History and Literature Sophomore Seminar:
Modern British Literature and Culture
Harvard University, H&L 97
Fall 2003
Meegan Kennedy
John Mackey
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Goals and Organization : Our aim this semester will be to examine major texts, authors, themes, trends, and events in modern British history and literature from an interdisciplinary perspective. Throughout the course of the tutorial, we will attempt to sharpen our close reading, analytical, and writing skills, while also questioning the nature of interdisciplinary study. The term will be divided into four units. The first (a brief, one-week unit) will introduce the course and raise questions about methods and themes that will recur throughout the year. The primary text for this unit will be Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels . The second unit will focus on the history and literature of the city of London - in many ways the center of British life - in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The third unit of the fall semester will be the sophomore tutorial common curriculum. This unit will consist of a series of readings, largely from a theoretical perspective, which will be read and discussed by you and all of your sophomore colleagues in the concentration. We will also have two common curriculum meetings during the semester, on Thursday, November 6 and Thursday, December 4. Finally, the fourth unit will focus on the Great War of 1914-1918, a great political and cultural turning point in modern history. During the spring semester we will focus on the literature of British empire, especially during the nineteenth century. You may examine a copy of last spring's syllabus if you like; this spring's will be similar but not identical.
Assignments : During most weeks, students will complete a response paper that deals with that week's readings. Response papers should be typed, double-spaced, contain a title, and be no more than two pages in length. At the end of the page, also include two questions about the week's readings that you would like to discuss in class. Response papers are due Mondays at 4 p.m.; put one copy in Meegan's mailbox and one in John's, and also send them as an attachment via email to both tutors. There will also be three longer interdisciplinary paper assignments throughout the semester, which will be based on primary source readings.
Schedule : P = Primary Source S = Secondary Source W = Writing Assignment CC = Common Curriculum Readings
* = Available in H&L Office for photocopying
P : Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (NCE).
P : *Altick, The Shows of London (excerpts).
S : From NCE: Douglas Lane Patey, "Swift's Satire on 'Science' and the Structure of Gulliver's Travels ," pp. 371-95; Dennis Todd, "The Hairy Maid at the Harpsichord: Some Speculations on the Meaning of Gulliver's Travels ," pp. 296-427;
W : Browse through some issues of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society before 1750 (available on JSTOR). Find a travel narrative, case history, or other report, describe it briefly, and provide a comparison and/or contrast to Swift's project, or that of the Academy, in Gulliver's Travels.
UNIT II: THE CENTER - LONDON
P: John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1614)
S: Margaret Healy, "The Glutted, Unvented Body," Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England: Bodies, Plagues, and Politics , pp. 189-228.
S : *Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities , pp. 1-7, 9-46.
S : Linda Colley, Britons, pp. 1-100.
W : "Three Threads and a Thesis" assignment (see handout).
P : John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728).
S : *Douglas Hay, "Property, Authority, and the Criminal Law," from Hay, et. al., eds., Albion's Fatal Tree , pp. 17-63.
S : Linda Colley, Britons, pp. 101-194.
W : Choose one of the images from William Hogarth's "A Rake's Progress" and analyze it in light of this week's readings.
P : James Boswell, Boswell's London Journal (1763).
P : *Boswell, "Inviolable Plan."
S : *H.J. Dyos, "Some historical reflections on the quality of urban life," in Cannadine and Reeder, eds., Exploring the Urban Past.
S : Linda Colley, Britons, pp. 195-282.
W : Go to the library, and pick a British periodical from Boswell's period that you would like to examine. Then try to find an article or piece that deals with either urban life or gender relations, and discuss that article in light of Boswell's journal.
Week 6: Oct. 21: COMEDY AND FEAR: A COUNTRY GIRL IN THE CITY
P : Frances Burney, Evelina (1778)
S : *Beth Kowaleski-Wallace, "A Night at the Opera: The Body, Class, and Art in Evelina and Frances Burney's Early Diaries," in Tobin, ed., History,Gender, and Eighteenth-Century Literature , pp. 141-58.
