by Barbara Benedict, Charles A. Dana, Professor of English Literature

Description:

This course is designed for first- and second-year students as a close-reading introduction to basic literary techniques and categories, with a strong writing component. It is not directed solely at upcoming English majors but they will probably be the majority of the class.

How important is your “stuff” to you? What does it mean? When is a thing just a thing, and when does it represent something else? In this course, students will examine the literary representations of material culture, including clothes, tools, collections of things, paintings, jewelry and books, in a range of works from the Renaissance to the present time. We will analyze what different kinds of things mean at different periods of history, and how writers invest them with magical, religious, satirical and sentimental significance. Readings will include drama, novels, poetry, and journalism, as well as some history, and anthropological and literary theory. This course fills a cultural context requirement for English majors.

Book List:

1. John Locke, selections from An Essay on Human Understanding
2. Susan Stewart, selections from On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, and the Collection
3. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
4. Daniel Defoe, The Apparition of Mrs. Veal
5. Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
6. Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room or To the Lighthouse
7. John Fowles, The Collector
8. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
9. Edgar Allan Poe, Selected stories including “The Black Cat” and “The Purloined Letter”
10. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, selected stories including “The Case of the Orange Pips”
11. Other selected short stories
    1. Selections from poltergeist and witch narratives (long 18th C mainly)
    2. Thorstein Veblen, selections from The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions Selected poems, mainly from The Norton Anthology of Poetry, shorter edition, including:
    3. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
    4. Andrew Marvell, “On a Dew Drop”
    5. Robert Herrick, “On Julia’s Clothes”
    6. Jonathan Swift, selections including “The Dressing Room,” “On a Nymph going to Bed”
    7. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock John Gay, Book I from Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London
    8. John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
    9. Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”
    10. Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright”
    11. Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”
    12. Richard Wilbur, “Objects”; “Museum Piece”
    13. William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
    14. Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”
    15. Selected song lyrics TBA by the class.

PART I: The Body and Things: where does the body stop and clothes begin? short introductory lectures on Renaissance, pre-industrial British society, sartorial laws, Catholic rituals, and literary traditions of dream-visions in which things mean something immaterial that reveals/conceals a moral truth; the eighteenth-century influx of cloth goods; changing notions of cleanliness and the borders of bodies and things; and modern theory on clothes, bodies and identity.

Readings for Weeks 1, 2 and 3:

• John Locke, from Essay on Human Understanding
• Shakespeare
  • Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’ day?”
  • The Merchant of Venice
• Robert Herrick, “On Julia’s Clothes”
• Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Cantos I and II
• Madonna, “Material Girl”
• Jonathan Swift, “The Dressing-room,” “The Ivory Table-Book,” “A Nymph Going to Bed,” etc.
• Bob Dylan, “Leopard-skin Pillbox Hat”
• Students’ selected song lyrics John Gay, Book I from Trivia; the Art of Walking the Streets of London

PART II: Things, Spirits and Sins: where does the material begin and end? how can thing embody evil? short introductory lectures on the repression of superstition in the 18thc, witches, devils, empiricism, the Royal Society and the rise of science.

Readings for Weeks 4, 5 and 6:

• Andrew Marvell, “On a Dew Drop”
• Daniel Defoe, “The Apparition of Mrs. Veal”
• John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
• Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Canto III-V.
• Poltergeist narrative, “The Lambs Inn Ghost”
• Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Case of the Orange Pips”
• Students’ selected song lyrics

PART III: Collecting Things: when does possessing something possess you? how can ownership change the owner’s personality or identity? Short introductory lecture on Victorian culture and the history of auctions and collecting.

Readings for Weeks 7, 8 and 9:

• Veblen, selections from The Theory of the Leisure Class
• Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”
• Edgar Allen Poe, “The Black Cat” and “The Purloined Letter’
• Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright”
• Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
• John Fowles, The Collector
• Janis Joplin, “Lord Won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?”
• Students’ selected song lyrics

PART IV: Remembered Things: are things what one remembers them to be? how do they furnish the mind and shape the idea of the past? short introductory lecture on WWI.

Readings for Weeks 7, 8 and 9:

• Susan Stewart, selections from On Longing
• Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room or To the Lighthouse
• Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”
• Richard Wilbur, “Objects”; “Museum Piece”
• William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
• Elizabeth Bishop, “The Art of Losing”
• Students’ selected song lyrics