Fall 2008 Courses

English 137-02: Literary Grotesques (Jarrin)

T/TH 9:40-11:10Am MAIN 111

Casting a critical gaze upon the villainous heroes of literature, this seminar will explore the meanings and manifestations of the grotesque over the last two centuries. We'll shake hands with the monstrous, the genius, the depraved, the revolutionary, and the human, from Frankenstein's monster to the anti-heroes of Dorian Gray, In Cold Blood, and The Shining. As we examine literature from a variety of historical moments, cultural frameworks, and national contexts, we'll refine our own theory of the "grotesque" from its medieval half-human/half-beast forms to more contemporary theorizations and textual embodiments.

Throughout the semester, formal and stylistic concerns (language, metaphor, prosody, narrative voice, tone, point-of-view) will enter our conversation to underscore the connections between literary texts and their grotesque content. We'll encounter a variety of literary genres, both textual (novels, short fiction, poetry) and visual (painting, photography, film), in an attempt to understand their distinctive forms, transformations, and aesthetic interrelationships. Finally, we'll consider postmodern authors whose work self-consciously challenges formal conventions in grotesque and iconoclastic ways.

Several key questions will animate our discussions: What is the connection between literary production and anxieties of mortality, deformity, and human reproduction? How have texts responded to unnatural technologies of immortality and questions of the supernatural? How might language and narrative perform gruesome acts of violence, insatiable consumption, and/or cannibalism? How do particular texts represent or even embody monstrosity? How do representations of race, gender, and sexuality manifest themselves within the grotesque as a literary mode? How have the gothic, horror, and war genres shaped our cultural understanding of the grotesque?

POTENTIAL TEXTS (8-9 of the following): Novels: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray; Truman Capote, In Cold Blood; Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire; Toni Morrison, Sula; Don DeLillo, White Noise; Martin Amis, Time's Arrow; Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Stephen King, The Shining. Short Fiction: Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find; Nathanael West, Day of the Locust; Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis; Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried. Selections from Edgar Allan Poe, Joyce Carol Oates, Sherwood Anderson. Poetry: Anne Sexton, Transformations. Selected poems by Robert Browning, T.S. Eliot, Stephen Dobyns. Related Films: Frankenstein (1931); Apocalypse Now (1979); The Shining (1980); Gods and Monsters (1998); Capote (2005). Selected episodes from The Twilight Zone.

REQUIREMENTS: Literary Grotesques is a first-year seminar. In addition to readings and weekly journal responses, students will be responsible for 3 papers (4-5, 6-8, and 8-10 pages, including one required revision discussed in collaborative writing workshop). While the course will provide a particular foundation for future coursework within the English department, it will also develop key critical reading/writing/thinking skills necessary across all disciplines. Particularly suited for those students considering majors in the humanities or social sciences.

*First year course only; non-residential; first year students only.*

Fall 2008 Course Listings