CORE COURSE: CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO ANGLOPHONE LITERATURES AND CULTURES (AAAL0001A)
2016
Mandatory; Lectures and seminars (seminars facultative)
Procházka, Robbins, Veselá, Roraback, Pilný, Nováková, Vichnar
Wed 15:50-17:25, Room 111
OBJECTIVES AND SCHEDULE
The general objective of the course is to flag up principal contemporary research issues and methodologies in the various areas of Anglophone literary and cultural studies covered by the department. The specific objective is to introduce individual special programmes available at the department and to assist students with their choice.
(A) English Literature
This topic will be covered in three sessions (5, 12, 19 October)
prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.
1. Transformation of the Field: From English Literature to Literatures on the British Isles
From the late 1970s, political devolution of the UK has contributed to the rewriting of cultural identities and literary canons. This lecture discusses the major features of the transformation of English literature as a discipline in the past four decades: the end of consistent historical narratives, the uses of periodization, the role of the “print culture”, intersecting perspectives and discourses, diversity of meanings across cultures in the case of Shakespeare and the Scottish invention of English literature. The last part contains a brief comparison of making new national, or rather post-national, literatures on the British Isles.
Reading:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn. (London and New York: Verso, 1991) (moodle).
Sacvan Bercovitch (gen. ed.), The Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Joseph Black (ed.), British Literature: A Historical Overview (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2010).
Robert Crawford, Devolving English Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000) (moodle).
Jacques Derrida, “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” trans. David Wood and Andrew Benjamin, A Derrida Reader, ed. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991) (moodle).
Jill Levenson and Robert Ormsby, The Shakespeare World (a draft proposal of a volume for Routledge, 2013).
Herbert Shaw, Terrestrial‐Cosmological Correlations in Evolutionary Processes, USGS Open‐File Report 88‐43 (Menlo Park, CA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1988).
2. New Views of Scottish Literature as Multilingual, Multiethnic and Multicultural Discipline
This lecture will develop the topics of the previous one, especially with respect to several problems:
(a) construction of the multi-ethnic and multilingual origins of Scottish culture (earliest Scottish literature in The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, 2007).
(b) reassessment of the Scottish contribution to British, American and European Romanticism (the volume Scotland and Romanticism, ed. Murray Pittock, 2011).
(c) Redefinition of Scottish literature as part of European, and not primarily British, culture. This has both historic causes (orientation of early modern Scotland on France and hostilities with England) and contemporary reasons (weighing the possibility of independent Scotland as part of the EU).
Reading:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn. (London and New York: Verso, 1991) (moodle).
Ian Brown and Susan Manning (gen. eds.), The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007) (moodle)
Murray Pittock, Scottish and Irish Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Murray Pittock (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Romanticism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011) (moodle)
Murray Pittock (ed.), Scotland in Europe, special issue of Litteraria Pragensia, 19.38 (2009):
including Tom Nairn, “The English Postman,” 19-29 and Murray Pittock, “What is a National Culture,” 30-47. (moodle)
Kurt Wittig, The Scottish Tradition in Literature (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1958)
3. Romantic Studies: Changing Views
This lecture will focus on four main trends in the transformation in the study of Romanticism, both on the British Isles and in comparative, European, perspective:
(a) comparative study of romantic genres (David Duff, Romanticism and the Uses of Genre, 2009),
(b) new comparisons of Romanticism and Post-modernism (Peter Otto, Multiplying Worlds, 2011),
(c) new trends in reception studies in the project of the British Academy and the Continuum Press, The Reception of British and Irish Literature in Europe, organized by Elinor Shaffer,
(d) synthetic and multi-perspective features of recent textbooks (Nicholas Roe’s Romanticism, 2005).
Reading:
David Duff, Romanticism and the Uses of Genre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) (moodle)
Elinor Shaffer (gen. ed.), “Series Editor’s Preface,” The Reception of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Europe, ed. Susan Schmidt and Michael Rossington, The Athlone Critical Traditions Series (London and New York: Continuum, 2008) xi-xvi.
