PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2015-16 academic year
– precise seminar content may change from year to year.
TERM 1
Dr. Christina Britzolakis and Dr. Diarmuid Costello
Week 1
NB: THERE IS NO CLASS ON MONDAY OF WEEK 1.
Wednesday:
General introduction to Textual Studies and to Benjamin/Baudelaire weeks (CB/DC).
Week 2
Monday: Benjamin 1 (DC)
Reading
‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire:’ prospectus
Themes and Topics:
Literary Marketplace/Feuilleton
Commodity/Department Store
Ragpicker/Le Soleil/Fencer-poet analogies
Flaneur/Crowds/E.A. Poe on Man of the Crowd
Interior/Exterior/Gaslight/The Arcade
The bourgeois interior
Modernity/Antiquity
Suicide/heroism
Lesbianism
Historical materialism
Possible presentations topics
1.
2.
3.
4.
The Flaneur/the Arcades
City/Crowd/Poe
Analogies of/for the Poet
Art/Commodity/Marketplace
Wednesday: Baudelaire 1 (CB)
Reading
‘The Painter of Modern Life’
‘To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl’
Themes and Topics
Art/Life
Past/Present
Beauty/Modernity
Guys/Baudelaire
Flâneur / man of the crowd
Time/Eternity
Femininity/Prostitution/Cosmetics
Tradition/Novelty
Lyric/Vignette
Week 3
Monday: Baudelaire 2 (CB)
Reading
The Albatross’ p.16
‘Elevation’, p.17
‘Correspondences’ p.19
‘The Beacons’, p.21
‘The Sick Muse’ p.25
‘The Venal Muse’p.27
‘The Ideal’ p.39
‘The Jewels’ p.47
‘Exotic Perfume’ p.49
‘Head of Hair’ p.51
‘I love you as I love’ p.53
‘ You’d entertain the universe’ p.53
‘Sed non satiata’ p.55
‘The way her silky garments’ p.55
‘The Dancing Serpent’ p.57
‘A Carcass’ p.59
‘De profundis clamavi’ p.63
‘Spleen’ 1-4 pp.145-151
‘Alchemy of Suffering’ p.153
‘Invitation to the Voyage’ p.109
Themes and Topics
Spleen/ Ideal
Sexuality / Drugs / Art
Ennui / Transcendence
Suffering /Alchemy
Narrative/Anti-narrative
Memory/ Experience
Wednesday: Benjamin 2 (DC)
Reading
‘Paris, the Capital of the 19th Century:’ exposé AND ‘Central Park’
Themes and Topics (exposé):
The Arcades,
Daguerre/Panoramas
World Exhibitions
The Interior
Baudelaire/Streets of Paris
Barricades
Possible presentation Topics (exposé):
1. Daguerre/panorama/photography
2. Baudelaire’s Paris
Themes and Topics (Central Park):
Fragment/Allegory
Dialectical Image
Modernity
Correspondance
Flaneur
Aura/halo
Jugendstil/Technology
Marketplace/Prostitute/Commodity
Possible presentation Topics (Central Park):
1. Aura/halo
2. Jugendstil/Technology
Week 4
Monday: Baudelaire 3 (CB)
Reading:
‘Landscape’ p. 167
‘The Sun’ p.169
‘To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl’, p.169
‘Parisian Dream’
‘To a Woman Passing By’ 189
‘Dusk’ 193
‘Gaming’ 195
Themes and Topics:
City/ Room
Exterior/ Interior
Past/Present
Dreams/Waking
Old Paris/New Paris
Eros/Visuality/Urban Space
Wednesday Benjamin 3 (DC)
Reading
‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire’
Themes and Topics:
Lyric Poetry
Proust/involuntary memory
Substantive experience: Erfahrung vs Erlebnis
Freud/consciousness/shock/memory trace
City/Crowd/Traffic/Shock/
Factory Time/Gambling
Correspondance/memoire involuntaire
Aura/involuntary memory/intersubjectivity/cultic distance
Possible Presentation Topics:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Proust/involuntary memory
Freud/Shock
City/Crowd/Worker/Gambler
Film as Ballistic Training
Week 5
NB ESSAY: we will ask you to state your initial ideas and text(s) for your essay this week.
Please come prepared.
Monday: Baudelaire 4 (CB)
Reading
The Seven Old Men’
‘The Swan’
Themes and Topics:
Shock/Defence
Passive/Active
Old Paris/New Paris
History/Myth
Wednesday: Benjamin (DC)
Reading
‘A Little History of Photography’
+ ‘News about Flowers’
+ ‘Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography’ (extract, pp. 302-307)*
*from Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and other
Writings on Media. (extract to be made available.)
Themes and Topics:
Technical and Social Vanguards
Painting/Photography/Art
Magic/Technology
The human face/portraiture
Aura/intersubjectivity
Optical Unconscious
Snapshot/Time Exposure
Technological determinism/Artistic Agency
Atget/Paris and Sander/Weimar Republic
Photography as Science vs. Art
Possible presentation Topics:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Painting/Photography
Magic/Technology
Aura/Face/Portrait
Determinism and Agency
Atget and/or Sander
Week 6
NB. READING WEEK (no seminars)
Week 7
NB ESSAY PLANS DUE:
ALL STUDENTS TO BRING TWO copies of a 2-3 page plan to Monday’s class
Monday: Baudelaire 5 (CB)
Reading
‘The Ragman’s Wine’ p.217
‘The Fountain of Blood’ p.249
‘Litanies of Satan’ p.269
‘Voyaging’ p.283
Themes/Topics
Labour/Leisure
Revolt/ Order
Travel/the Exotic
Value/Commodity
Wednesday: Benjamin (DC)
Reading
‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility’
Themes and Topics:
Art and Politics
Art/Magic/Ritual/Cult Value
Aura/Authenticity/Authority/Tradition
Space and Time
Human countenance
Uniqueness/Distance/Mass Perception
Reproducibility and Exhibition Value
Film and Reproducibility
Film vs Stage/Surgeon vs Magician
Mass Art/Training/Shock/City/Habit
Distraction vs Contemplation
Optical Unconscious
Possible Presentation Topics:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Aura: Space/Time/Tradition
Cult Value vs Exhibition Value
City and Mass Perception
Film/Training/Shock
Weeks 8-10
Tutorials: times tbc.
TERM 2
Dr. Eileen John
Week 1
Monday
Preliminary discussion of the Phaedrus (focus on 227a1, 228a5-c5, 229c5-230a8):
looking forward and back; knowing one’s audience and oneself; myth, truth and
explanation
Wednesday
Phaedrus: in praise of the non-lover, shameful speech, speech and
being oneself

