The Tradition in Crisis: Dissenters and Defenders Spring 2008 MWF 9:05-10:00
Instructors:
Section A, HH 514: Chris Brunelle, Old Main 32 C, x 3952, brunelle@stolaf.edu
Section B, HH 515: Laurel Carrington, Holland 509, x 3628, carringt@stolaf.edu
Section C, HH 516: Anne Sabo, Old Main 14 C, x 8105, sabo@stolaf.edu
1) Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (Hackett 0-87220-020-5)
2) Thomas Paine Rights of Man (Hackett 0-87220-147-3)
3)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Sorrows of
Young Werther (Modern Library Classics 0812969901)
4) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (Bantam Classics 0-553-21247-8)
5) J. S. Mill On Liberty (Hackett 0-915144-43-3)
6) Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto (Penguin 978-0-14-044757-6)
7) Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own (Harcourt 0156787334)
8) Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin 0-14-018765-0)
9) William Carlos Williams Paterson (New Directions Publishing Corporation 978-0811212984)
10) Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (Signet Classics 978-0451529060)
11) Friedrich Nietzsche (and Walter
Kaufmann) The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin
978-0140150629)
12)
Oscar Wilde The
Picture of Dorian Gray (Oxford World’s Classics 978-0192807298)
13)
Henrik
Ibsen Four Major Plays: vol. I (Signet Classics 978-0451530226)
14) Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (Vintage 978-0679724513)
15) William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience ed. Keynes (Oxford 978-0192810892)
16) Sigmund Freud Civilization and its Discontents (Norton 978-0393301588)
17) Jean-Paul Sartre Nausea (New Directions 978-0811217002)
Class participation: 25%
Two 4-page papers: 30%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 25%
The best participants are often but not always those who speak the most. We don’t assume that just because you are talking a lot you are a diligent student. However, participation always involves being an attentive and respectful listener and being physically present, awake, and alert in class. It will also involve some of the following:
Schedule of
Classes, Readings, and Assignments
M Feb 11 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (pp. 3-87)
1) How does Burke use language to create an aura of tragedy concerning the Revolution? Make note of specific passages.
2) How does Burke critique each of the rights enumerated on page 14?
3) The term “nature” appears frequently in Burke’s Reflections. What is its importance for him? What does it prove?
4) What is Burke’s understanding of the class hierarchy? What kind of terminology does he employ to reflect that understanding?
5) How does Burke understand the term “rights”?
W Feb 13 Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (pp. 1-83)
1) How does Paine use language to undermine Burke’s rhetorical strategies? Again, make note of specific passages.
2) How do Burke and Paine each interpret the events on the night of October 6, 1789? How can they possibly be talking about the same thing?
3) How does Paine undermine Burke’s defense of the class structure?
4) How does Paine understand the term “rights”?
F Feb 15 William Blake, Songs of Innocence (up through “On Anothers Sorrow”)
Plenary lecture by Prof. Chris Brunelle (Viking)
S Feb 16 Henrik
Ibsen, Peer Gynt, at the
Guthrie theater
Time
of departure: 11:30 a.m. Bus will be loading outside Buntrock
Commons. Play lasts 1-4 p.m. Discussion 4-5 p.m..
Return to St. Olaf
College by 6 p.m.
M Feb 18 Blake, Songs of Experience
W Feb 20 Johann Goethe, Sorrows of Young Werther, Book I (pp. 1-67)
1) Werther addresses one of the 18th century’s central aesthetic issues: the relationship between feeling and reason and the consequences of that relationship for the social order. Which letters in Book One speak most strongly to that relationship?
2) How important is religion to Werther? What, if any, are his religious beliefs, and how do they shape his character?
3) Werther is an epistolary novel, a novel made up of fictitious letters. How much and in what ways does this format shape our response to the novel?
Th Feb 21 Dinner 6:00 in Valhalla; talk by Philip Brunelle on William Bolcom’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” in Viking Theater, 7:00
F Feb 22 Goethe, Werther, Book II (pp. 69-149)
1) Does Charlotte seem to you to be more a romantic ideal (pure, self-sacrificing, sympathetic) or a real individual with an inner (and not necessarily pure) life of her own?
