Studies in Satire

English 556, Spring 2013

Jack Lynch

Course Description

Go directly to:

January — February — March — April

Office: FASN Dean's Office, 325 Hill Hall (take the elevator; you can't get in from the stairwell).

Phone: (973) 353-5213

Hours: By appointment.

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

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

Course Requirements

Written Assignments: There will be two argumentative and analytical papers, the first of around ten pages (2,500 words), the second either a new paper of around ten pages, or an expansion of your first paper to fifteen to twenty pages (3,500 to 5,000 words).
Reports and Annotated Bibliographies: Each student will be particularly responsible for the readings on one day of the semester, producing and distributing (on paper, by E-mail, or on Blackboard) a short annotated bibliography of relevant criticism and then beginning class with an oral report of five to ten minutes (don't go over). The report should begin with a very brief discussion of the day's annotated bibliography, giving a quick overview of the major scholarship on the topic. Thereafter, the topic is anything relevant to the day's readings, whether primary or secondary. A good report will raise as many fruitful questions as possible and get discussion rolling.
Readings: The readings will be pretty heavy and therefore, I'm afraid, a little expensive — though not, I hope, unmanageable. I've picked the cheapest reputable editions I can find, and those who've looked at the reading list for the M.A. Exam will note that I've drawn many works from it. The following books are, or will soon be, available from New Jersey Books (and the Rutgers Bookstore if you really have to). If you already own editions of these books, there's no need to buy them again; if you don't, though, try to get these editions:
- Thomas More, Utopia, ed. Sacks, Bedford, ISBN 0312101459.
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, ed. DeMaria, Penguin, ISBN 0141439491.
- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, ed. Ross and Woolley, Oxford, ISBN 0199549788.
- Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, ed. Richard, Broadview, ISBN 1551116014.
- Voltaire, Candide and Related Writings, ed. Wootton, Hackett, ISBN 0872205460.
- Jane Austen, Emma, ed. Kinsley, Oxford, ISBN 0199535523.
- Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. McSweeney and Sabor, Oxford, ISBN 0199540373.
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Modern Library, ISBN 0375757805.
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0061849928.
Other materials are available online.

Schedule of Class Meetings

Wednesday, 23 January: Introduction: Class business, &c.
Wednesday, 30 January: Horace, Satires 1.9, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.6 (or try these translations: 1.9, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.6); Juvenal, Satires 6 and 10 (or try these translations: 6 and 10; Ulrich Knoche, “Satire: A Roman Literary Genre” and “Origin and Name of the Satura.”
Wednesday, 6 February: William Langland, Piers Plowman, the Prologue (in Middle English) and passus I–VII (in translation); John A. Yunck, “Satire” (from A Companion to Piers Plowman).
Wednesday, 13 February: Thomas More, Utopia; Robert C. Elliott, “The Shape of Utopia.”
Wednesday, 20 February: John Dryden, A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (abridged); John Donne, Satyr 4; Alexander Pope, “The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated,” and “The Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Paraphrased”; Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dustin Griffin, “Theories of Satire in Polemical Context.”
Wednesday, 27 February: John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel; John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, “Satyr upon Charles II,” “Signor Dildo,” and “Satyr against Reason and Mankind”; Wayne C. Booth, “The Ways of Stable Irony.”
Wednesday, 6 March: Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock and Epistle to Arbuthnot; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “Verses Addressed to the Imitator of Horace”; Howard D. Weinbrot, “Masked Men and Satire and Pope.”
Wednesday, 13 March: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels and “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”; Louis I. Bredvold, “The Gloom of the Tory Satirists.” First Paper Due.
Wednesday, 20 March: No Class: Spring Break.
Wednesday, 27 March: Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, “Cassinus and Peter,” “Strephon and Chloe,” “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” and “The Lady's Dressing Room”; Ashley Marshall, “Satire,” from The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660–1800 (forthcoming).
Wednesday, 3 April: Samuel Johnson, Rasselas; Voltaire, Candide; James F. Woodruff, “Rasselas and the Traditions of ‘Menippean Satire.’”
Wednesday, 10 April: Jane Austen, Emma; David P. Demarest, “Reductio ad Absurdum: Jane Austen's Art of Satiric Qualification.”
Wednesday, 17 April: Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; Anne K. Mellor, “Carlyle's Sartor Resartus: A Self-Consuming Artifact”; Wayne C. Booth, “Reconstructing the Unconstructable.”
Wednesday, 24 April: Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; Everett Carter, “The Meaning of A Connecticut Yankee.”
Wednesday, 1 May: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Theodore D. Kharpertian, “Thomas Pynchon and Postmodern American Satire”; Wayne C. Booth, “Infinite Instabilities.” Final Paper Due.