Peter Otto, Multiplying Worlds: Romanticism, Modernity and the Emergence of Virtual Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) (moodle)
Nicholas Roe (ed.), Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) (moodle)
(B) American Studies
This topic will be covered in three sessions (26 October, 2 & 9 November).
1. Consumerism & the Unconscious in US Prose Fiction & in Continental Theory
Erik S. Roraback, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
This seminar will offer critical comment on the following texts of US fiction: Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853), William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), Henry James’s The Ambassadors (1903), Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936).
We shall explore how the formal aspects and content of these literary texts paved the way for a truer understanding of experience, of commodity culture, of consumerism, and of ‘the society of the spectacle’. These areas are now seen as crucial for imagining other possible futures, while tapping into a narrative arc of America and beyond.
Special focus will in addition be given to European Continental theories on the commodity form from Theodor W. Adorno, on consumerism from Jean Baudrillard, on theories of experience, of commodity culture, and of ‘materialist aesthetics’ from Walter Benjamin, on the society of the spectacle from Guy Debord, on the status of Bartleby in Melville’s short story from Gilles Deleuze and from Giorgio Agamben, and the North American scholars Jonathan Crary and Henry A. Giroux will also be points of reference for thinking about contemporary capitalism and hyper-consumerism.
Bibliography:
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Trans. E.F.N. Jephcott. London: Verso, 1974/1978.
Agamben, Giorgio. “Bartleby, or On Contingency” in, Potentialities: Critical Essays on Philosophy. Ed. and trans. with an Intro. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Baudrillard, Jean. Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Sage Publications, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, USA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.
Bouchard, Donald F. Hemingway: So Far From Simple. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010.
Crary, Jonathan. Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso, 2013.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books. 1991.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Bartleby, or the Formula” in Essays Critical and Clinical. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Giroux, Henry A. The Giroux Reader. Ed. and intro. Christopher G. Robbins. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.
Roraback, Erik S. The Dialectics of Late Capital and Power: James, Balzac and Critical Theory. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.
---. “A Benjamin Monad of Guy Debord & W.D. Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885); or, Individual & Collective Life & Status as Spectacle” in Profils américains, 21: William Dean Howells. Ed. Guillaume Tanguy. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2009.
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. Intro. Cynthia Griffin Wolff. New York: Penguin, 1985. First published 1905.
Žižek, Slavoj. Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso, 2012.
2. Emerson and the American Scholars: Emerson in the Hands of the "Old" Americanists, the "New" Americanists, and the "Post-New" Americanists
Prof. David L. Robbins
This session will examine the respective constructions of American literature and culture by the founding generation of Americanist Scholars (F.O. Matthiessen, Perry Miller, Stephen Whicher, Richard Chase, and their contemporaries, 1940-70), the left-critical generation of "New" Americanists (Sacvan Bercovitch, Richard Brodhead, Carolyn Porter, John Carlos Rowe, Myra Jehlen, Julie Ellison, Jonathan Arac, and Wai-Chee Dimock, among many others, 1970-2000) that recontextualized, rehistoricized, and often harshly denounced the formulations of their forbears, and the constellation of Americanist Scholars (including Stanley Cavell, Richard Poirier, Harold Bloom, Donald Pease, Branka Arsic, Johannes Voelz, Jonathan Levin, and Randall Fuller, 1985-present) that has emerged to offer counterpoint to the "New" Americanists and which is currently involved in nuancing, contesting, and innovating upon the methodologies and interpretations suggested by them. To illustrate and illuminate these successive strategies and approaches, the seminar will examine the respective constructions by these scholarly Americanist constellations of the iconic American scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Bibliography:
Branka Arsic, On Leaving: A Reading in Emerson (2010)
Sacvan Bercovitch, The Rites of Assent; Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America (1993)
Harold Bloom, "Mr. America," New York Review of Books (1984); "Grandfather Emerson," London Review of Books (1994); and "The sage of Concord," The Guardian (2003)
Stanley Cavell, "Thinking of Emerson" (1978) in The Senses of Walden: An Expanded Edition (1979)
Randall Fuller, Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (2007)
Jonathan Levin, The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, & American Literary Modernism (1999)Richard Poirier, A World Elsewhere: The Place of Style in American Literature (1966), The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections (1987), and Poetry and Pragmatism (1992)
John Carlos Rowe, At Emerson's Tomb?: The Politics of Classic American Literature (1997)
George J. Stack and Mary DiMaria, "Emerson and Postmodernism" in Barry Tharaud, ed. Emerson for the Twenty-First Century: Global Perspectives on an American Icon (2010)
Johannes Voelz, Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists & Emerson's Challenge (2010)
3. Interventions in America
Pavla Veselá Ph.D.