2) Why is Werther (in his letter of September 15) so distraught at the chopping down of the walnut trees?
3) What do you make of Werther’s comparisons between himself and Christ?
4) How convincingly does Goethe delineate Werther’s progression from despair to suicide?
M Feb 25 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (pp. xxiii-xxx, 1-89)
1) How is Victor Frankenstein portrayed? Is he a reliable narrator?
2) What is Walton’s role? How is he portrayed?
3) How are women portrayed? Does Shelley’s portrayal of women break with stereotypes, or not? Why is Elizabeth alone in recognizing that vengeance and revenge only served to perpetuate the cycle of hate and despair? Is it because of her clearly gendered (female) role in the novel (as opposed to the masculinist portrayals of the vengeful monster and the patriarchal social institutions of the law and criminal justice system?)
W Feb 27 Shelley,
Frankenstein (pp. 90-213)
1) What are the elements of monstrosity in Viktor and humanity in the monster? What is Shelley’s commentary on the relationship between monstrosity and humanity?
2) Is this a novel about science or imagination? What is the cost of creativity, according to this novel? How is the (romantic) sublime compared to social responsibilities and engagements?
3) Why does Dr. Frankenstein decide late in the novel to seek the assistance of the magistrate in order to help carry out his plan of revenge against the monster? What is the relationship between public retribution and private vengeance? Where does the monster’s revenge fit in here?
F Feb 29 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chs. 1-2
1) What is the extent of liberty, according to Mill? Who or what has the right to limit personal liberty?
2) In his introduction, Mill mentions the “tyranny of the majority.” What does he mean by this, and how do you understand this concept?
3) Mill also remarks on the magical thinking that accompanies long-standing custom. What does he mean by this? How do you think Burke would respond?
4) What are the utilitarian arguments to support maximum possible liberty of thought and discussion? Can you support his position?
5) Does Mill seem to critique Christianity?
M Mar 3 Mill, On Liberty, Chs. 3-5
1) Again, what is the utilitarian argument in support of individuality?
2) Does Mill seem to undermine democracy on page 63?
3) Mill gives us a number of applications for his theory. Do you support his conclusions in each case? Can you think of other cases that are relevant today?
4) Is there a contradiction at the heart of Mill’s theory—that endorsing freedom of thought, expression, and way of life seems to demand acceptance of those whose thoughts, expressions, and lifestyles seek to inhibit others?
W Mar 5 Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (read it all; skim the prefaces)
6:30-7:15,
Valhalla Room: Great Con Student of the Year
1) What is the pattern of history, as Marx sees it? Where does he see his own period in relation to that pattern?
2) What is his critique of the bourgeois ascendancy of capitalism? What is the role of the capitalist system in human history?
3) Who or what is the proletariat? What is its distinctive status as a class?
4) What would Burke have to say about Marx’s criticisms of capitalism?
5) Finally, evaluate Marx’s program for ushering in the new age of the proletariat.
F Mar 7 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species Introduction, Chapters 1-3
1) What is new about Darwin’s approach, in regards to the origin of species? What have other naturalists presumed?
2) In looking at domesticated species, what are the possible theories explaining the extreme variations among breeds? How does Darwin account for such variations?
3) What according to Darwin is the distinction between a species and a variety? Why is his conclusion important?
4) What conclusions does Darwin reach about the potential for species to multiply? What are the checks that prevent this from happening?
5) Finally, what is your response to Darwin’s concluding sentence to chapter 3?
M Mar 10 Darwin, The Origin of Species Chapter 4; T.H. Huxley, “The Struggle for Existence in Human Society” and “Evolution and Ethics” (handouts)
1) How does process of natural selection function to produce new species, and bring about the extinction of others?
2) What is the process of sexual selection, and how does it compare to natural selection?
3) What are the various circumstances that allow some species to flourish?
4) Again, what do you make of Darwin’s concluding statement, this time in chapter 4?
5) According to Huxley, what does the spectacle of natural selection teach us about nature’s capacity for morality? What is the duty of civilization in the face of such realizations?
Tu Mar 11 FIRST ESSAY DUE, 4:00 p.m.
