Introduction to
Graduate Literary Study

English 503, Autumn 2002

Jack Lynch

Course Description

Hours: Wednesday, 3:00-5:00, and by appointment (appointments are best).

Home: (609) 882-4642 (before 10:00 p.m.!).

E-mail: jlynch@andromeda.rutgers.edu (the best way to reach me).

Listserv: gradintro @ andromeda.rutgers.edu (for the whole class)

Course Requirements

• Written Assignments: There will be two short papers, each of around 2,000 words — the first a standard seminar paper, the second to be delivered orally to the class (edited to take no more than fifteen minutes) at semester's end.
• Reports: In addition to several in-class reports on research exercises, each student will be responsible for beginning discussion of one day's materials. That will typically take the form of a brief (five-minute-ish) informal discussion of the theoretical readings for the day and their use in interpreting literature. The day's reporters will also be responsible for steering discussion throughout the class meeting.
• Readings: Two books — Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (ed. Marilyn Butler) and Literary Theory: An Anthology (ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan; abbreviated LT) — are available from New Jersey Books. Other readings will be available as photocopies or on-line.

Schedule of Class Meetings

Tuesday, 3 Sept.

INTRODUCTION. Class business and an introduction to bibliography.

Tuesday, 10 Sept.

TEXTUAL CRITICISM. Readings: W. W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text"; Fredson Bowers, "Current Theories of Copy-Text, with an Example from Dryden"; Jerome McGann, "What Is Critical Editing?" (photocopies); textual variants to Frankenstein (Appendix B in Butler's edition); Anne K. Mellor, "Revising Frankenstein." Reports: Textual variants.

Tuesday, 17 Sept.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM. Readings: Anne K. Mellor, "My Hideous Progeny"; John Clubbe, "The Tempest-Toss'd Summer of 1816: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein"; Laura E. Crouch, "Davy's A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry: A Possible Scientific Source of Frankenstein"; Jane Blumberg, "Frankenstein and the 'Good Cause.'" Reports: Library research exercises.

Tuesday, 24 Sept.

FORMALISM. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Formalisms" (LT, pp. 3-7); Boris Eichenbaum, "Introduction to the Formal Method" (LT, pp. 8-16); Cleanth Brooks, "The Formalist Critics" (LT, pp. 52-57) and "The Language of Paradox" (LT, pp. 58-68); Peter Brooks, "'Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts': Language, Nature, and Monstrosity."

Tuesday, 1 Oct.

STRUCTURALISM. Readings: Jonathan Culler, "The Linguistic Foundation" (LT, pp. 73-75); Ferdinand de Saussure, selection from Course in General Linguistics (LT, pp. 76-90); Roman Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language" (LT, pp. 91-95); J. L. Austin, selection from How to Do Things with Words (LT, pp. 96-100); Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth" (LT, pp. 101-15); Andrew Griffin, "Fire and Ice in Frankenstein."

Tuesday, 8 Oct.

NO CLASS — I'll be away. Take the time to catch up, and brace yourself, because it just gets harder from here.

Tuesday, 15 Oct.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "The Class of 1968" (LT, pp. 333-57); Jacques Derrida, "Différance" (LT, pp. 385-407); Michel Foucault, selections from The Order of Things (LT, pp. 377-84) and The Archeology of Knowledge (LT, pp. 421-28); Christian Bok, "The Monstrosity of Representation: Frankenstein and Rousseau."

Tuesday, 22 Oct.

MARXISM. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Starting with Zero: Basic Marxism" (LT, pp. 231-42); G. W. F. Hegel, "Dialectics" (LT, pp. 243-46); Karl Marx, selections from Grundrisse (LT, pp. 247-50), The German Ideology (LT, pp. 250-56), "Wage Labor and Capital" (LT, pp. 262-67), and Capital (LT, pp. 268-76); Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (LT, pp. 294-304); Elsie B. Michie, "Frankenstein and Marx's Theories of Alienated Labor." FIRST PAPER DUE.

Tuesday, 29 Oct.

FEMINISM, GENDER STUDIES, AND QUEER THEORY. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Feminist Paradigms" (LT, pp. 527-32) and "Contingencies of Gender" (LT, pp. 675-78); Luce Irigaray, "The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine" (LT, pp. 570-73); Hélène Cixous, "Sorties" (LT, pp. 578-84); Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, selection from The Madwoman in the Attic (LT, pp. 596-611) and "Horror's Twin: Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve"; Barbara Johnson, "My Monster/My Self"; selection from Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (LT, pp. 683-91); Eve K. Sedgwick, selection from Between Men (LT, pp. 696-712) and "Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic."

Tuesday, 5 Nov.

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis" (LT, pp. 119-27); selections from Freud (LT, pp. 128-77); selections from Lacan (LT, pp. 178-205); Paul Sherwin, "Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe"; Peter Brooks, "What is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)."

Tuesday, 12 Nov.

ETHNIC STUDIES AND POSTCOLONIALISM. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "English without Shadows, Literature on a World Scale" (LT, pp. 851-55); Edward Said, selection from Orientalism (LT, pp. 873-86); Henry Louis Gates, "The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey" (LT, pp. 903-22); Homi Bhabha, selection from The Location of Culture (LT, pp. 936-44); Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism"; Zohreh T. Sullivan, "Race, Gender, and Imperial Ideology in the Nineteenth Century."

Tuesday, 19 Nov.

CULTURAL STUDIES. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "The Politics of Culture" (LT, pp. 1025-27); Pierre Bourdieu, selection from Distinction (LT, pp. 1028-36); Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry as Mass Deception" (LT, pp. 1037-41); Stuart Ewen, selection from All-Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (LT, pp. 1082-86); James Whale, Frankenstein (1931 movie starring Boris Karloff); Harriet E. Margolis, "Lost Baggage: or, The Hollywood Sidetrack"; David Leon Higdon, "Frankenstein as Founding Myth in Gary Larson's The Far Side."

Tuesday, 26 Nov.

NO CLASS — Thursday schedule.

Tuesday, 3 Dec.

CONFERENCE PAPERS.

Tuesday, 10 Dec.

CONFERENCE PAPERS.