Mary Wollstonecraft, Preface
to the Female Reader (1789).
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
From the vehemence of current debates concerning the relation of
representations of sex and violence on TV to actual sexual and violent
acts committed in American society, one would think that such issues were
new and peculiar to America. In fact, similar debates were taking place as
far back as the 18th C in England and Europe. Just as one specific
court-TV trial has occupied center stage in the American media for the
past several years only to be supplanted now by yet another, so also were
late-18th and early-19th century British readers obsesseed with the potent
intersection of sex, violence, and law that they found in gothic romances
of the time. Because gothic explores what lies beyond Enlightenment
attitudes toward reason, literacy, superstition, sensuality, crime,
punishment, tyranny, marriage, social class, and nationhood, it provides
writers of this period with a means of pushing the boundaries of what is
known and what can be known. It asks whether we can separate pain from
pleasure, sex from violence, justice from corruption, punishment from
tyranny. This course explores the craze for gothic fiction in England
during the RomanticPeriod. We will certainly read Walpole's Castle of
Otranto, Radcliffe's The Italian, Austen's Northanger Abbey, Lewis's The
Monk, Dacre's Zofloya, Baillie's Orra, Coleridge's Christabel, Maturin's
Bertram, and Percy Shelley's Cenci. Graded work will be consist of a short
paper, a longer paper, an annotated bibliography, and a final exam.
Students will also be required to acquire and use elctronic computer mail
accounts.
COURSE CALENDAR
Note: The first two instigator paragraphs are due before Fall
Break. The second two are due before Thanksgiving.
Sept 3: Opening day, introduction to course.
Sept 5: Please do the following things, which will get you centered for
the course: (i) send me an e-mail message so that I know you have an
e-mail account and that you are in the class; (ii) read the opening
"Glossary of Aesthetic Terms" at the beginning of the coursepack; (iii)
read Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (selections in coursepack);
read
Chapter 3 of E. J. Clery's The Rise of Supernatural Fiction
1762-1800, which is entitled "The Uses of History" (I will give this
material to you on Sept. 3); read the introductory material in the Horace
Walpole, Castle of Otranto. This means that you should read the
Robert Mack introduction, and the two introductions written by Walpole.
I've also included in the bulkpack an excellent introductory essay on
Walpole, which you should examine if only for the pictures and to see what
else Walpole wrote during his life. In class, we will concentrate on the
Watt, the Clery, and Walpole's second introduction. ARTICLE SUMMARY
DUE FOR WATT.
Sept 8-10: Read Chapters 2 and 5 from Thomas Lacqueur, Making Sex.
Read Edmund Burke, "On
Taste" and A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the
Beautiful (1758): Part I, Sections II, VI-XV; Part II, Sections
I-VIII, and Part III, Sections I-XVIII. On Monday, we will focus on
ideas of sexual difference as they work in first 40 pages of Castle of
Otranto in comparison to Burke's highly gendered notions of the sublime
and the beautiful. Questions for Monday: if you set up two columns,
and in one note all that is sublime in the first half of Walpole, and in
the other note all that is beautiful in Walpole, are they as cleanly
gendered as Burke makes them? Do these columns confirm or contradict
Lacqueur's claims in Making Sex about the Eighteenth Century's "discovery"
of sexual difference? On Wednesday, we will look at "On Taste" and
at how emotion and sympathy work in the first 40 pages of Walpole and
especially in Walpole's Dedicatory Sonnet. Questions for Wednesday:
How do emotion and sympathy work in this novel? Is emotion a subversive
force in this novel or the opposite? Or both?
Sept 12: Read Peter Gay,
"The Enlightenment in Its World" (selections in coursepack) and Immanuel Kant,
"An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (1784, in
coursepack). In class:we will focus on how emotion--particularly
fear--operates in this novel. Question: Based on how Manfred
attempts to manipulate sex and sexual desire in this novel, would you
interpret Walpole as sympathetic or hostile to the Enlightenment?
Sept 15: Read the first seven chapters of The Italian. As this is a
complex novel, I've supplied you with a plot summary
of The Italian (in coursepack). ALSO: Read the article by Eve
Sedgwick, "The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic
Novel." ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE
Sept 17: Read to Volume Two, Chapter Two of The Italian. Read Michel
Foucault, "Panopticism" (in Discipline and Punish).
Question: How does the architecture of San Stefano express power?
Sept 19: Landscape and The Italian. Read: Chapter 6 and Chapter 8 of E.
J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction. Look again at Burke's
Philosophical Enquiry (selections above). Question: What is
the relation between Burke's theories of the sublime and Foucault's
analysis on the Panopticon? Why then does Ellena derive so much relief and
pleasure from the sublime when at San Stefano?
