ENGLISH 4270: MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE

A survey of the approaches to literary study that have flourished in the academy over the last half-century, including New Criticism, structuralism, semiotics, reception theory, marxism, feminism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, new historicism, and other poststructuralist modes of address. Attention will also be paid to topics such as the nature of literary history, contemporary institutional and professional issues, and proper bibliographic and textual practice. Though much of the reading will be abstract and theoretical, we will do our best to remain grounded through practical criticism of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Course documents and assignments will be posted on mygateway.umsl.edu, but the main course page will be located at www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/F09SYLL5000.htm, which can also be reached through my home page (www.umsl.edu/~gradyf).

Requirements: Class participation (based on perfect attendance and regular, vigorous, and open-minded contribution to discussion both in class and on-line; tri-weekly written responses to discussion questions--20%); one bibliographic project (10%); one critical essay analysis (10%); two short (5-6pp.) essays (20% each); one take-home final exam (20%). Plagiarism on papers, electronic or the old-fashioned kind, will mean an instant F for the assignment, my undying disapprobation, and possible disciplinary action by the university; please refer to this site for further details, and please please please ask me if you have any questions.

Assignment group divisions can be found here: group link

REQUIRED TEXTS:

· Richter, D. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007 [hence CT]

· Bram Stoker, Dracula. Ed. Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal. Norton Critical Edition. Norton, 1997 (1897)

· M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms. Ninth edition. Wadsworth, 2009

A course reader containing various relevant articles, available through MyGateway

RECOMMENDED: Possession of or regular access to a style manual, either the MLA Handbook of Writers of Research Papers or The Chicago Manual of Style, and a good dictionary.

Tentative SYLLABUS:

M AUG 24 Introduction: Readings, Research, Rumors, Regrets

Culler, “What is Theory?” [reader]

Graff, “ Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty” [reader]

M AUG 31: Author

Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," CT 537-541

F.R. Leavis, from The Great Tradition, CT 652-58

Foucault, “What Is an Author?”, CT 904-14

Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” CT, 874-77

Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," CT 810-18

Donaldson, “Chaucer the Pilgrim” [on-line]

M SEP 7 Labor Day: No Class

M SEP 14: Objects of Study

Brooks, from My Credo and “Irony as a Principle of Structure,” CT 797-806

Fish, “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” CT 1022-30

Chute, “Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative” [reader]

Culler, “What Is Literature and Does It Matter?” [reader]

· Richter, “Formalisms,” CT 749-60

M SEP 21: Institutions

Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” CT 415-29

Ransom, “Criticism, Inc.” [reader]

Graff, “Taking Cover in Coverage” [reader]

Guillory, from Cultural Capital, CT 1472-84

Shapiro, “Survival and Failure, Adaptation and Acceptance” [reader]

Eagleton, “Rise of English” [reader]

MLA materials [on-line]

*W SEP 23 FIRST ESSAY DUE DATE (Group 1)*

M SEP 28: Institutions, cont.

Library research tour

Presentation on Composition Studies by Dr. Duffey (reading tba)

M OCT 5: Structure (I)

Saussure, Selections from Course in General Linguistics, CT 842-49

Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature,” CT 691-701

Barthes, "The World of Wrestling" [reader]; “Striptease,” “The Structuralist Activity,” CT 869-74

Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” CT 860-68

Eco, “The Myth of Superman,” CT 950-61

Richter, “Structuralism and Deconstruction,” CT 819-26

*W OCT 7 FIRST ESSAY DUE DATE (Group 2)*

M OCT 12: Structure (2)

Graff, "Determinacy/Indeterminacy" [reader]

Barthes, “From Work to Text,” CT 878-82

Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” CT 915-26

De Man, “Semiology and Rhetoric,” CT 882-93

Riquelme, "Doubling and Repetition/Realism and Closure in Dracula" [reader]

Martinez, “Deconstructing the Matrix” [reader]

Richter, “Structuralism and Deconstruction,” CT 826-37

M OCT 19: History (I)

Marx, from The German Ideology and from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, CT 406-411

Althusser, from Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, CT 1263-72

Jameson, from The Political Unconscious, CT 1290-1306

Moretti, "A Capital Dracula," in Dracula 431-44 [plus on-line supplement]

Grady, "Vampire Culture" [reader]

· Richter, “Marxist Criticism,” CT 1198-1214

M OCT 26: History (II)

White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” CT 1383-1397

Schaffer, "'A Wilde Desire Took Me': The Homoerotic History of Dracula," Dracula 470-82 (full text available here and on MyGateway)

Greenblatt, Introduction to The Power of Forms and “King Lear and Harsnett’s ‘Devil-Fiction’,” CT 1443-47

Lentricchia, from Ariel and the Police, CT 1448-52

Armstrong, “Some Call It Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity,” CT 1419-32

· Richter, “New Historicism and Cultural Studies,” CT 1320-39 [to 1332?]

*W OCT 28 BIBLIOGRAPHIC PROJECT DUE*

M NOV 2: Empire

Appiah, "Race" [reader]

Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” CT 1837-49

Said, from Orientalism, CT 1801-14

Arata, "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization," in Dracula 462-70 (full text here , in Victorian Studies 33 [1990], and on MyGateway)

Anderson, “The Origins of National Consciousness,” CT 1815-20

· Richter, “Postcolonialism and Ethnic Studies,” CT 1753-74 [to 1764]

M NOV 9: Gender (I)

Gilbert and Gubar, from The Madwoman in the Attic, CT 1532-44

Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own, CT 596-601, 607-10

De Beauvoir, from The Second Sex, CT 673-78

Fetterly, Introduction to The Resisting Reader, CT 1035-42

Culler, “Reading as a Woman,” CT 1579-90

Roth, "Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula," in Dracula, 411-21

Richter, “Feminist Literary Criticism,” CT 1502-16

*W NOV 11 SECOND ESSAY DUE DATE (Group 1)*

M NOV 16: Gender (II)

Craft, "'Kiss Me with Those Red Lips': Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula," in Dracula 444-59 (full text available through JSTOR and on MyGateway)

Sedgwick, from Between Men, CT 1684-87

Wittig, “One Is not Born a Woman,” CT 1637-42

Butler, from Gender Trouble [reader]

Showalter, from “Critical Cross-Dressing…,” CT 1591-97 (plus supplements on-line)

Garber, from Vested Interests [reader]

Richter, “Gender Studies and Queer Theory,” CT 1611-25

*WED NOV 18 SECOND ESSAY DUE DATE (Group 2)*

M NOV 26 Thanksgiving Break: No Class

M NOV 30: Unconscious [I]

Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, “The Uncanny,” “Medusa’s Head,” CT 500-533

Bentley, “The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbolism in …Dracula” [reader]

Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” CT 1172-80

Clover, "Her Body/Himself" [reader]

Richter, “Psychoanalytic Theory and Criticism,” CT 1106-19

M DEC 7: Unconscious [II]

Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I…”, CT 1123-8

Foster, “’The little children can be bitten’: A Hunger for Dracula” [reader]

Žižek, "Two Ways to Avoid the Real of Desire" [reader] and “Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing,” CT 1181-96

M DEC 14: Final Exam due

Students with disabilities who believe that they may need accommodations in this class are encouraged to speak to me as soon as possible and to contact the Disability Access Services Office in 144 Millennium Student Center at 516-6554 as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are arranged in a timely fashion.