W Mar 12 Wagner
Tristan and Isolde
Plenary lecture by Prof. Laurel Carrington (Viking)
F Mar 14 Wagner
Tristan and Isolde
M Mar 17 Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra (First Part: 115-191)
Plenary lecture by Prof. Anne Sabo (Viking)
1) What are some of the Biblical references (both in terms of content and style) in the presentation and narration of Zarathustra’s life and works?
2) What is meant by ‘the spirit of gravity’? What is its opposite as embraced by Zarathustra?
3) How is the ‘overman’ presented? What are the characteristics of the overman? How will he come about?
4) What is the significance of solitude, according to Zarathustra? How does he distinguish between followers or pupils and companions or brothers, and how might they relate to solitude?
W Mar 19 Nietzsche Zarathustra (Second Part: 191-200, 219-222, 225-228,
236-238, 249-259; Third Part: 260-279, 308-343; Fourth Part: 398-408, 429-439)
1) What does Zarathustra mean by “God is a conjecture”? What are the implications of this ‘fact’ as Zarathustra sees it?
2) What is the significance of presenting life as a woman?
3) What is the relationship between self-overcoming, will to power, and redemption?
4) Nietzsche’s ‘eternal recurrence’ has been interpreted as an existential imperative; what support do you find for this interpretation and how might you understand this as an existential imperative?
5) Do Zarathustra and the story of Zarathustra present you with an appealing philosophy of life? Why or why not?
F
Mar 21—Su Mar 30 SPRING BREAK
M Mar 31 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (pp. 3-107)
1) Pay attention to the novel’s references to ancient Greek (‘Hellenic’) society. What qualities does Wilde ascribe to Hellenism? Conversely, what qualities does he ascribe to Romanticism?
2) It has been said (though not by Lord Henry) that the term ‘nature’ soaks up ideology like a sponge. How do the novel’s characters define and (ab)use the idea of nature? (And what is the effect of nature itself, as portrayed by the narrator?)
3) We learn of Lord Henry Wooton both externally, through his speeches and his conversation, and internally, through our glimpses of his inner thoughts (e.g. p. 20, third paragraph). How do his inner thoughts color your interpretation of his external character?
4) Do you find any of Lord Henry’s aphorisms to be true, or honest, or morally good?
W Apr 2 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (pp. 108-188)
1) What is “the new Hedonism,” and what is its role in the story?
2) The Picture of Dorian Gray is among other things an effective horror story. Apart from the issue of the painting itself, what elements of the novel’s tone or details of its exposition contribute to the feeling of horror? How does Wilde draw the reader into the novel’s uneasy world?
3) Does the final chapter offer any useful reply to those who claim that the novel is immoral?
F Apr 4 Midterm Examination
M Apr 7 Ibsen
Hedda Gabler Acts I-II
Plenary
lecture by Prof. Solveig Zempel (Viking)
1) How would you characterize Hedda Gabler? Is she purely evil, misunderstood, trapped, a victim, a bully, a coward, a hero, or what? Why does she act the way she acts?
2) Why is she constantly referred to by that name, even though she is Mrs. Tesman now?
3) How is Løvborg presented? How do you understand Hedda’s relationship to Løvborg, how she relates to him (“vine leaves in his hair—fiery and bold”), both in the past and the present?
4) What’s the symbolic meaning of General Gabler’s pistols (to Hedda)?
5) What’s the role of Judge Brack? What do we learn about Hedda, her situation, and feelings through her conversations with Brack?
W Apr 9 Ibsen
Hedda Gabler Acts III-IV
1) Robert Bly (“On Peer Gynt,” the Guthrie program) writes that in Peer Gynt, Ibsen lays out the contrast between Peer, on the one side, and “on the other side the ordinary Norwegian citizens represented in the play by hopelessly conventional, second-rate trolls.” Do we see a similar contrast between Hedda, on the one side, and ordinary Norwegian citizens, on the other side, in Hedda Gabler? If so, who in Hedda Gabler represents the ordinary Norwegian citizens? How is the contrast between them and Hedda set up?
2) What is the structure of the society Ibsen depicts in this play? Does class play a role?
3) What might one argue that Hedda Gabler and Peer Gynt have in common?
4) What is the role and character of the other women in this play? How do they compare to the female characters in Peer Gynt? How might one read Hedda Gabler as a commentary on gender roles? How do women attain agency, according to this play? And what kind of agency?
