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ENG1002HF (Cancelled - April 19, 2021) Old English II: Beowulf A. Walton

 

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ENG5006HF
Modernism and the Politics of Form
A. Hammond

Course Description
In recent years, critics working under the loose banner of “new formalism” have brought renewed attention to the social uses of literary form. Pushing back against conceptions of formalist criticism as ahistorical, totalizing, and tending to ideological mystification, these critics adopt a historical approach to form, showing how styles and genres emerge out of political contexts and in turn shape possibilities for thought, expression, and action in a given historical moment. This course tests the claims of new formalism through an investigation of modernism, among the most formally inventive and formally self-conscious of literary periods. Reading modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, Jane Bowles, and Jean Toomer alongside modernist critics such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Erich Auerbach, and Walter Benjamin, we will assess the impact of particular styles in light of specific political intents and historical circumstances, paying particular attention to the possibility of a modernist “democratic aesthetic.” Reading modernism through the new formalist approaches of contemporary critics like Caroline Levine and C. Namwali Serpell, and alongside democratic theory by Jacques Rancière and Chantal Mouffe, we will ask how much in new formalism is truly “new,” and how much a return to the concerns of modernists.

Course Reading List
Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Berolt Brecht, and Georg Lukács, Aesthetics and Politics (selections)
Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (selections)
Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”
Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies
Henry Green, Living
Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
Caroline Levine, Forms (selections)
Marjorie Levinson, “What Is New Formalism?”
Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically
Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible
Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark
C. Namwali Serpell, Seven Modes of Uncertainty (selections)
Jean Toomer, Cane
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” “Poetry, Fiction, and the Future,” “The Leaning Tower”
Andrei Zhdanov et al., Problems of Soviet Literature: Reports and Speeches at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress.
(This reading list is subject to revision)

Course Method of Evaluation and Course Requirements
Annotated Bibliography (10%)
Seminar Presentation and Position Paper (25%)
Research Essay Proposal (5%)
Research Essay (40%)
Participation (20%)

Term: F-Term Summer (MAY & JUNE 2021)
Time/Date: Mondays and Wednesdays / 11:00 am to 1:00 pm (Start date May 3; last date June 14. Class cancelled on Victoria Day, May 24.)
Location: NB: the summer 2021 graduate courses will be ONLINE DELIVERY (SYNCHRONOUS), via teleconferencing. Link to be sent to students directly by the instructor 

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Course Description:
This course will focus on Canadian ecopoetry, beginning with selections of twentieth-century poetry that is not consciously “environmental” but nevertheless evokes various forms of ecological interrelatedness. We will then consider contemporary works that self-consciously investigate the role of poetry in responding to current environmental issues. We will read this body of work in light of ongoing critical debates surrounding ecopoetry’s relationship to the adjacent, but distinct field known as “ecopoetics.” While “Ecopoetry” can be used to designate any poetry that deals with environmental concerns, it often refers specifically to poetry that engages with politicized forms of environmentalism. Meanwhile, “ecopoetics” refers to a theory of poetry that investigates how poems might enact the dynamism of ecological systems on the written page; “ecopoetics” thus invokes a formal experimentalism that can seeminaccessible and therefore incompatible with grass roots environmentalism. We will explore the tensions between “ecopoetry” and “ecopoetics” by considering the diversity of approaches that Canadian ecopoetry encompasses, from the activist “poethics” of Rita Wong and Stephen Collis, to the formal experimentalism of Erin Mouré, Lisa Robertson, and Phil Hall, to the scientifically inspired poetics of Don McKay and Adam Dickinson.

Course Reading List:
Daphne Marlatt, Steveston; Dennis Lee, Civil Elegies; Di Brandt, Now You Care; Erin Moure, Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person; Phil Hall, Killdeer; Don MacKay, Strike/Slip; Adam Dickinson, The Polymers; Lisa Robertson, XEclogue; Rita Wong, Undercurrent; Carey Toane, The Crystal Palace; Stephen Collis, Once in Blockadia; Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, Decomp; A. Rawlings and Chris Turnbull, The Great Canadian; Brenda Ijima (ed), eco language reader *Texts are subject to change based on availability. *Plus a selection of critical essays and chapters by Charles Olson, Jonathan Bate, Laura-Gray Street and Ann Fisher-Wirth, J. Scott Bryson, Evelyn Reilly, Heather Milne, Rita Wong, Adam Dickinson, Don McKay, Lyn Keller, and Pauline Butling.

Course Method of Evaluation and Course Requirements:
Essay/Research Paper, 45%; Seminar Presentation, 25%; June 15 Roundtable Presentation, 15%; Class Participation, 15%.

Term: F-Term Summer (MAY & JUNE 2021)
Time/Date: Tuesdays and Thursdays / 11:00 am to 1:00 pm (Start date, May 4; last class, June 10; Additional semester roundtable date, June 15) 
Location: NB: the summer 2021 graduate courses will be ONLINE DELIVERY (SYNCHRONOUS), via teleconferencing. Link to be sent to students directly by the instructor

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ENG5963HF (Cancelled - April 12, 2021) James Joyce: Modernism, Modernity, Mythology G. Leonard

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