Presentation on Lysias’ speech and the interlude between the first two speeches
(230e-234c, 234c-237b)

Groupwork on Socrates’ first speech and his recantation (237b-241d,
241d-243e)
Week 2
Monday Phaedrus: in praise of the lover, the need for poetic
speech, reason and
madness


Wednesday
Presentation on the first part of Socrates’ second speech, kinds of
madness and the self-moving soul, the fable of the horses and charioteer
(243e-246a, 246a-250c)
Groupwork on the final part of Socrates’ second speech, beauty and
erotic love (250c-257b)
Phaedrus: taking stock; love, eternity, and individuality; myth,
poetry and philosophy


Week 3
Presentation on Nussbaum’s ‘“This story isn’t true”: madness, reason and
recantation in the Phaedrus’, in The Fragility of Goodness
Group discussion of the relations between the speeches, and of values
and problems implicit in the various genres and forms of discourse
Monday
Wednesday
Phaedrus: rhetoric and truth, writing and speech, memory and
understanding

Groupwork on rhetoric as a science, on the analysis of the speeches, and
collection and division (259e-271c)

Presentation on the myth of Thamus and Theuth (274b-278d)
Phaedrus: concluding session, on love and rhetoric, knowing one’s own and others’
souls


Presentation on Griswold Ch. 6, ‘Dialogue and Writing’
Groupwork on the dialogue as a whole—is it ‘put together like a living creature’
(264c)?
Recommended reading: Jacques Derrida, ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’
Bibliography
Baudelaire and Benjamin, Term 1
Primary
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (dual language edition translated by James McGowan)
Oxford: OUP World Classics, 2008.
P.E. Charvet (ed.), Baudelaire Selected Writings on Art and Literature, London: Penguin Classics
2006)
Walter Benjamin, The Painter of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, ed. Michael W.
Jennings, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard/Belknap Press, 2006.
Walter Benjamin ‘A Little History of Photography’ and ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical
Reproducibility’, both in Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility
and other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings et al, Harvard/Belknap Press, 2008.
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin), Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard/Belknap Press, 2008
‘Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on the Essay, ‘Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century’ in
Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 3 (1935-1938) ed. Michael W. Jennings et al, Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard/Belknap Press, 1999.
‘Presentation III: Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin’ (an exchange on the ‘Work of Art in the
Age of its Technical Reproducibility’) in Adorno et al, Aesthetics and Politics, London: Verso, 1980.
Secondary – Baudelaire
Adcock, Michael. ‘Remaking Urban Space: Baron Haussmann and the Rebuilding of Paris, 18511870’. https://www.unimelb.edu.au/culturalcollections/research/.../adcock.pdf
Baudelaire, Charles. The Complete Verse Vol.2. The Poems in Prose, ed. Francis Scarfe. London:
Anvil Press, 1986. See especially ‘A Lost Halo’, ‘The Eyes of the Poor’ and ‘Crowds’.
-------------------Intimate Journals. Trans. Christopher Isherwood. London: Black Spring Press, 1989.
Berman, Marshall. ‘Baudelaire: Modernism in the Streets’. In All That is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity. London: Verso, 1983.
Bersani, Leo. Baudelaire and Freud. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977.
Blood, Susan. Baudelaire and the Aesthetics of Bad Faith. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997.
Calasso, Roberto. La folie Baudelaire. Trans. Alastair McEwen. London: Allen Lane, 2012.
Chesters, Graham. Baudelaire and the Poetics of Craft. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988.
Clark, T.J. The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-51. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press, 1999.
Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. Paris as Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-century City. 1997.