5) What are the implications of the ending?
1) On what grounds does Freud equate happiness with pleasure?
2) As listed by Freud, what are the various methods to ward off suffering, and which of them does Freud promote as the most useful or successful?
3) On what grounds does Freud (in Chapter II) criticize religion, and how successful do you find his critique to be?
4) On pp. 39-41 Freud considers the roles of disappointment and the limits of transcultural empathy. What effect do these two topics have on the rest of his essay?
M Apr 14 Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (pp. 53-112)
1) Freud minces few words in his condemnation of the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself. What do you make of his argument as it pertains to human society? (And, more generally, what role(s) does Christ play in Freud’s work?)
2) Where does guilt come from, and what is its role in human discontent?
3) According to Freud, how do men and women differ in their natures and their contributions to civilization?
M Apr 14 Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times 7-9 p.m. (RML 515) (attend tonight’s or
tomorrow
night’s screening)
Tu Apr 15 Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times 7-9 p.m. (Science Center 170)
W Apr 16 Charlie
Chaplin, Modern Times
1) Modern Times is introduced as “a story of industry, of individual enterprise–humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” How do individual enterprise and humanity fare compared to industry in this film?
2) Released in 1936, the film reflects an era of economic depression after the big crash in 1929. What were the various components of the depression, as portrayed in this film?
3) This film is something between a ‘talkie’ and a silent movie. Who do we hear speak in this film and in what contexts? What’s the relationship between the spoken word, authority, and technology?
4) What is this film trying to say about the execution of the law in modern times? How does it portray corporate and public surveillance?
5) Film was itself a modern medium at that time. How is this medium used to capture modern times, through e.g. settings, props, and acting?
F Apr 18 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own Chapters 1-3
1)
Note
the manner in which Woolf approaches her subject. How does she use language to
generate specific questions and insights? Note that her entire account of
“herself” as a woman asking certain questions is fictive.
2)
Why
the focus on food, drink, tobacco, ambience? What does all this mean in her
approach to her subject?
3)
What
do you make of the poems—Tennyson and Christina Rossetti—she cites near the
beginning? Do people speak that way today? What is Woolf trying to say?
4)
How
do males experience a world in which women are simply assumed to be inferior?
5)
Why
could Shakespeare’s sister never have become a writer? Do you accept Woolf’s
argument?
M Apr 21 Woolf Room
Chapters 4-6
1)
What does Woolf mean when she speaks of integrity in the creative
process? Do you agree or disagree with her vision—for example, is there room
for anger in a novelists practice?
2)
Why must a woman writer’s tools differ from a man’s?
Again, do you find Woolf’s argument convincing?
3)
Comment on the close readings she gives of two imaginary novels, one by a
man and one by a woman. How does her sensitivity to language, time, place, and
circumstance guide her judgment?
4)
What is her charge to the new generation of young women? What might such
a charge be today?
W Apr 23 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (pp. v-viii, 1-103)
Plenary lecture by Prof. Anthony Rudd (Viking)
F Apr 25 Sartre, Nausea (pp. 103-178)
M Apr 28 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (introduction xix-xxxvi, Part I chapters
I-II, Part II chapter VIII)
1)
Contemporary
(post-structuralist) feminist Judith Butler has said that de Beauvoir’s
formulation that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” implies a
distinction between the terms “sex” and “gender.” Butler explains that de
Beauvoir suggests that “gender” is an aspect of identity which is “gradually
acquired.” Butler thus sees The Second
Sex as potentially providing a radical understanding of gender. How, beyond the statement quoted by Butler,
does de Beauvoir distinguish between “sex” and “gender” in The Second Sex?
2) You have studied the significance of bodily strength to Wollstonecraft. How does de Beauvoir compare to Wollstonecraft in her response to physiological differences in The Second Sex?
3) Unpack de Beauvoir’s critique of Freud’s psychoanalysis. Specifically, what are the shortcomings of psychoanalysis, according to de Beauvoir?
4) What are the main victories in the development towards equality between the sexes, according to de Beauvoir? What are the main impediments that remain?
Tu Apr 29 SECOND
ESSAY DUE 4:00 p.m.
