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This seminar explores one key work of twentieth-century prose fiction in English, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), probably the
most complex and important text by the contemporary avant-garde American novelist-recluse Thomas Pynchon (1937- present). Critical and theoretical matter will also be enlisted in our collective enterprise of encountering Gravity's Rainbow, a text now seen as a paradigmatic late twentieth-century prose epic and novel. Emphasis will be placed on questions of what precisely are the diverse forms of culture illuminated through Gravity's Rainbow's modes of representation in regard to questions of aesthetics (including of aesthetic pleasure), of epistemology (i.e., of knowledge), of ethics (and so by extension of evil), and of ontology (i.e., of selfhood and of subjectivity). Moreover, the notion of ´modernity´ and of how it functions in, and is critiqued by, Pynchon´s novel, with the aid of various theoretical perspectives (baroque, Niklas Luhmann social systems theory, the Frankfurt School, Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, and so on), will be pursued as an object of critical focus. Last update: UAAZNOJE (30.05.2008)
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Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow (1973) _____ . Against the Day (2007, general reference) _____ . "Foreword" (2003) to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell _____ . The Crying of Lot 49 (1965, general reference) _____ . Mason & Dixon (1997, general reference) _____ . V (1963, general reference) _____ . Vineland (1989, general reference) Selections from the following critical and theoretical texts will be available in a course- reader or will be adduced by the instructor in the class: Roland Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text (Le plaisir du texte 1973, trans. 1975). Michael Davitt Bell: "Some Things That 'Happen' (More or Less) in Gravity's Rainbow": pp. 1-20. Leo Bersani: "Pynchon, Paranoia, and Literature" in The Culture of Redemption (1990) pp. 179-99. Eric Cassidy: "Cyberotics: Markets, Materialism and Method in Pynchon and Deleuze" in Pynchon Notes 34-35 (1994) pp. 107-28. William Dawers: "That Other Sentimental Surrealist: Walter Benjamin" in Pynchon Notes 20-21 (1987) pp. 39-60. Niklas Luhmann: Observations on Modernity (trans. 1998). Edward Mendelson: "Gravity's Encyclopedia" in Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon (1976) pp. 161-95. Cyrus R.K. Patell: Morrison, Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal Ideology (2001). Erik S. Roraback: "Para-Baroque Conceptual Intersections: Finnegans Wake, Gravity's Rainbow and The Writing of the Disaster." (First version given as a paper at the XIVth James Joyce Symposium, London, 27 June 2000 and a second version subsequently published in Hypermedia Joyce Studies 5.2 (2005). The foregoing article is part of a work in progress on baroque modernity. "Literary Space; or, Folding Blanchot onto Pynchon: Enlightenment Reason, the Global System and the Literary Baroque" (A first version given as a presentation at the XXVIIth Congress of the Russian Society of American Culture Studies, Moscow State Univ., Moscow, 30 November-7 December 2001. Parts of subsequent drafts were given at Charles University in two American Cultural Studies lecture series.) The foregoing text is a component part of a work in progress with the working title of The Unconscious of Modernity: Benjamin's Angel thru a Literary and Philosophical Baroque. Steven Weisenburger: For general consultation: A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources & Contexts for Pynchon's Novel (1988). One copy on reserve in the library. Last update: UAAZNOJE (30.05.2008)
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seminář Last update: UAAZNOJE (30.05.2008)
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1 Introduction 2 Gravity's Rainbow: Part I: pp. 1-60 + Michael Davitt Bell's reading guide each week 3 Gravity's Rainbow: Part I: pp. 60-113 + Roland Barthes 4 Gravity's Rainbow: Part II: pp. 114-167 + Leo Bersani 5 Gravity's Rainbow: Part II: pp. 168-226 + Erik S. Roraback 6 Gravity's Rainbow: Part II: pp. 227-278 + Edward Mendelson 7 Gravity's Rainbow: Part III: pp. 279-336 + William Dawers 8 Gravity's Rainbow: Part III: pp. 337-433 + "Foreword" to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four 9 Gravity's Rainbow: Part III: pp. 433-504 + Eric Cassidy 10 Gravity's Rainbow: Part III: pp. 504-616 + Erik S. Roraback 11 Gravity's Rainbow: Part IV: pp. 617-760 + Leo Bersani 12 Conclusions Last update: UAAZNOJE (30.05.2008)
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