SPRING 2000
This information effective for Spring 2000.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
This course is a basic introduction to the reading and interpretation of texts of European Drama. It will be conducted with three lectures per week (MWF 12:30-1:40 in College Eight 240) and a weekly discussion section. Students will study a small number of plays from a variety of historical periods, national traditions, and theatrical configurations; the plays will be studied as performance texts, and attention will be paid to the historical and physical circumstances of performance. Students will be expected to study texts intensively and to read supplementary background materials.
The course will begin with a play in the realist tradition of the late nineteenth century that still dominates much of our drama; the selection will be a work by either Ibsen or Chekhov. We shall then return to the beginning of the western tradition, and read the Oresteia of the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, followed by a Shakespeare play (probably The Merchant of Venice) from sixteenth century England, and a play from the classical tradition of seventeenth century France, Racine's tragedy Phèdre. We shall end with two plays that mark significant developments of the mid-twentieth century: a play by Bertolt Brecht, the major theorist and practitioner of German Epic Theater, and a play by Samuel Beckett, the most conspicuous dramatist of the Theater of the Absurd. All works not originally written in English will be read in translation.
This is an appropriate course for students who intend to be Literature majors in any path (it satisfies the 61 sequence requirement); for students wishing to satisfy the H requirement in General Education; for students who wish to improve their reading/interpretive skills; for students who wish to gain an introduction to drama; for students who wish to study the products of extraordinary creative intelligences.
Ten-fifteen pages of written work; some quizzes; a final exam (Monday, June 5, 8-10 am--the first exam slot of the Schedule).
Karen Bassi
email: bassi@cats.ucsc.edu
228 Cowell College
MWF 9:30-10:40
Stevenson 175
What are novels and where do they come from? What is the history of the so-called romance novel? And what is the basis of its popularity in Western culture? We will attempt to answer these questions by taking a close look at a form of prose fiction that became popular in the ancient Mediterranean. Written in Greek and Latin, the plots of these narratives combine a mixture of romantic love and adventure in which the hero and heroine are always young, well-born, and handsome or beautiful. So what happens? The two lovers are separated, of course! And the remainder of the story is about their travels in distant lands, their spectacular misfortunes, and their eventual reunion. Fake deaths are a common occurrence in these tales. So is the appearance of bandits or pirates who pose a constant threat to the heroine's virginity. If this sounds like the plots of Harlequin romances, you have discovered why these ancient works are often called erotic "romances." At the same time they provide a rich and rewarding reading experience.
In this class we will read a selection of these works (in English) with attention paid to their cultural context, their audiences, the construction of gender in the ancient world, the representation of foreigners and foreign travel, the relationship between sex and violence, and between visual and textual traditions. We will consider the "origins" and history of the novel form and its modern reception. Until very recently these texts were considered outside the mainstream of the traditional canon and are not often read in undergraduate literature courses; to some extent they retain their position as "outsiders." Therefore, we will necessarily be concerned with the factors that determine the inclusion or exclusion of a given text within the Western literary canon. This course is designed for students who are interested in literary history, in theoretical and cultural approaches to literary texts, and in Western antiquity and its contemporary forms. This course is open to all interested students. It satisfies the General Education Code IH.
Attendance at lecture and section meetings. A group presentation, a midterm and final exam, and three short papers.
Primary Readings are to be found in B. P. Reardon, ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. They are:
Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe
Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon
Longus, Daphnis and Chloe
Heliodorus, An Ethiopian Story
Pseudo-Lucian, The Ass
Petronius. Satyrica, Translated with introduction by R. Bracht Branham and Daniel Kinney: University of California Press, 1997.
These texts are available at the Bay Tree Bookstore.
In addition, a Reader of relevant secondary materials will be provided. This will include a selection from the following list:
Bakhtin, Mikhail. "The Greek Romance," in The Dialogic Imagination. Translated by Caryl Emerson Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press, 1981, pp. 86-110.
Barns, J.W.B. "Egypt and the Greek Romance." In Mitteilungen aus der Papyrussammlung de Nationalbibliothek in Wien, 29-36. New Series 5. 1956.
Bartsch, S. Decoding the Ancient Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
Elsom, Helen E. "Callirhoe: Displaying the Phallic Woman." In Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin. 212-230. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Hägg, Toman. The Novel in Antiquity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, English Edition 1983.
Hallett, Judith P., and Marilyn B. Skinner, eds. Roman Sexualities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Harrison, S. J., ed. Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Holzberg, Niklas. The Ancient Novel, An Introduction. Translated by Christine Jackson-Holzberg. London and New York: Routledge, English Edition 1995.
Konstan, David. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Montague, Holly. "Sweet and Pleasant Passion: Female and Male Fantasy in Ancient Romance Novels." In Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin. 231-249. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Morgan, J.R. "Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels." In Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, ed. Christopher Gill and T.P. Wiseman. 175-229. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.
Morgan, J.R. and Richard Stoneman, ed. Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Perry, B.E. "Greek Romance and the Problem of Forms and Origin," in The Ancient Romances. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, pp. 3-43.
Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance, Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Tatum, James, ed. The Search for the Ancient Novel. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Winkler, J.J. "The Education of Chloe." In Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, 101-126. Routledge, 1989.
Zeitlin, Froma. "The Poetics of Eros: Nature, Art and Imitation in Longus' Daphnis and Chloe." In Before Sexuality, ed. Froma Zeitlin and John Winkler. 417-464. Princeton: Princeton Univesity Press, 1990.