Sommersemester 2012 Office hour: Th (and after class), rm Syllabus

Transcription

1 The Heyday of the Short Story Marshall Brown Sommersemester 2012 Office hour: Th (and after class), rm. 223 Syllabus The true and the interesting in 19th century fiction. Handout attached. 2. Boccaccio, Decameron 5.9 (the story of Federigo's falcon): pp O'Henry, "The Gift of the Magi": The two stories have the same plot; the aim of the discussion will be to characterize the difference between Boccaccio's traditional novella and the updated short story. For this purpose, the antique language of the Gutenberg translation will be more helpful than more accessible modern translations; it also gives more of the flavor of the original. 4. Ludwig Tieck, "Der blonde Eckbert" 5. Washington Irving, "Rip van Winkle": 6. Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow": 7. Mary Louise Pratt, "The Short Story: The Long and Short of It," Poetics 10 (1981): It's also posted at Some of you will find the Pratt essay hard going. Don't spend a lot of time on the details; the 8-part characterization of the short story is the essence.) Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet (chs. 1-2), A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, A Case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Five Orange Pips, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Silver Blaze, The Musgrave Ritual 2. Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue 1.5 No class 8.5 No class 15.5 Poe: MS. Found in a Bottle (and, if you don't know it, read Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner), Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, William Wilson, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell- Tale Heart, The Purloined Letter, The Cask of Amontillado Also Poe, The Philosophy of Composition: *22.5 Maupassant: A Ruse, A Duel, The Decoration, The Piece of String, The Model, The Hand, The Idyll, Mother Savage, Impudence, The Signal, In the Woods, The Mask 29.5 No class

2 *5.6 Verga: Cavalleria Rusticana, Picturesque Lives, Jeli the Shepherd, Rosso Malpelo, Gramigna's Mistress, War of the Saints, Getting to Know the King, Property, Freedom *12.6 Chekhov: The Chameleon, Heartache, The Name-Day Party, In the Cart, The Lady with the Pet Dog, Gooseberries, About Love, On Official Business 9.6 Joyce: Dubliners (starting with Araby). Please read at least through A Painful Case for this class. *26.6 Joyce: Dubliners, continued *3.7 Mansfield: The Woman at the Store, At the Bay, Psychology, Bliss, Je ne Parle pas Français, Revelations, The Stranger, The Garden-Party Stories marked with a cross will be the focus for initial discussion. They are to be prepared with especial care.

3 The short story is a mid-19th-century invention. The aim of this course will be to characterize the form and ideology of the 19th/early 20th century short story, based on close reading of representative stories by major authors. Regular topics for discussion throughout the semester will be: 1) the true/real and the interesting/romantic, 2) metanarrative (references to story form), 3) narrative perspective (relationship between narrator and characters, report of thoughts and feelings, presence or absence of judgment, etc.), 4) time structure (continuous/discontinuous, fast/slow, cause/chance, etc.), 5) the physical (object-) world: what kinds of things are noticed, how are they described, what kinds of meaning are attributed to them, 6) the nature of society as depicted in the stories. I will also expect you to read the Wikipedia entries for each author in order to learn basic biographical information. The assignments run pp. for each class meeting, mostly in rather simple English. If that's more than you can handle, then you aren't in the right course. Please use the assigned translations (or read the originals, as you'll do with the two German texts); other translations are sometimes very undependable. There may be good German translations, of course, but I don't have access to them to check them out. The class will normally be conducted in English, but I'm quite willing to switch into German at the drop of a hat. (I try to use common idioms like these rather freely; if you don't know them, I hope you'll have some fun learning them.) If your German is better than your English, please write your paragraphs in German. I would rather help you with writing issues than with grammar mistakes. You will need to print out the readings for 17.4, prepare them carefully, and bring them to class. We are unlikely to get through all this material in the first day. I may bring the rest up on 24.4, or I may not. I assume you will own or have ready access to the Tieck and Hoffmann stories. All but one of the other subsequent readings will be available by the first class. The exception is Dubliners, which you should purchase. Annotations are essential. I recommend the Norton Critical Edition. If you get an edition without annotations, there are good notes on line at Please use a print edition so that you can make notes on the text. Digital readers don't work well with the kind of reading I teach. Believe me. I taught this course in Seattle in the fall, and some students who were using digital editions regretted it. Regular attendance and class participation will be expected. Rather than class reports, I want to help you with your writing via frequent short written assignments. By May 24 and on the Friday following three of the other starred dates, me a ONE-PARAGRAPH Word document carefully written and proofread, running words. It should be a close reading of the opening of one story by the author for that week, using the analytic procedures from the course and amounting to an argument identifying the issues presented by the story. It should have a cogent TITLE that initiates and unifies the paragraph, and it typically should make incidental reference to--or end with a prospect toward--the rest of the story and/or other stories by the author. I have posted writing guidelines at Please read them carefully. They were written for a different course and extend to longer papers, but they include plenty of guidance for these assignments along with ideas you can use elsewhere. You will also get detailed individual feedback on your paragraphs. After the course is under way and I have gotten to know you, I'll assign a final essay to be written after the course meetings are finished.