Although the literary canon changes perpetually, our current conception of what constitutes major works of American literature continues to reflect as well as actualize the sociocultural shifts that took place in the 1960s and 70s, when new subjects – women, racial minorities and other marginalized writers – began to redefine the canon. This session introduces three such interventions into the previously white, male and middle-class canon: minority literature, immigrant writing and popular literature (particularly science-fiction and utopia). I focus on several texts, both contemporary ones and those that were “rediscovered” thanks to the new literary subjects' search for history, and discuss them in relation to the canon they challenged.
Bibliography:
Boelhower, William. Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible. London: Methuen, 1986.
Prchal, Tim and Tony Trigilio, eds. Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930. Rutgers University Press, 2008.
Pryse, Marjorie and Hortense J. Spillers, eds. Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
Roberts, Adam. The History of Science Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
Roemer, Kenneth, ed. America as Utopia. New York: Burt Franklin, 1981.
Sollors, Werner. “Ethnic Modernism.” The Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
(C) Irish Studies
This topic will be covered in two sessions (16 & 23 November).
doc. Ondřej Pilný, PhD
1. From “Anglo-Irish Literature” to “Irish Studies”
A survey lecture focused on the history of the discipline of Irish Studies. Topics covered include the definitions of Irish literature past and present; the history of the teaching of and research in Irish literature in English and in Irish; prominent current tendencies and methods in Irish Studies research; principal Irish Studies resources and professional associations.
Bibliography:
Kelleher, Margaret and Philip O’Leary, eds. The Cambridge History of Irish Literature. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Connolly, Claire, ed. Theorizing Ireland. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Leerssen, Joep. Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representations of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century. Cork: Cork University Press, 1996.
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage, 1995.
Mc Cormack, W.J. From Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History. Cork: Cork University Press, 1994.
Williams, J.E. Caerwyn and Patrick K. Ford, The Irish Literary Tradition. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992.
Scott Brewster and Michael Parker, eds. Irish Literature since 1990: Diverse Voices. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2009.
Mahony, Christina Hunt, Laura Izarra, Elizabeth Malcolm, John P. Harrington, Ondřej Pilný, Catriona Crowe, eds. The Future of Irish Studies: Report of the Irish Forum. Prague: Irish Forum and Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University Prague, 2006.
2. Case Studies in Irish Drama and Theatre
A seminar session intended to illustrate the current debates in Irish Studies outlined in the preceding lecture. The session is focused on prominent Irish plays and their reception in Ireland and globally, particularly in relation to the notion of canonicity. The works discussed include Translations by Brian Friel, The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh, and Terminus by Mark O’Rowe.
Bibliography:
Lonergan, Patrick. Theatre and Globalization. Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
---, The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh. London: Methuen, 2012.
Murray, Christopher. Twentieth-century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
Roche, Anthony. Contemporary Irish Drama. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Jordan, Eamonn. Dissident Dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish Theatre. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010.
Grene, Nicholas. The Politics of Irish Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Chambers, Lilian and Eamonn Jordan, eds. The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006.
