The Animal in/as Literature
"O Zarathustra," said then his animals, "to those who think like us, all things dance
themselves.” --Friedrich Nietzsche
Walt Whitman and butterfly
ENGL491C, Term 2, 2013
Thurs, 2-4pm, Brock Hall Annex 2367
Instructor: Bo Earle
Office hours: Thurs. 12-2, BuTo 625
Email: bo.earle@gmail.com
The question of the place of animals in imaginative and
ethical life is the focus of one of the richest and most dynamic
new fields in literary studies, art and philosophy today. But
artistic, philosophical and ethical engagement with the problem of
the animal have been crucial means of negotiating the instability
of modern subjectivity since the romantic period. Conversely, we
are now beginning to appreciate the crucial role of evolutionary
processes in human cognition, suggesting a profound overlap
between how we represent animal life and animal life per se.
This seminar will consider the key theoretical statements in
interdisciplinary animal studies in relation to romantic, modernist
and post-modernist poetry, fiction, film, painting and
illustration. Our inquiry will proceed through a series of questions
that have particularly important implications for the definition
and evaluation of self and community, ethical action and
environmental responsibility: How do we differentiate among the
symbolic, social and utilitarian uses of animals? What
responsibility do we incur through these uses and how do we
define to whom we incur it? Does animality have a place in “the
self” as well as in “the other”? Can animals provide ethical
guidance even though, or precisely because, they aren’t ethical
agents? How does art represent or even effect human-animal
interaction?
One of William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” reads: “The bird
a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” If this list means
anything it’s in virtue of suggesting a norm that does not
compromise particularity but instead (paradoxically) is a norm of
particularity. Blake’s analogies to the radical distinctness and
intimacy of unique species’ habitats render friendship absurdly
alien (how are we supposed to know how spiders feel about their
webs, or birds about their nests?), but this absurdity itself solicits
acknowledgement that friendship relies on such inexplicability,
that an entirely rationalized friendship is no friendship at all.
What we want from friendship is in fact a kind of nesting or
enmeshment that precedes and defies rationalization, right? The
line rhetorically echoes this point in its reduction of syntax to the
most minimal form of a list: the items listed are tied together by
no grammar or reason but only by the form of sheer succession
whose persuasiveness is less akin to logic than to a physical
compulsion or an infectious rhythm that we can’t explain but
nonetheless binds us (like, precisely, a habitat). That is, the line
achieves an aesthetic appeal and communicates an ethical
message not in spite but on the strength of its disjunctions (it
communicates negatively, or in Blake’s terms by way of Hell). An
aim of this seminar is for you to discover, critique, elaborate and
even create such vitally paradoxical connections between the
constitutively opposed concepts of animal and human.
Required texts
The Animals Reader, ed. Kalof, Fitzgerald
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
Posthumanism, ed. Badmington
The Animal Part, Mark Payne
The Song of Solomon. Toni Morrison
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Elizabeth Costello, J.M. Coetzee
Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway
Au Hasard Balthazar (DVD)
I do not know what it is that I am like (DVD)
You are also required to buy or at least rent (from itunes or
another outlet, online or elsewhere) several other films indicated
in the syllabus. All other course texts are accessible directly via
links in this syllabus.
Coursework
*Response papers/journal: beginning with (and including) the Jan
10 meeting, before every seminar meeting each student will email
to me one to two pages responding to any of the materials to be
discussed in that day’s discussion
*Each student will make one very brief (5 min.) presentation to
the seminar on one or more course texts (prose, fiction, poetry,
image or video). Students will be asked to sign up for a
presentation text at the first meeting of the seminar.
*Papers: Electronic submission of the papers (as MS Word
attachments, to the email address above) is preferred. There are
two course papers to write. There should be no overlap in the
content of the papers. These are critical as opposed to research
assignments, exercises in the kind of close analysis and reflection
we will practice in class discussion. Generally students will get the
most out of the seminar who write exclusively on the texts of this
course, but if there is very compelling reason to address texts
from outside this course in the final paper, this may be allowed
after prior consultation with me. For both papers students are to
make appointments to propose and discuss paper topics with me
beforehand.
 Five page paper due February 28.
 10 page paper at end of exam period.