W Apr 30 Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Part III chapter IX, Part IV chapter XIV,
conclusion)
1)
Is de Beauvoir fair
in her treatment of men? Are her explanations for men’s dreams, fears, and
idols convincing? How exactly does she explain the creation and adoption of
specific myths related to women?
2) Why, according to de Beauvoir, does women’s first experience of intercourse always constitute rape?
3) How do women’s and men’s sexuality differ, both socially and physiologically, according to de Beauvoir? What remedies does she suggest for an improved sexual life between women and men? What, according to de Beauvoir, are the obstacles to her suggested remedies?
4)
What is de Beauvoir’s response to the alleged ‘war
between the sexes’? How does she foresee the future; what will the liberation
of women imply in terms of the division of the human species into women and men?
F May 2 William Carlos Williams, Paterson (Books I-II)
1) Williams argued that the new world needed a new language that would more truthfully reflect its physical landscape and geography as well as its people, and thus speak better for its people than the inventions of, say, the modernist T.S. Eliot (Paterson is in part a response to Eliot’s The Waste Land). How do you see Williams striving to create a new language in this long epic poem? What does Williams bring in as the material of his poem? Why does he include what he includes?
2) What is the significance of inventions, as articulated in this poem? What is the risk implied in Williams’ commitment to the invention of a new language, as expressed in this poem?
3) How does Williams articulate the conundrums of language in this poem? What imageries does Williams conjure to illustrate the challenges and obstacles of language?
M May 5 Williams, Paterson (Books III-IV)
1) What is the symbolic meaning of the river? What kind of commentary does it present on the application of logic through language? How about the figure of the dance?
2) Consider the rhetorical strategies of the poem that bid the reader engage certain propositions or outbursts (often emphasized by exclamation marks) that speak more directly to the reader than the rest of the material. How does the author address the reader here? What is Williams trying to have the reader understand through these devices?
3) What is the significance of rhythm in this poem? How is a sense of rhythm achieved? What is the rhythm like?
4)
One could argue that
there is a democratic attachment, faith in humanity, expressed in this poem.
How?
W May 7 Hannah
Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
Chapters 1-5
1) What are the legal difficulties of bringing the
defendant to justice? What is the venue, and what is the source of authority?
2) What are the most important themes in Arendt’s
reconstruction of Eichmann’s early life, including his joining the Nazi party?
What do we learn about his character?
3) How does Eichmann’s peculiar response to language—emotional
responses to clichés—limit his ability to think in terms of the moral
implications of what he is doing?
4) How does humor enter into this narrative, either
Eichmann’s attempts at humor, or Arendt’s remarks on the unintended humor
lurking beneath such a monstrous situation?
5)
What
efforts does Eichmann make on behalf of his regime to settle the “Jewish
question” prior to the final solution? What premises does he believe he shares
in common with the Zionists he seems to admire?
W May 7 Marc
Forster, Stranger than Fiction
7-9 p.m. (Holland Hall 501) (attend
tonight’s
or Sunday night’s screening)
F May 9 Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem Chapters
6-8, 15
1) How did the top officials
of the Nazi regime arrive at the final solution?
2) How, according to Arendt,
did Eichmann reconcile himself to what he was doing?
3) How does Kant’s moral
philosophy, specificially the categorical imperative, play a background role in
Eichmann’s adaptation of his beliefs and actions to those of the Nazi party?
4) What is Arendt’s conclusion
about the banality of evil?
5) Was the death sentence
just, according to Arendt? Why? Do you agree or disagree?
Su May 11 Marc
Forster, Stranger than Fiction
7-9 p.m. (Viking)
M May 12 Marc
Forster, Stranger than Fiction
1) What is the relationship between fact and fiction as presented in Stranger than Fiction? What is ‘stranger’ than fiction?
2) Other than the use of a narrator’s (the author’s) voice-over, what techniques are used to get us into Harold Crick’s head?
3) How does this film comment on the postmodern conundrum of originality? Can there be anything truly new and original, according to this film?
4) It can be argued that this film presents an existential philosophy of life: how? What is the meaning of life, or how is meaning created, according to this film?
5) What is the significance of (human) (textual) interconnection, according to this film?