Fall 1997
T 6P-8:50P
212 Carlisle Hall
The nineteenth century subsumed all human activity to its position in history, from which these activities drew their meanings and their value. By the twentieth century this historicization had been challenged, and new ways developed to understand culture in historical ways. Above all, the question of social configurations came to dominate literary history.
This course will discuss the works of Georg Lukacs, Northrop Frye, Erich Auerbach, and Fredric Jameson. This will not be a survey, but rather a series of soundings in major theorists of culture and literature, supplemented by essays which place these individuals. Each of these works addresses in differing ways the social position of literature, its force in creating the historical world, and the overwhelming importance of realism as an ideology.
Lukacs's work of the 1930's set the tone for marxist criticism for three decades; any discussion of critical thought in the century must consider his notions of "bourgeois realism" and "critical realism." Northrop Frye's work suggests that literature forms a cosmos of understandings which lies behind all historical ideologies and philosophies of history, all of which are versions of poetic visions of human experience. Erich Auerbach crowns the German philological tradition with a sweeping survey of Western "realism" and its roots in a figuralism that explains change by linking future fulfillments to past possibilities. Jameson's important work of the 1970's and 80's confronts a new problematics, which sees form as the primary literary issue, and acknowledges realism as another effect of language. A student of Auerbach, his goal is to establish a responsible marxist literary theory beyond the limits of Lukacs and his era, and to promote his (Jameson's) slogan "Always historicize!"
Requirements:
In addition to participating in the discussion which is the work of the seminar, students will write several short papers and an article-length essay. E-mail account required. Attendence required.
Although all students will be responsible for all the required reading, each student will specialize in two of the figures in the course. These assignments will be assigned by lot. The instructor will not change the results of the lottery, but they may be traded at the start of the course.
Assignments:
Each student will write two essays of 10-12 pages, to be presented on an assigned day in the semester; copies of the papers will be given to each member of the class at least three days before the class. One student will be assigned to respond to the essay in a response of about 2 pages.
Readings (in part):
Week I (26 August)
Marx/Engels on Literature (FC1) Browse through these brief selections for background on how two 19th century ("I am not a marxist!" - K.Marx) felt about literature.
Hayden White, "Literary History: The Point of It All" (FC3) Pay attention to White's usual strategy of identifying the forms of any particular discourse, and his typical response, which is to transcend them by posing a meta-discourse.
Jakobson/Tynanov, "Formalist Theory" (FC5) This brief position paper was the outline of a project that was stifled by Stalin, but had some future in Prague. It suggests that "devices" have histories, and that this is what literary history must study.
Week II (2 September)
Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel This difficult work remains a profound statement of the German philosophical view of literature. Follow the key words, such as totality, distance, roundedness, organic, and many others. What keywords can you find that contain within them ideas about society and literature?
Week III (9 September)
Lukacs, from Goethe and His Age (FC6) The Goethe and Tolstoy essays are fully marxist, in a way that The Theory of the Novel is not. Note the various turns that are characteristic of this work, esp. the relation between form, content and class interests.
Lukacs, "Leo Tolstoy and Western European Literature" (FC7)
Jameson, Marxism and Form, 160-206. Jameson wants to save Lukacs from the charge of "vulgar marxism," presenting him as a leader in a much more flexible, intelligent cultural theory (i.e. the Western marxism that Jameson adheres to).
Week IV (16 September)
Lukacs, "Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann?" (FC9) Are these both bourgeois writers, escaping reality through the formal (Kafka) or thematic (Mann) devices of modernism? Yes and no, says Lukacs. Mann is different, and better, for political reasons. Lukacs, "Narrate or Describe" (FC8) 19th century narratives went out of style in modernism, but Lukacs maintains that because we live in the historical processes of time, only narrative is epistemologically responsible. Hayden White, "Storytelling: Historical and Ideological" (FC20). White gives a current view of the issue of the value of narrative, using Lukacs as an example.
Week V (23 September)
Wellek/Warren, from Theory of Literature (FC2) This book of 50 years ago was the classic handbook of literary studies at the time. The last chapter on "Literary History" seems an afterthought in a moment when all attention was turned to the text itself.
Auerbach, "Vulgar Latin" (FC14) In this excerpt from Auerbach's book on Romance philology, he addresses the major cultural upheaval of Western history, the decline of antiquity and the loss of mental tools caused by the loss of grammatical sophistication.
Auerbach, "Figura" (FC15) This famous essay traces the origin and history of Western interpretation theory. It is a masterpiece of scholarship.
Week VI (30 September)
Auerbach, Mimesis, ch. 1-10.