Sept 22: Read through the end of Volume II of The Italian. Read
the first three parts of Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
(through the chapter Scientia Sexualis). Question: Why is Schedoni
called "The Confessor"? What light does Foucault shed on the relation
between confession, the inquisition, penance, and sadomasochism?
Sept 24: Continue The Italian. You will find Chapters 6-8 (only
about 35 pages) of E. J. Clery's The Rise of Supernatural Fiction
extremely useful here. We will work from the response questions, and from
your own questions.
Sept 26: Finish The Italian.
Sept 29: Begin The Monk; finish the first Volume One. Read
Eve Sedgwick, "Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic."
Question: Using Paulo-Vivaldi as a segue, go to Matilda-Ambrosio:
how does power work in their relationship? What are the vague moments?
Oct 1: Read the next two chapters--to Volume Two, Chapter Three
(through Raymond's interlude).
Oct 3: Finish Volume II of The Monk. Read Chapter 6 of Thomas
Lacqueur, Making Sex. ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE.
Oct 6: Finish The Monk. Read Chapter 9 of E. J. Clery, The
Rise of Supernatural Fiction.
Oct 8: Read select reviews of The Monk (in coursepack), and
Coleridge's reviews of The Monk and The Italian (in
coursepack). For Discussion: Samuel Coleridge, Christabel
(first book).
Oct 10: Finish Christabel.
Read Karen Swann, "'Christabel':
The Wandering Mother and the Enigma of Form." >Essay
#1 Due.
Oct 13: FALL BREAK
Oct 15: Interlude #1: Who read? Reread the selections from Ian Watt's
Rise of the Novel (1957) from the first day of class, and read the
following three articles and/or book chapters: Chapter 5 of E. J. Clery's
The Rise of Supernatural Fiction; Jan Fergus, "Eighteenth-Century
Readers
in Provincial England: The Customers of Samuel Clay's Circulating Library
and Bookshop in Warwick 1770-72," and Edward Jacobs, "Anonymous
Signatures: Circulating Libraries, Conventionality, and the Production of
Gothic Romances."
Oct 17: Interlude #2: Why did they read? Read Anna Letitia Barbauld,
"On
the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, With Sir Bertrand, A
Fragment"; David Hume, "Of
Tragedy."; Edmund Burke "On Tragedy" (Part I, Section XIV of A
Philosophical Enquiry); and Joanna Baillie "Introductory Discourse"
(selections in coursepack).
Oct 20: Interlude #3: How have we viewed them? Read David Punter,
"Introduction" and "Origins of Gothic Fiction" in The Literature of Terror
(1980), and Anne Williams, "Introduction" to Art of Darkness: A Poetics of
Gothic (1994).
Oct 22: Romances and Anti-Romances. Begin Northanger
Abbey (first three chapters). Read Mary Wollstonecraft, Preface
to the Female Reader (1789).
Oct 24: Finish Volume One of Jane Austen, Northanger
Abbey (through Chapter 15). Read Marilyn Butler, "The Juvenalia and Northanger
Abbey" in Jane Austen the War of Ideas (1975). Essay
#2 Due.
Oct 27: Austen and Conduct Literature. Read John Gregory, A Father's
Legacy to His Daughters (selections).
Oct 29: Continue Northanger
Abbey. Read Anna Clark, "Women's
Pain, Men's Pleasure: Rape in the Late Eighteenth Century,". Read
Enid G. Hildebrand, "Jane Austen and the Law".
Oct 31: Finish Northanger
Abbey. Read Lawrence Stone, "Sex,
Money, and Murder in Eighteenth-Century England."
Nov 3: Begin Mary Wollstonecraft, The
Wrongs of Woman. Question: Why does Wollstonecraft open by
referring to Gothic?
Nov 5: Continue The
Wrongs of Woman. Read Katherine Binhammer, "The Sex Panic of the
1790s." ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE.
Nov 7: The
Wrongs of Woman. Read James Grantham Turner, "The Properties of
Libertinism." ARTICLE SUMMARY DUE
Nov 10: Read The Rules. Question: Is The
Wrongs of Woman a conduct book? In what way?
Nov 12: Finish The
Wrongs of Woman. The question of the endings.
Nov 14: Read Joanna Baillie, Orra.
Nov 17: Finish Orra.
Nov 19: Read Acts 1-2 of Percy Shelley, The
Cenci.
Nov 21: Read Acts 3-4 of Percy Shelley, The
Cenci.
Nov 24: Finish Percy Shelley, The
Cenci.
Nov 26: Long
Essay Due.
Nov 27: Thanksgiving.
Dec 1: Read John Keats, Isabella, or The Pot
of
Basil.
Dec 3: Finish Isabella, or The Pot
of
Basil. Begin John Keats, The Eve of St.
Agnes.