S : Linda Colley, Britons, pp. 283-375.
W : No response paper due this week - essay due Friday.
During each of the Common Curriculum weeks, one-third of the class will work up a summary of the argument and discussion questions for each of the readings (see handout), to distribute and present in class. The group presenting will be excused from the weekly written response for that week.
Week 7: Oct. 28: Language and Meaning
S: Ferdinand Saussure, "Part I: General Principles," Course in General Linguistics
S: Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," "Operation Margarine," "Blueblood Cruise," "The Great Family of Man," Mythologies
W: Choose one of the Barthes essays. How is his discussion of "mythology" like or unlike our conventional understanding of "mythology" in Greek, Roman, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, or other cultures?
Week 8: Nov. 4: Meaning and Multiplicity
S: Mikhail Bakhtin, "From the prehistory of the novel," The Dialogic Imagination
S: Michel Foucault, "Orders of Discourse"
S: Claude Levi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson," from Tristes tropiques
W: In what ways might Levi-Strauss's essay be a "historical" or "literary" document? In what ways does it differ from these sorts of documents? Use specific examples.
Thursday, November 6, 4:00: Common Curriculum Workshop (Sever Hall)
Week 9: Nov. 11: VETERAN'S DAY HOLIDAY - NO CLASS
Week 10: Nov. 18: Multiplicity in Genre and Narrative
S: Hayden White, "Historical Text as Literary Artifact," Tropics of Discourse
S: James Clifford, "Identity in Mashpee," Predicament of Culture
W: Compare the process of identity formation that is disputed in Clifford, to the process in Swift, Boswell, or Burney; or, How does Clifford help you rethink the construction of "nationalism" as Anderson discusses it?
P : *Selected First World War Poems
S : Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory , ch. 1,2, and 5.
S : Anne Ferry, from Tradition and the Individual Poem: An Inquiry into Anthologies ; Susan Bassnett, "A Century of Editing: The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1900-1999"; Klaus Peter Muller, "Victorian Values and Cultural Contexts in Francis Turner Palgrave's: The Golden Treasury."
W : Anthology research and writing exercise: Compare and contrast Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse with Palgrave's Golden Treasury. (See handout)
P : Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933), excerpts: "Preface and Foreword," "Forward From Newcastle," "Learning versus Life," "Camberwell versus Death," "Tawny Island," "This Loneliest Hour," "Survivors Not Wanted," "Another Stranger," Sect. 1 and 12.
S : *Margaret Higonnet and Patrice L.-R. Higonnet, "The Double Helix," In Higonnet, et al, eds., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars , pp. 31-51.
L : *Joan Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis."
W : Discussion of partial drafts of second 1500-word essay.
Thursday, December 4, 4:00: Common Curriculum Workshop (Sever Hall)
Friday, December 5, 2:00: History and Literature Forum with Jay Winter,
Yale University historian of twentieth-century war and memory (Sever Hall). Readings will be emailed to you.
P : Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991).
P : *W.H.R. Rivers, M.D., "An Address on the Repression of War Experience," The Lancet (2 Feb. 1918), pp. 173-77.
P : *Sigfried Sassoon, autobiographical selection.
W : No response paper this week - essay due Friday
Friday, December 12, 4:00: second 1500-word essay due, History and Literature Office
P : Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1922).
S : Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918; read the following selections: Introduction, "The Nature of Time," and "The Present."
P : *Virginia Woolf, "Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown."
W: Select a passage from Mrs. Dalloway that illustrates something interesting about Woolf's vision of time and/or history. Write a response paper that is based on your close reading of the passage. Be sure to indicate the page number(s) of the passage at the top of your paper.
Wednesday, December 17 to Sunday, January 4: WINTER RECESS
Monday, January 5 READING PERIOD