Grading Criteria
40% Final paper
25% Midterm paper
25% Reading Responses
10% Class participation (including presentation)
Readings (to be completed by the date under which they are
listed!):
Jan. 3: Animal Functions: To be Regulated, to be Observed, to
be Emulated and to Be
The King James Bible: Genesis 1-3, Job 40-42, Song of Solomon
Descartes, Letters (in Animals Reader)
Mark Payne, The Animal Part, Introduction
Elizabeth Bishop, “The Moose”
Ezra Pound, "Salutation"
W.B. Yeats, "The Fascination of What's Difficult"
Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry”
Amy Lowell, "A Lover"
clip: Faith the dog
clip: from Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams
clip: wildlife confidential
clip: Dog home alone
Hyperbole and a Half: Animals
clip: Surfer fail video
Jan. 10: Animal Enchantment
***Please contribute children’s stories to this class session***
Herzog, Grizzly Man (movie available on itunes)
Dreyfus/Kelly, from All Things Shining
Herman Melville, Moby Dick chapter 1, chapter 14, chapter 57
Robert Burns, "To a Mouse"
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
Walter de la Mare, “The Titmouse,” “Some One,” “Silver”
Charles Baudelaire, "The Cat", "Cats"
Christopher Smart, from Jubilate Agno
Emily Dickinson, "Bee! I'm expecting you!"
Percy Shelley, “To a Skylark”
Jan. 17: Animal Spectacle
Christopher Guest, Best in Show (movie available on itunes)
Hemingway, from Death in the Afternoon, chapter one.
John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” (in Animals Reader)
Moby Dick, chapter 55, chapter 56 (image: Garneray's Pesche de
la Baleine), chapter 79
T. Coraghessan Boyle, “Heart of a Champion”
William Wordsworth, “The Tables Turned”
Ted Hughes’s Jaguar poems
Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Panther”
Clip from Richard Linklater’s Waking Life
Clip from Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator
Clip from John Ford’s Stagecoach
Clip from BBC Planet Earth
Three clips David Miller’s Lonely are the Brave: one, two, three
Clip: owl
Clip from The Turin Horse (if you want to watch all of this
absolutely devastating, almost three hour long Hungarian
masterpiece, it’s available on itunes; but be forewarned that
the pace of this clip is representative of the whole film.)
Jan. 24: Animal Obscenity
Hitchcock, The Birds (movie available on itunes)
Kafka, The Metamorphosis
John Keats, “Lamia Part 1 & Part 2,”
John Clare, “The Mouse's Nest,” “Badger”
Clip from Kieslowski's Blue
Clip from Psycho
Clip from The Shining
Clip: Herzog on the Obscenity of the Jungle
Jan. 31: Animal Morality
Kafka, Report for an Academy
J.M. Coetzee, from Elizabeth Costello, pp. 59-115.
Peter Singer, “Animal Liberation or Animal Rights?” (in Animals
Reader)
Jeremy Bentham, from Principles of Morals and Legislation (in
Animals Reader)
Keats, letter to George and Georgiana Keats, Feb.-May, 1819
Moby Dick, chapter 61, chapter 65, chapter 116
Hart Crane, "Chaplinesque"
Byron, “Epitaph to a Dog,” “Darkness”
Animals in the news: what we can learn from old animals
new species discovered, eaten
Optional short film (warning! VERY graphic): Georges Franju’s
Blood of the Beasts (divided into three clips: one two, three);
Franju’s horror classic Eyes without a Face also uses animals in
interesting ways; here’s a neat video synopsis (spoiler
warning!). It isn’t on itunes but if you’d like to watch the
whole thing I can lend it to you.
Clip from Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic Umberto D; this isn’t
on itunes but if you’d like to watch the whole thing I can
lend it to you.
Feb. 7: Animal Difference
Wes Anderson, Fantastic Mr. Fox (movie available on itunes)
Rousseau, from The Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract
Joan Roughgarden, "The Theory of Evolution"
William Blake, The Book of Thel: images, text
Wordsworth, "Hart-Leap Well"
Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
Walt Whitman, “The Dalliance of the Eagles”
Thomas Hardy, “Convergence of the Twain,”
Nietzsche, The Gay Science #224
Ted Hughes, “Pike,” “The Thought Fox,”
Moby Dick, chapter 41
Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Billy Collins, "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July", "Another
Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House"
Feb. 14: Animal Indifference
Robert Bresson, Au Hasard Balthazar
Coetzee, Disgrace
Michael Haneke, “Terror and Utopia of Form”
Wallace Stevens, "Autumn Refrain", "Not Ideas about the Thing
but the Thing itself", from Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: "It
Must Change," section 6
Moby Dick, chapter 42
Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush,”
Dickinson, "I'm Nobody! Who are you?”
