023) 1900
  3. James Chandler “On the Face of the Case” (2007) (on Lord Jim)
  4. [Darwin on emotions, Wallace, tbd
  5. [Jameson on Lord Jim from The Political Unconscious]
  6. Michael Fried, “Almayer's Face: On "Impressionism" in Conrad, Crane, and Norris” (1990)
  1. November 13
  2. Willa Cather, Song of the Lark (1915
  3. Willa Cather, “The Novel Demeuble”
  4. Gertrude Stein tbd
  1. November 20

D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (Oxford, 0199538883) (1913)

[or potentially Richard Wright, tbd]

Crit/theory: TBD

Thanksgiving Recess; [No class November 27]

work on final papers

  1. December 4: Final week…..
  2. [if Lawrence hasn’t been shifted back to this week, then final paper presentation week]

Reading List

All are available from the bookstore, but you may also purchase the same edition elsewhere if you prefer. Please always bring a physical copy of the book itself to class, and be prepared to show the markings, underlinings and notes that you have made as you read.

Anthony Trollope, The Warden (1869) Oxford 019953778X

Charles Darwin, Darwin (Norton Critical Editions, 0393958493)

Emile Zola, Germinal (Oxford, 0199536899)

Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Norton, 978-0-393-95903-1) (1891)

Henrik Ibsen, HeddaGabler[in Ibsen’s Selected Plays Norton, 978-0393924046] (1890)

Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Norton, 978-0-393-95137-0) (1889

Henry James, What Maisie Knew (Penguin 0141441372) [1895]

Norris, Frank. McTeague(Penguin, 0140187693) (1899)

Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (Oxford World’s Classic,978-0199536023) (1899-1900)

Willa Cather, Song of the Lark (1915 (in Cather, Early Novels and Stories (Library of America, 9781883011741)

D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (Oxford, 0199538883) (1913)