Week VII (7 October)
Auerbach, Mimesis, ch. 11-20
Week VIII (14 October)
Auerbach, "Philology and Weltlitertur" (FC12) In this introduction (dropped from the English edition) to his book on Romance language and literature, Auerbach poses the relationship between the science of language change and literary study.
Hayden White, "Auerbach's Literary History" (FC10) White, much influenced by Auerbach's work, considers the question of "figuralism," which is the central term in the work of both scholars.
Week IX (21 October)
Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Essays 1 and 2.
Week X (28 October)
Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Essays 3 and 4.
Week XI (4 November)
Frye, The Great Code, part one. Frye's first book on the Bible is, like all his work, based on Blake's notion that the Christian Bible (i.e. both parts, in all their tension) is the code on which the culture rests. Hayden White, "Frye's Place in Contemporary Cultural Studies" (FC11)
Week XII (11 November)
Frye, The Great Code, part two.
Week XIII (18 November)
Jameson, The Political Unconscious Jameson's statement of a modern marxist project uses a model of culture laid out by Dante (and described by Frye), an ascending set of stages leading to the highest stage (which Frye or Dante would call anagogic, but which the marxists call "totality").
Week XIV (25 November)
Jameson, "Figural Relativism" (FC19) Fredric Jameson considers the work of Hayden White. "History and Utopian Desire" (FC21) On Jameson and Frye. Hayden White, "Getting Out of History," (FC22). Hayden White considers the work of Fredric Jameson.
Week XV (2 December)
Each student will be assigned weekly a section of the reading, from which he or she will extract 5 or 10 sentences which a) summarize the ideas in this part of the text), OR b) express a remarkable or mysterious concept, OR c) mark a crucial step in the argument. Do not select the same sentence over and over. The purpose of this sentence extraction is to encourage you to find places where you feel at home in even the strangest text.
Each student will turn in these sentences (identified by work, author, page) on a floppy disk (with name on it). Next class, the instructor will return the disk with everyone's sentences on it. These sentences will serve as a basis for future review and study.
Selection of key sentences is a personal matter; in a way, the selection is a sort of picture of you. Think about why you selected each sentence.
PAPER TOPICS
PAPER TOPICS ideas (for the Lukacs Group)
Unity and Totality in Lukacs's Theory of the Novel
Utopia and Nostalgia in Lukacs's Theory of the Novel
Tolstoy's Place in Lukacs's Literary History
The Value of Narration in Lukacs's Cultural Theory
What Is Right and What is Wrong With Scott's Historical Novels?
The Political Value of Realism in Lukacs's Later Work
PAPER TOPICS (ideas for the Auerbach group)
Society and Style in Auerbach's Mimesis.
Christian Realism in Auerbach
Auerbach and Lukacs on Modernism
Auerbach's Method
Auerbach and Historical Change
Romance Philology and Auerbach's Vision of the West
PAPER TOPICS (ideas for the Frye group)
Frye's Anatomy derives from his earlier study of Blake, who conceived of the cosmos in Biblical typological terms. What are the Blakean influences in the Anatomy?
Frye is often referred to as a "myth critic," and the Anatomy as a piece of myth criticism. Yet only one of the four parts of the Anatomy is myth criticism. Is it correct to call Frye a myth critic?
Frye says that criticism has to look at art from the standpoint of an ideally classless society, not preferring one form over another, and exercising judgment only on comparative, not positive grounds. How does he attempt to do this?
On p. 310 of the Anatomy, Frye with two words placed in parentheses suggests that the book is a satire. What does he mean by this?
On what basis could Northrop Frye be called a literary historian? How does his discussion of philosophy of history in "New Directions from Old" help us understand him?
Because rhetoric is, as Aristotle put it, "concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science," it is intrinsically interdisciplinary, even anti-disciplinary. The way in which the world of inquiry is mapped out in university structures -- History, Philosophy, Literature, Sociology, Physics, etc. -- does not map out the world outside the university. Into which category does an automobile accident fall? A revolution? The first day of school? Because there are a variety of ways to represent events, there are choices, but no necessity. And whenever we are not compelled to do things only one way, rhetoric must come to the fore because we need to find grounds for deciding how to proceed. Rhetoric is the study of these grounds.
The goals of the course are to familiarize the student with a) the rhetorical tradition and its position in 2000 years of Western thought, b) the constitution of the modern discipline from discourse protocols that create bodies of knowledge, and c) recent work on the rhetorical understanding of human knowledge. The course will also develop strategies for class discussion, presentation of papers before groups, and writing professional book reviews.