Marianne Moore, "No Swan So Fine"
Also Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy nicely addresses Coetzee’s
theme of “giving up” animals to whom we’re attached, and is
available on itunes.
Feb. 21: NO CLASS
Feb. 28: Animal Ecology (5 page paper due)
Errol Morris, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (movie available on
itunes)
Jonathan Lear, from Radical Hope
Frost, "Dust of Snow" "The Oven Bird";
A.R. Ammons, “Corsons Inlet” “Glass” “Mechanism”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty” “The Windhover”
Wordsworth, “There was a Boy”, “Animal Tranquility and Decay
[three versions: 1798, 1800, 1815]”
Clip from Bill Viola, I do not know what it is that I am like
Clip from Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild
Clip from Le Quattro Volte (this astounding film about
reincarnation isn’t on itunes but I’ll lend you a copy if you
want to watch it (which, if this clip+description remotely
intrigues you, you should.)
Mar. 7: Animal Allegory
Moby Dick, chapter 70, chapter 135
Elizabeth Costello, pp. 216-230.
Blake, selected Songs: the transcribed texts of the songs are all
available here; the following are the songs to read with links to
the images which you’re expected to view: Innocence: “The
Lamb,” Experience: “The Fly,” “The Tyger” (MUST-SEE video);”
from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, read this “Memorable
Fancy" and all the "Proverbs of Hell"
Keats, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”
Robinson Jeffers, "Hurt Hawks", "Fire on the Hills", "Rock and
Hawk"
Yeats, “The Second Coming,” “Sailing to Byzantium”
Elizabeth Bishop “The Fish” "At the Fishhouses"
“Death Eater,” a painting by Comora Tolliver
Kiwi! video
Also there are two classic Italian movies (more or less) about St.
Francis that you may be interested in checking out, neither of
which are available on itunes: Passolini’s The Hawks and the
Sparrows, and Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis
Mar. 14: Animal Contagion
Steven Soderbergh, Contagion (movie available on itunes)
Jean Baudrillard “Prophylaxis and Virulence” (in Posthumanism
reader)
Bersani/Adam Phillips, “Shame on You”
Cary Wolfe, “Bring the Noise”/Michel Serres, from The Parasite
Moby Dick, chapter 71, chapter 94
Coleridge, “the Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, "Frost at Midnight"
Theodore Roethke, "The Minimal"
Whitman, “Full of life now”
George Eliot, from Middlemarch, Book II
Blake, “The Sick Rose:” image; text
Clip: murmuration
Optional: Leo Bersani, "The Sociability of Cruising"
Mar. 21: Unbecoming Human
Stanley Kubrick, 2001 (movie available on itunes)
Nietzsche, The Gay Science: Preface to the 2nd Ed. (all four parts),
Sections 1, 107-109, 125, 276, 337, 341
Jacques Derrida, "The Animal that therefore I am (more to
follow)"
Michael Fried, "The Death of Jacques Derrida"
Stevens, “The Snowman”
Emily Dickenson, “A bird came down the walk,” “A narrow Fellow
in the Grass,” “I heard a fly buzz,” "Of bronze and blaze"
Optional: Foucault, from The Order of Things (in Posthumanism
reader)
Mar. 28: Becoming Animal
Neill Blomkamp, District 9 (movie available on itunes)
Morrison, Song of Solomon
Adolf Portmann, from Animal Forms and Patterns
Richard Dawkins, from The Extended Phenotype
Kafka, Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk
Moby Dick, chapter 36
Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”
Deleuze/Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus: “Becoming-Animal”
(in Animals Reader)
Imamura 911 video
Clip from Black Swan
Clip from March of the Penguins
Clip from the ending of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants
Apr. 4: Animal Art
Pedro Almodovar, Talk to Her (movie available on itunes)
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Prologue 1-2; Sections 46
(“The Vision and the Enigma”), 57 (“The Convalescent”), 80 (“The
Sign”)
Gerald Stern, "Nietzsche"
Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
Brendan Galvin, “Ars Poetica: The Foxes”
Keats, “To Autumn”
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Basho, "Old Pond" (many versions)
William Carlos Williams, "Poem," “The Red Wheelbarrow”
(image) (video)