---, eds. The Theatre of Conor McPherson: “right beside the beyond”. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2012.
Wallace, Clare. Suspect Cultures. Narrative, Identity and Citation in the 1990s New Drama. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006.
Pilný, Ondřej. “Whose Ethics? Which Genre? – Irish Drama and the Terminal Days of the Celtic Tiger.” Mark Berninger and Bernhard Reitz (eds.), Ethical Debates in Contemporary Theatre and Drama. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012. 195-210.
---. “The Grotesque in the Plays of Enda Walsh”, Irish Studies Review 21.2 (2013): 217-25.
(D) British and Commonwealth Cultural Studies
This topic will be covered in two sessions (30 November, 7 December).
PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc., M.A.
1. From Commonwealth to Postcolonial
This introductory lecture attempts to enable students to make their own beginnings in a new field of study: postcolonialism and area studies. It introduces students to the various ways we can approach literatures in English produced by writers who either come from, or have an ancestral purchase upon, countries with a history of colonialism. From an explanation of the organization and structure of the special programme in British and Commonwealth Cultural Studies, we proceed to outline the interrelationships between literatures and cultures that are part of the special programme courses taught at the department – namely, British, Canadian, Indian, and Caribbean – with a focus on the basic approaches to post/colonial identity. The introductory lecture shall therefore tackle issues of terminology and methodology, the “what” and “how” we read. Consequently, students will also be introduced to several important postcolonial theories of identity. In the first lecture, it is colonial discourse analysis (Fanon, Said, Bhabha). Other contemporary approaches will be dealt with in the second session. This overview lecture will be supplemented by reading material supplied by the instructor (the texts, which include brief passages from representative theoretical texts, will be made available on moodle).
TEXTS:
Frantz Fanon, from “The Fact of Blackness”, in Black Skin, White Masks (trans. Charles Lam Markmann. Pluto: [1952] 1986).
Edward Said, from Orientalism (2nd ed. Penguin: [1978] 1995).
Homi Bhabha, from chapter 3 “The Other Question” and from chapter 4 “Of Mimicry and Man”, in The Location of Culture (Routledge:1994).
2. Postcolonial Formulations
This is a follow-up session to Session 1 (From Commonwealth to Postcolonial). At the beginning, the main aim is to provide an occasion for the students to interpret a literary text from the perspectives of Said’s concept of Orientalism and then to apply Bhabha’s concepts of ambivalence and mimicry. Contemporary theory in this field tends to be equated with three thinkers: Bhabha, Spivak and Said. Other voices are neglected. The second part of the session therefore attempts to organize different kinds of critical and theoretical approaches and “formulations” into four conceptual tendencies: poststructuralist, culturalist, materialist and psychological (incl. trauma studies).
TEXTS:
Aijaz Ahmad, from “The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality“ (Race and Class, 36(3), 1995, pp. 1-20).
Homi Bhabha, from “Introduction”, in The Location of Culture (Routledge:1994).
Rudyard Kipling, “The Overland Mail”
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, from “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) and from In Other Worlds (Routledge: 1987).
(E) Critical and Cultural Theory
This topic will be covered in one session (21 December).
David Vichnar, Ph.D.
Film & Film Theory
This lecture will provide a general overview into film criticism and will examine 'critical' aspects of the cinematic medium and its relation to cultural theory. Discussion will focus on structural and semiotic aspects of emerging cinematic conventions and the role of innovation, from Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, to Maya Deren, to Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Russell, Stan Brackage, Dusan Makavejev, David Lynch and others.
Reading: Mast, Cohen & Brady (eds.), FILM THEORY & CRITICISM: INTRODUCTORY READINGS (Oxford: OUP, 1992)
ASSESSMENT
The exam has a form of a graded essay (4000 words). The essay topic has to be agreed with one of the lecturers on the basis of a written proposal (300 words minimum).
Poslední úprava: Horová Miroslava, Mgr., Ph.D. (11.09.2016)