Gay, Peter. Modernism, the Lure of Heresy: from Baudelaire to Beckett and beyond. New York:
Norton, 2007.
Lawler, James R. Poetry and Moral Dialectic: Baudelaire’s Secret Architecture. Madison, N.J.:
Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1997.
Lloyd, Rosemary. Charles Baudelaire. Critical Lives. London: Reaktion, 2008.
----------. The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005.
Marder, Elissa. Dead Time: Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity (Baudelaire and Flaubert).
Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001.
Prendergast, Christopher. Paris and the 19th Century. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Baudelaire. Trans. M. Turnell. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964.
Tester, Keith (ed). The Flâneur. London: Routledge, 1994.
Thompson, William J. (ed). Understanding Les fleurs du mal: Critical Readings. Nashville:
Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1997.
Ward, Nicole Jouve. Baudelaire: A Fire to Conquer Darkness. London: Macmillan, 1980.
Ward, Patricia A (ed). Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity. Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press,
2001.
Secondary - Benjamin
Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997; extracts tbc, incl. ‘Paralipomena’ pp. 273-5.
Andrew Benjamin ‘Tradition and Experience: Walter Benjamin’s On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,’ in
Andrew Benjamin, Art, Mimesis and the Avant Garde, London: Routledge, 1991.
Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (eds.) Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and
Experience, London: Routledge, 1994.
Andrew Benjamin (ed.) Walter Benjamin and Art, London: Continuum, 2005.
Susan Buck-Morss, “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered.”
October 62 (1992): pp. 3-41.
Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press, 1991.
Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the
Frankfurt Institute. New York: The Free Press, 1977, chapters 9-10 ‘The Adorno-Benjamin Debate,
Parts I and II’
Peter Buse, Bertrand Taithe, Scott McCracken, Benjamin’s Arcades: An Unguided Tour, Manchester:
University of Manchester Press, 2013.
Howard Caygill, Walter Benjamin: the Colour of Experience, London: Routledge, 1998.
Nöel Carroll, ‘Philosophical Celebrations of Mass Art: The Minority Tradition’ A Philosophy of Mass
Art, Oxford: Clarendon, 1998; chapter 2, pp. 110-145.
Diarmuid Costello, ‘Aura, Face, Photography: Re-Reading Benjamin Today, Andrew Benjamin (ed.)
Walter Benjamin and Art, London: Continuum, 2005; pp. 164-184.
Margaret Cohen, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Rodolphe Gasché, “Objective Diversions: On Some Kantian Themes in Benjamin’s The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and
Experience. Ed. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne. London: Routledge, 1994; pp. 183-204.
Beatrice Hansen (ed.) Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, London: Continuum, 2006.
Miriam Bratu Hansen, ‘Room-For-Play: Benjamin’s Gamble with Cinema’ October 109 (Summer
2004) pp. 3-45
Miriam Bratu Hansen, ‘Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street’, Critical Inquiry 25 (Winter
1999), pp. 306-343.
Miriam Bratu Hansen, Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and Theodor
Adorno, Berkeley: Univerity of California Press, 2012 (part II)
Robert Kaufman, ‘Aura, Still’, October 99 (Winter 2002) pp. 45-80.
Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, London: Reaktion Books, 2007.
John McCole, Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition, Ithica: Cornell University Press,
1993.
Rainer Rochlitz, The Disenchantment of Art: the Philosophy of Walter Benjamin, New York: Guilford
Press, 1996
Joel Snyder ‘Benjamin on Reproducibility and Aura: A Reading of the ‘The Work of Art in the Age of
its Technical Reproducibility’ in Gary Smith (ed.) Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, Chicago:
Chicago Univerity Press 1989.
Gary Smith (ed.) Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, Chicago: Chicago Univerity Press 1989.
Richard Wolin, ‘Experience and Materialism in Benjamin’s Passengenwerk’ in Gary Smith (ed.)
Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, Chicago 1989.