Introduction to
Graduate Literary Study

English 503, Autumn 2006

Jack Lynch

Course Description

Hours: Monday and Wednesday, 10:30-11:30, 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 papers, the first of around 2,000 words (eight pages-ish), the second of around 4,000 words (fifteen pages-ish).
• 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. (First, and Only, Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bore.) 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, 2nd ed. (ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan) — are available from New Jersey Books on University Ave. (not the Rutgers Bookstore). Other readings will be available on-line. Note that this isn't a class about Frankenstein; it's really about different approaches to literature. I'm just trying to ensure we all have one text we can talk about in detail. A heads-up: the theoretical readings will be positively overwhelming, not so much in volume (it's rarely more than a hundred pages in a week) but in density. Don't fret. Just work your way through as much as you reasonably can. Two books might help: Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, and David Macey, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory.

Schedule of Class Meetings

Monday, 11 Sept.

Introduction. Class business and an introduction to bibliography.

Monday, 18 Sept.

Textual Criticism. Readings: W. W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text"; Fredson Bowers, "Greg's 'Rationale of Copy-Text' Revisited"; G. Thomas Tanselle, "Textual Instability and Editorial Idealism"; textual variants to Frankenstein (Appendix B in Butler's edition); Anne K. Mellor, "Revising Frankenstein." Reports: Textual variants.

Monday, 25 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.

Monday, 2 Oct.

Formalism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Formalisms"; Boris Eichenbaum, "The Formal Method"; Cleanth Brooks, "The Formalist Critics" and "The Language of Paradox"; Peter Brooks, "'Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts': Language, Nature, and Monstrosity."

Monday, 9 Oct.

Rhetoric, Phenomenology, and Reader Response. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Language and Action"; Edmund Husserl, "Ideas"; Edward Corbett, "Classical Rhetoric"; J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things with Words"; Richard Lanham, "Tacit Persuasion Patterns"; Stanley Fish, "Interpretive Communities"; Beth Newman, "Narratives of Seduction and the Seductions of Narrative: The Frame Structure of Frankenstein."

Monday, 16 Oct.

Structuralism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "The Implied Order: Structuralism"; Jonathan Culler, "The Linguistic Foundation"; Ferdinand de Saussure, selection from Course in General Linguistics; Vladimir Propp, selection from Morphology of the Folk-Tale; Roman Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language"; Andrew Griffin, "Fire and Ice in Frankenstein."

Monday, 23 Oct.

Poststructuralism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Introductory Deconstruction"; Jacques Derrida, "Différance" and selection from Of Grammatology; Jean-François Lyotard, selection from The Postmodern Condition; Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations"; Christian Bok, "The Monstrosity of Representation: Frankenstein and Rousseau."

Monday, 30 Oct.

Marxism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Starting with Zero"; G. W. F. Hegel, "Dialectics"; Karl Marx, selections from Grundrisse, The German Ideology, "Wage Labor and Capital," and Capital; Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"; Elsie B. Michie, "Frankenstein and Marx's Theories of Alienated Labor." First Paper Due.

Monday, 6 Nov.

Feminism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Feminist Paradigms"; Luce Irigaray, "The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine" and "Women on the Market"; Coppélia Kahn, "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle"; Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, selection from The Madwoman in the Attic and "Horror's Twin: Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve"; Ellen Moers, "Female Gothic"; Barbara Johnson, "My Monster/My Self."

Monday, 13 Nov.

Gender Studies and Queer Theory. Readings: Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Contingencies of Gender"; selection from Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality; Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution"; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Epistemology of the Closet" and "Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic."

Monday, 20 Nov.

Psychoanalytic Criticism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis"; selections from Freud; selections from Lacan; Paul Sherwin, "Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe"; Peter Brooks, "What is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)."

Monday, 27 Nov.

New Historicism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Writing the Past"; E. P. Thompson, "Witness Against the Beast"; Michel Foucault, selection from Discipline and Punish; Nancy Armstrong, "Some Call It Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity"; Stephen Greenblatt, "Shakespeare and the Exorcists"; Jerrold E. Hogle, "Frankenstein as Neo-Gothic: From the Ghost of the Counterfeit to the Monster of Abjection"; Ellen Cronan Rose, "Custody Battles: Reproducing Knowledge about Frankenstein."

Monday, 4 Dec.

Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "Situating Race" and "English without Shadows: Literature on a World Scale"; Ian F. Haney López, "The Social Construction of Race"; Henry Louis Gates, "The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey"; Ania Loomba, "Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies"; Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "Decolonising the Mind"; Homi Bhabha, selection from Signs Taken for Wonders; Zohreh T. Sullivan, "Race, Gender, and Imperial Ideology in the Nineteenth Century."

Monday, 11 Dec.

Cultural Studies. Readings: Rivkin and Ryan, "The Politics of Culture"; Walter Benjamin, "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry as Mass Deception"; Michel de Certeau, selection from The Practice of Everyday Life; 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." Second Paper Due.