English 205 - Telling and Retelling

Patricia L. Skarda

TTh 10:30-11:50

 

This course is especially recommended for non-majors who want to read good books for a semester, and the course can be counted toward the English major. It also qualifies as a Writing Intensive course, though the catalogue missed that fact.

 

Necessarily, this course has two subtitles: "Modern Novels and their Famous Antecedents" and "The Pleasures of Reading and Rereading." To satisfy the first we will examine recent novels and their literary antecedents, paying close attention to whether the recent novels are dependent on or merely suggestive of their literary progenitors. To satisfy the second, we will discuss and often comment on what the pleasures of reading, especially close reading, actually are, bearing in mind that each of us may read for reasons that another may scorn. Together we will determine what we need to know to be good readers of contemporary fiction that revises, reinterprets, questions, parodies, or extends work of the past. By reading critically recent novels, students will acquire an appreciation of literary texts and contexts, old and new. Students taking this class will acquire an enhanced awareness of the reflections and refractions in the telling and retelling of stories that will never be forgotten.

 

A considerable number of recent novels are dependent on more than a vague familiarity with great literature of the past. But the imitative and often interpretive art of these works is often lost on readers unaware of literary antecedents. By recognizing the echoes in character, language, and theme, and by seeing the connections and correspondences (and sometimes the discontinuities) between literary works, students will be brought to a heightened awareness of the literary arts.

 

Jaws can be seen as a retelling of Moby Dick with an interesting acknowledgment of The Turn of the Screw (Peter Quint is the captain of the rescue ship in Jaws ); The Bridges of Madison County has a parody called The Ditches of Edison County ; even The Wizard of Oz has a prequel in Wicked . But I have set a considerably higher standard of literary merit for the texts of the course. Among the works under consideration are the following pairs of texts:

 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and

   Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin (movies available for both);

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles and Ourika by Claire de Duras (movies available for Hardy and Fowles );

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (movies   available for both);

King Lear by William Shakespeare and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (movies available for both);

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (several movie versions available) and Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (very funny movie);

Christabel , a narrative poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (plus a few love letters between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning) and Possession by A.S. Byatt ;

The Book of Job and J. B. by Archibald MacLeish and In the Image by Dara Horn;

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Hester by Christopher Bixby (movie available for the former);

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Hours by Michael Cunningham (good movies for both);

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall (movie available for the former)

Also a selection of short stories.

 

Students will be required to write at least three reader responses, two essays (one of which may be a book or film review), and a final examination. Students will also be required to participate in one group presentation. The size of the class will determine the method of instruction, though I expect to have lively discussions between informal lectures. Movies, when available, will be shown in the late afternoon or evening, but seeing them will not be required.