Dec 5: Finish The Eve of St.
Agnes. Read as well John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans
Merci."
Dec 8: Last day of class.
PORTFOLIO DUE DECEMBER 12TH AT 4:00 PM AT MY OFFICE.
COMPUTER INFORMATION:
You are required to have an electronic mail account: I do not
require you to use the world wide web, or any of the internet, but an
electronic mail account--and checking it at least a couple of times a
week--is required. Until you send an electronic mail message to
me, I will not consider you registered for the class, and I will
drop those of you on the course lists who do not get electronic mail
accounts. I do this because I will use electronic mail as my chief way of
making course announcements, sending out reminders, and communicating with
you.
Also, this course will have an electronic mailing list (known as a
listserver) that will have all of our names on it. If you send a message
to gamer250@dept.english.upenn.edu,
your message will go to everyone in the class. This way, you will be able
to do many things: 1) conduct discussions outside of class, 2) ask for
information on what we did in class if you miss a meeting, 3) test paper
ideas out on each other, 4) brainstorm regarding the final exam, etc. On
the first day of class, I will, as part of our first assignment, get those
of you who know about e-mail to take twenty minutes to teach those of you
who don't know about e-mail how to use it. Michael and I are more than
willing to set up group appointments with you in order to teach you how to
use this technology--so if you feel lost, you simply need to say so.
- 1. To send a message to the class listserver: "mail" a message to:
gamer250@dept.english.upenn.edu. When you send a message to this address,
the entire class will be able to read it and respond to it.
- 2. To reply to a message that has been sent to you via the class
listserver: make sure that you hit "g" (it stands for "group reply") if
you want to send your reply to the entire class. Hit "r" (for "reply") if
you only want to reply to the person who sent the message. The best thing
to do is double-check whom you are sending it to.
- 3. To get to my teaching homepage using Netscape: Simply select the
"Open" icon, and then type in my address:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Teaching
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance: As this is a 50-minute class, please show up on time
or even early. Regarding Absences: since I know that disasters happen
unexpectedly during the semester, I allow you three absences.
Therefore, please do NOT explain to me why you miss class unless it
involves a major illness that you can document. Since there's no such
thing in this class as an "excused" absence, I don't want to know why you
miss class; these two absences are your business. Missing more than two
classes is equally your business, but it will significantly lower your
grade, since it will inhibit your ability to contribute significantly to
our discussions. You should count on 3-4 absences lowering your grade by
1/3 (B to B-, for example), 5-6 by 2/3 (B to C+), 7-8 by one full grade (B
to C), etc. More than 10 will constitute failing the course.
Participation: This class will conduct itself as a discussion
rather than a lecture. I say this now because I do not want anyone taking
this class to expect it to be a lecture class. I do sometimes lecture for
5-15 minute stretches, but the bulk of our time will be spent in real
discussion, and the topics of our discussion will be determined as much by
your intellectual interests as by my own. This means that you should
expect class periods to be intense and often fun--a place to test out your
own ideas about what we're reading. You can expect me to come in every
class with 50 minutes of my own agenda planned; in turn, I will expect the
25 of you to have at least 25 minutes of questions, observations, and
discoveries about the reading. Students who do not participate in our
discussions will most likely see their final grade go down; the four or
five students who end up carrying much of the burden of discussion will
probably see their hard work reflected in their grade as well.
IF YOU ARE SHY, HERE'S WHAT TO DO: Simply bring in one question
that you want to ask the rest of us AND ASK IT--and you should, when
possible, choose interpretive questions ("I don't understand how these two
passages can be part of the same poem") rather than factual questions
("When did Robinson write this?") In particular, I urge you to pay
special attention to those points where you don't understand something in
the reading--where you've tried to find out the answer for yourself and
failed--because they are the most important for the class.
Reading and Writing Assignments: As this course is a
lower-level, introductory course, I am assuming that you have little or no
experience in reading poetry. Consequently, the reading load for this
course is relatively light (usually under 6 hours per week), and the
writing load for this course is relatively heavy (several one-paragraph
article summaries, four short one-paragraph discussion "instigators," five
listserv responses, two short essays, and a longer essay with an annotated
bibliography attached to it). Instructions concerning all of these
assignments are below.
