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Course Details

Fall 2012ENGL 707.2MWF JohnV Knapp

Title: SEMINAR: TOPICS IN LITERATURE

Course Description: Seminar devoted to advanced study of special topics and periods of literature. May be repeated to a maximum of 9 semester hours when topic varies.

PRQ:

Detailed Course Description:Many literature teachers through the 20th and into the 21st century have tended to think of characters in one-at-a-time fashion, rather than recognizing that most of them are also part of a collective, a social or familial dynamic.  In this course, our focus will remain on characters within the family both as individual entities (using James Phelan’s useful tri-part definition of mimetic, thematic, and synthetic characters), but also as members of a family where it itself exhibits what some psychological scientists call “emergent properties.”   The family (in life and in fiction) as a unit contains qualities that are both inclusive and different from any single member or even sub-sets of them.  Hence, families – in literature and in life – emerge from being a mere aggregate of individuals into becoming dynamic entities in their own right.  Conversely, individual literary characters also inhabit systems of people; I will discuss both individuals and families employing what is called family (or living) systems theory or FST.  As Tolstoy said, opening Anna Karenina with the famous line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Yes, but while all families, unhappy or otherwise, are different in some respects, they often behave in ways that to a critic of family theory would be obvious and predictable, each family constituting a dynamic entity that emerges from the very individuals who belong to its membership. 
Course Requirements:

As a class, we will select approximately six or seven of the following pieces of literature and criticism, and then, after an introduction to family systems and social minds theories, we will read these literary works collectively.  However, following our reading, each of you may select one of these works (or one off the list for which there is joint agreement), and write (alone or with a partner) one major critical essay.  During that process, you will give brief reports to the class on your progress and anything new in criticism you may discover.

Required Texts:

Select from the following:

Aeschylus, Oresteia.  Trans. Richard Lattimore. U of Chicago P, 1953.
Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA:

       Harvard UP, 2009.
Bronte, Anne.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  Rpt. Dutton, 1969.
Bronte, Charlotte.  Jane Eyre. Rpt. Norton, 1971.
Bronte, Emily.  Wuthering Heights. Rpt. Norton, 1972.
Carroll, Joseph.  Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature.  Routledge, 2004.
Dickens, Charles.  Great Expectations.  Rpt. Penguin, 2009.
Culpeper, Jonathan. Language and Characterization: People in Plays and Other Texts.  Essex, UK:

      Pearson, 2001.
Di Nicola, Vincenzo. A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy.  NY: Norton,

      1997.
Faulkner, William.  As I Lay Dying. Norton Critical, rpt. 2009
Forster, E. M. Howards End. Norton Critical, rpt. 1998.
Frayn, Michael. Spies.  Picador, 2002.
Gottschall, Jonathan. Literature, Science, and the New Humanities.  NY: Palgrave, 2008.
Hardy, Thomas.  The Mayor of Casterbridge. Rpt. Norton, 1977.
Hineojosa, Rolando.  Becky and Her Friends. Arte Publico, 1990.
Houlbrooke, Ralph. The English Family, 1450 – 1700.  London: Longman, 1984.
Kagan, Jerome. Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st

       Century. Cambridge UP, 2009.
Knapp, John V.  Critical Insights: Family.  Salem P, 2012.
Knapp, John V. and Kenneth Womack, eds. Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy

       and Literary Study.  U of Delaware P, 2003.
Lawrence, D. H. Sons and Lovers.  Cambridge UP Edition, 1993.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved.  New American Library, 1987.
Morrison, Toni.  Song of Solomon. Plume, 1987.
Olsen, Tillie.  Tell Me a Riddle.  Rpt. Rutgers UP, 1995.
Ovid, The Metamorphoses: “The Orestia.” Trans. Mary Innes,   Rpt., Penguin, 2007
Ozment, Steven.  Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,

      2001.
Palmer, Alan.  Fictional Minds.  Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004.
Palmer, Alan.  Social Minds.  Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2011.
Palmer, Alan. ed. “Social Minds in Fiction and Criticism.”  Style, 45.2 (2011).
Phelan, James.  Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of

       Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.
Pirsig, Robert.  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Rpt. Harper Collins, 2006
Powers, Richard. The Echo Maker. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006.
Powers, Richard.  Prisoner’s Dilemma.  Harper Collins, 1996.
Roth, Henry.  Call It Sleep. Rpt. Avon, 1962.
Salmon, Catherine A. and Todd K.. Shackelford, Family Relationships: An Evolutionary

      Perspective.   NY: Oxford UP, 2008.
Smiley, Jane.  A Thousand Acres. Ivy Books, 1996.
Shakespeare, William.  Hamlet.  Riverside Shakespeare,  1974:  1135 -- 1197.
Shakespeare, William.  Pericles.  Riverside Shakespeare, 1974:  1479 -- 1516.
Style , “New Psychologies and Modern Assessments” 44.1 & 44.2 (Spring/Summer 2010).
Style, “Social Minds in Criticism and Fiction” 45.2 (Summer 2011).
Trollope, Joanna.  The Other Family. Touchstone, 2010.
Tyler, Anne.  Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Ballantine, 1982.
Updike, John.  Rabbit Run. Knopf, 1960.
Vermeule, Blakey. Why Do We Care About Literary Characters?  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,

      2010.
Waugh, Eveline.  Brideshead Revisited.   Penguin, 1946.
Whitaker, Carl A. and William M. Bumberry. Dancing with the Family: A Symbolic-Experiential

      Approach.  NY: Brunner/Mazel, 1988. 
Zunshine, Lisa.  Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Ohio State UP, 2006.

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