4 Term paper. A word essay in English or German on time and causation in the stories of one of the assigned authors. Due by to me by Sept. 15. Extensions beyond that will be automatic provided that you write me by Sept. 12 with the following information: 1) your provisional title, 2) 3-6 sentences concerning how you plan to approach the topic, 3) the date by which you plan to submit it. This self-defined deadline will be firm. Guidelines. Consider me, or someone like me, as the audience. That means, in particular, do not begin with a general introduction about the author. Start in immediately with your problem and its analysis. General summaries and paraphrases of the stories will also rarely be helpful. Keep the focus on the specific topic. The essay should typically consist of 8-10 well-formed paragraphs, arranged in a significant order so as to build your argument. Pay attention to how you connect paragraphs, remembering that differentiations are more interesting than resemblances; that is, "also" connectives have less energy than contrastive ("but") connectives or than sequential comparative connectives ("even more"). While it's common for essay paragraphs to end with a transition to the next paragraph, the effect is similar to ending an isolated paragraph with "what happens next." The best paragraphs are building blocks arranged side by side and mortared together with firm connectives. Generally speaking, don't name the topic of the next paragraph in the end of this paragraph; write a good paragraph conclusion instead. And don't summarize the last paragraph at the beginning of the next one. The typical summation formula is "not only X, but also Y." But I've just read X; it's repetitive to remind me so quickly, as if my memory were poor or your formulation unclear. Instead, just begin the next paragraph with "But Y," omitting "also" if possible. The middle of the paragraph should array information relevant to the argument of the paragraph. The paragraph topic identifies what information you should be looking for from the stories, and you may have to review the stories as you are writing the paragraph to seek out the information. I often have to do that. Keep quotes and paraphrase as short as possible; my rule of thumb--obviously not an inflexible law--is that commentary on any quote should typically run twice as long as the quote. The essay may focus chiefly on a single story, provided it takes relevant note of the others; most of you will find it easier and more successful to write an overview. It's easiest to proceed one story at a time. But balance ease for you against interest for me; a more topical arrangement can be more creative (or, of course, it can be more confusing). Most important is to have a significant order among the paragraphs that builds toward the conclusion (and, perhaps, the post-conclusion discussion), rather than a series of alsos. And remember that you can make your topic interesting by configuring it as a problem, which means constructing your first paragraph to identify the contrasting or even contradictory elements. You are welcome to read a few additional stories by your author; useful references to them can enhance your discussion, as can brief, passing comparisons and contrasts to assigned stories by other authors. Format. Please include a header or footer with your name and page numbers. Then give me the help I need in locating your quotes. If page numbers from the course reader are helpful, just put the number in parentheses after the quote or information. If the location is obvious, then I won't need a page number at all. Please don't heap up footnotes. If you are using a different edition, identify it somehow, in case I might have access to it and want to check the quote; I really don't care about the format. Similarly, while I discourage outside sources for an essay of this nature, do please let me know in some convenient fashion any sources that you have consulted and give page numbers for any specific information you have drawn from them. Generally available information doesn't need to be sourced--but in most cases doesn't need to be there. However, don't make unsupported generalizations about the time period or the author's biography. Preferably, don't make such generalizations at all; this exercise is to write about what's in the stories, not about what was or might have been around them.

5 Finally, when you're done and before you hit the send button, proofread it all carefully. Most of you have been really good about that, and it's a good habit. Again I ask your indulgence for typos that I have undoubtedly sent off to you. I try to remember to check, but writing 20 paragraphs of comments distracts me, and my keyboard has been sticking. I welcome corrections of my German grammar and idiom. Grading. After consulting with Prof. Leypoldt, I have confirmed that a typical course median here would be 2 or 2-, and I'll work in that range. I hope as your work continues to improve that a median of 2 will look right to me. I will grade you in the light of the level you have achieved, not by averaging what you were at the start with what you are now. You are often no longer the same person as the writer of your first paragraph. Strong class participation will raise some grades; lack of participation (including more than 2 absences) will count against you.