GRADED WORK FOR THIS COURSE:
Your grade will be determined by three components: the quality of your
in-class performance (including the article summaries, the paragraphs, and
the listserver responses, 25% of your grade), your performance on the
final exam 25% of your grade), and the quality of the portfolio of work
that you hand in at the end of the semester (50% of grade). These various
assignments are listed and described below:
- 1) The Four "Instigator" Paragraphs (10% of grade). These
should be no more than 150 words, i.e. 1/2 a page single spaced at the
most. Four times during the semester, I will ask you to write a paragraph
that is intended to instigate discussion. I will grade these based on
their ability to instigate discussion. The way these will work is that
you will bring your "instigator" into class on that day. On any given
day, we will likely have 7-8 students bringing in these paragraphs and
reading them aloud. These paragraphs should be straight to the point,
without introductory material, and in your speaking ("I") voice. You
should see these paragraphs as significant opportunities for you to
determine the agenda of the class. THEREFORE, YOUR PARAGRAPHS SHOULD BE
ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON IN THE CLASS PERIOD, AND WHY. The
paragraph should be in your speaking voice and i) point us to a specific
part of a specific poem (at most two passages), ii) challenge us by asking
a question or by proposing an idea for discussion, iii) make clear what
you want to accomplish by discussing this--what will we be able to figure
out if we approach the text for discussion in your way? PLEASE DESIGN
THESE TO BE SPOKEN ALOUD. I will grade them less on the quality of the
prose than on the basis of how well they spur discussion--in other words,
on their intellectual intensity, clarity, and curiosity. Deadlines for
these:You should hand in two of these before fall break, and have done
all of them by Thanksgiving.
- 2) Five responses on the class listserver (10% of grade--at least
150 words in length): In the first eleven weeks of the semester, I
will ask you to participate in the discussion we have on the class
listserver (send all messages to gamer250@dept.english.upenn.edu). You
may write in when you have something you want to contribute, propose,
respond to, etc., and may do so any time over the semester BEFORE
THANKSGIVING. You may participate as much as you wish--and those who
"carry" the discussion do get A's and A+'s for this part of the
course--but I require that you make at least five entries. Please
do not cram in all of your entries into the last two weeks of November,
since it defeats the purpose of having on-line discussion groups, and
since it will lower your grade on this requirement. At the end of the
semester, I will read through all of the listserv activity and evaluate
your level of engagement, and it will count as 10% of your final grade.
- 3) Five Article Summaries (5% of grade): I intentionally have
chosen some of the most important critics of the last 25 years when I
chose the articles we will read for the course. Consequently, in many
ways they are the most important aspect of the course, in that they will
familiarize you with reading literary criticism, and with the kinds of
issues that lately have dominated scholarly work on British Poetry. As a
way of insuring that you read these articles closely, I have assigned
throughout the semester a number of one-page summaries of the articles we
read for the class. I will simply read through these and check them off
so long as your summary convinces me that you have read the article.
Doing all of these on time is, again, an easy way to get a quick "A" in
the part of the course.
- 4) The Final Exam (25% of grade): This will be split between
an identification section, a short answer section, and an essay question.
It will be open book and open note. The best way to study for this exam
is to have read, by the end of the semester, each of the poems for
discussion several times, and to have marked in your books and bulkpack
every passage that comes up in class. These will be the ones that appear
on the final.
- 5) The Portfolio (50% of grade): You'll be writing papers
during the semester and receiving revision instructions and grade feedback
from me. You'll then revise as needed and hand in your best work at the
end of the semester in a portfolio. Obviously, it should really be the
best, most finished, immaculate work you can do. Each portfolio will
contain the following items:
- One
Short Essay (10% of grade; less than 1500 words; see below for
instructions):
- One
Longer Essay (20% of grade; more than 2000 words; see below for
instructions), that should address a question of your own choosing, and
will represent the most sustained piece of work for the course. Ideally,
it should treat at least two texts in the course, and whatever outside
materials you have dug up. While you must hand in a prospectus of this
paper during the semester, I also recommend that you come to see me during
my office hours before you begin writing this essay. This essay is worth
20% of your grade.
- The
Annotated Bibliography (20% of grade; see below for instructions) will
be an appendix to the long paper, and must include at least two articles
on the text[s] you have written on for your Longer Essay. It consists of
two summaries and two exploratory essays.
Late Work and Extensions:
During the semester, I DO NOT
ACCEPT LATE WORK. If you do not make a deadline, it does not directly
affect your grade; you simply lose that opportunity for me to read your
work and provide you with feedback. For example, if you miss the second
paper deadline, you simply lose that opportunity for me to read your work
and help you with feedback. I do this because I do not want anything to
do with the hassles of students asking for extensions, bringing excuses,
etc. I will only read each paper you write once before the portfolio.
However, I am happy to discuss work in progress with you during my office
hours or by appointment; and will be very happy to talk with you about an
essay that I've commented upon. It is a good idea to bring in a draft
with specific questions about it. It is much more instructive to discuss
specific questions and writing problems in a draft than general, abstract
questions concerning your writing.
Plagiarism: I will report all instances of Plagiarism to the
Office of Student Conduct. If you have any doubts over whether you're
plagiarizing from something, please come see me or the course's WATU
Tutor.