ASSIGNMENTS: The written assignments are four papers of 4+ pages (10 or 12 pitch type, one inch margins, no cover page). One of these papers will address an issue presented by the classic (Greek and Latin) rhetorical literature. One of the papers will analyze an essay, article, document, or manual from some academic or professional discourse known to you. One of the papers will deal with some aspect of recent rhetorical thought. One of the papers will be on a topic of your choice, clearly related to the topics, readings, or discussions in this class.
These papers should be tightly written, sustained arguments--coherent, cogent, and insightful. Avoid introductions and background material; get to the argument at once. Your audience(s) for each paper will be me, your fellow students, and the Humanities and Academy in general.
Criteria for grades on these "graduate" papers: 'A' is a publishable insight (in other words, it makes a scholarly contribution) to the topic; 'B' is not necessarily publishable, but is, nonetheless, an insightful synthesis of the material read; 'C' is a mere reporting of information and most likely does not work out of some communal concern with a problem that is relevant to the subject matter of this course or the humanities in general; 'F' a failure to do the assignment either because it was not handed in or because the paper demonstrates an inability even to explain the readings. The course grade will be based on participation in class and online as well as on the four papers.
There will also be weekly class assignments and reports.
E-MAIL FORUM: By the second week of the term, each member of the class will have activated an e-mail address at UTA's Academic Computer Services. As a student, you have already been assigned an address by ACS; this is free. The class will have a weekly discussion group in which your questions about the readings, observations from life, puzzlements, etc. can be discussed with other members of the class, and with the instructor, who will also indicate passages or questions that will be opened up for discussion during the week. This discussion group will be an important opportunity to express your views and question each other.
READING ASSIGNMENTS
The following books have been ordered and should be in the bookstore.
BOOKS:
- Bizzell and Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition.
- Lanham, The Electronic Word.
- Donald N. McCloskey, If You're So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise
- Rorty, Richard, Contingency, irony, and solidarity.
- Schilb and Harkin, eds. Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Post-Modern Age.
All of the works marked with an asterisk (*) will be found at the Fast Copy Center under Kellner, Hum 5301.
I. 23 Jan. "The 'Q' Question," in The Electronic Word (Lanham).
II. 30 Jan. THEME -- Sophistry, Old and New. Gorgias, in The Rhetorical Tradition (Bizzell/Herzberg); "Magic, Literacy, and the National Enquirer," in Contending with Words (Covino); *Moss, "The Case for Sophistry"; Gates, "The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g)," in Bizzell and Herzberg.
III. 6 Feb. THEME -- Philosophy vs. Rhetoric. Plato, Gorgias and Phaedrus in Bizzell/Herzberg; Weaver, "The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric" and "Language is Sermonic" in Bizzell/Herzberg.
IV. 13 Feb. THEME -- Argumentation. Aristotle, Rhetoric in Bizzell/Herzberg;
V. 20 Feb. THEME -- Argumentation II. Toulmin, in Bizzell/Herzberg; Perelman, in Bizzell/Herzberg.
VI. 27 Feb. THEME -- Academic Discourse and Rhetoric Nelson, "Political Foundations for the Rhetoric of Inquiry," *Bazerman, "Codifying the Social Scientific Style: The APA Publication Manual as a Behaviorist Rhetoric," and *Rosaldo, "Where Objectivity Lies: The Rhetoric of Anthropology."
VII. 6 Mar. THEME -- Academic Discourse and Rhetoric
D.N. McCloskey, If You're So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise
VIII. 20 Mar.
"Quick and Dirty Guide" Fast Copy #1
Hans Kellner, from Language and Historical Representation Fast Copy #2
Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth" Fast Copy #16
Kellner, " 'Never Again' is Now" Fast Copy #19
X. 3 Apr.
Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lie..." in Bizzell/Herzberg
Heidegger, "Poetically Man Dwells" Fast Copy #11
Lyotard, "The Postmodern Condition" Fast Copy #13
Vitanza, in Contending with Words
XI. 10 Apr.
Austin, "How To Do Things With Words" Fast Copy #29
Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," Fast Copy #14
Derrida, Jacques. "Signature Event Context" in Bizzell/Herzberg.
XII. 17 Apr.
Rorty, Contingency, irony, solidarity.
XIII. 24 Apr.
Harkin, Schilb, Sosnoski in Contending with Words.
Ong, "The Author's Audience is Always a Fiction" Fast Copy #20
XIV. 1 May
Richard Lanham, The Electronic Word, ch. 1, 3, 4, 5,10.
XV. 8 May
Cixous, in Bizzell/Herzberg.
Worsham, in Contending with Words.
Jarrett, in Contending with Words.
Rhetoric Seminars
Rhetoric, Composition, Critical Theory HP & Program
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