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Female Modernists: Women Writers in Paris Between the Wars
English 144F Winter Quarter 2014 Mon & Wed 9-10:50 AM Bldg 160-319
Professor Terry Castle Margaret Jacks Hall 313 castle@stanford.edu
Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 k Wed 11-12 and 1-2
Course Description:
The course will focus on expatriate women writers—American and British—who
lived and wrote in Paris between the wars. Among them: Gertrude Stein and Alice B.
Toklas, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Djuna Barnes, Janet Flanner, Sylvia Townsend Warner,
Natalie Barney, and Radclyffe Hall. We will also read Colette's memoir of the post-First
World War period. A central theme will be Paris as a lure and inspiration for bohemian
female modernists, and the various alternative and emancipatory literary communities
they created.
Readings:
Video: Andrea Weiss, Paris Was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (New York Review Books Classics)
Gertrude Stein, Writings, 1903 to 1932, Vol. 1 (Library of America)
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Collected Poems, 1912-1944 [New Directions, Paperback]
Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, 1925-1939
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New Edition) [Dalkey Archive,Paperback] and Ladies Almanack:
Showing Their Signs and Their Tides; Their Moons and Their Changes; The Seasons As It Is
With Them; Their Eclipses and Equinoxes; ... etc.
Colette, The Pure and the Impure
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Note: This course fulfills the Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirement in
"Aesthetic and Interpretive Inquiry."
Requirements:
a) Attendance, Reading, and Class Participation:
Students will complete all readings for the course according to the schedule below.
100% attendance is required; casual absences are not acceptable. (Students absent for
any reason are expected to notify the instructor in advance.) More than one absence will
affect your grade adversely! All students should be prepared to participate fully in every
class discussion. Classroom participation will account for 25% of your final grade.
(***Note: no incompletes will be given in this course except in authentic cases of illness
or emergency***)
As a courtesy to me and to your fellow students: may I also ask 1) that you not arrive
late; and 2) that you turn off all laptops and cellphones, etc. at the beginning of class?
Thank you!
b) Written Assignments:
SHORT ASSIGNMENTS:
We will have a Course Blog, to which each student will be asked to contribute at least
one
well-honed paragraph of writing (i.e., a critical ‘gloss’) each week. You will post your
blog note by 8 pm on Sun or Tues night, depending, for the following day.) The format
for each entry will be this: the student will select and reproduce a short (or short-ish)
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passage from the assigned reading that he or she finds particularly striking or puzzling
or potentially illuminating. He or she will then ‘gloss’ it: that is, describe as succinctly and
compellingly as possible what it is saying and doing in the fictional context, why we
should find it interesting or important, what kinds of critical questions and challenges it
poses, and indeed, how one might generate from it some more extended critical
statement or essay topic. Issues highlighted can be thematic, stylistic, linguistic, formal,
reception-oriented, or indeed anything else one might find intriguing. All blog entries
will be shared with one’s classmates, and students will be asked to keep up with and
comment on one another’s entries. Please no more than 300-400 words! Blog work will
count as 50% of your final grade.
In class we will use these glosses as our discussion ‘prompts.’ Not only will they help us
identify key themes and topics in the works under discussion, we’ll consider each gloss
itself as a piece of concise critical rhetoric to be analyzed. How well has the author
conveyed the passages’s significance? What’s the author’s goal here and how
successfully does he or she get it across?
LONGER PAPER:
Students will write one longer more formal paper, 7-8 pp. in length, due date to be
announced. (It will be due near the end of the quarter.) It will constitute the remaining
25% of your final grade.
[N.B. My policy on late papers: for every day your essay is late, the final grade will be reduced by
a half-step(i.e., B to B-). Policy kicks in immediately, so papers will be due IN CLASS. If essays
come in later that sameday, the grade will automatically be reduced a half-step.]
Reading Schedule
WEEK 1
MON JAN 6
WED JAN 8
WEEK 2
MON JAN 13
thirds)
WED JAN 15
WEEK 3
MON JAN 20
WED JAN 22
Introduction, Paris Was a Woman
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (first third)
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (first two(1st blog note—on Townsend Warner--due by 8 pm Tuesday night)
Warner, Summer Will Show (entire)
No Class—Martin Luther King Day
(2st blog note—on Stein, Autobiography--due by 8 pm Tuesday night)
Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (first two-thirds)
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WEEK 4
MON JAN 27
plus
Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (entire),
“Valentines” to Picasso, Sherwood Anderson, et al., and Tender
Buttons
WED JAN 29
WEEK 5
MON FEB 3
WED
FEB 5
WEEK 6
MON FEB 10
No Class—Professor Castle away
Djuna Barnes, Ladies Almanack (entire) and Nightwood (first half)
(3rd blog note—on Barnes--due by 8 pm Tuesday night)
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (entire)
WED FEB 12
Colette, The Pure and the Impure (first two-thirds)
4th blog note—on Colette—due by 8 pm Tuesday night)
Colette, The Pure and the Impure (entire)
WEEK 7
MON FEB 17
WED FEB 19
No Class—Presidents’ Day
H.D., selected poetry (TBA)
WED FEB 26
5th blog note—on short story author of your choice—due by 8 pm Sunday
Short stories by Radclyffe Hall, Katherine Mansfield, Mary Butts,
and Djuna Barnes (handout)
Short stories (cont.)
WEEK 9
MON MAR 3
WED MAR 5
6th blog note—on Flanner—due by 8 pm Sunday
Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday (entire)
Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday
WEEK 8
MON FEB 2
WEEK 10 (Dead Week)
MON MAR 10
No class—Professor Castle away
WED MAR 12
Individual meetings on papers
WEEK 11 (Finals week)
MON MAR 17
,Final Class Paper Due! (7-8 pp., due by 3 pm)
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Josephine Baker, ca. 1925
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Learning Outcomes:
This course fulfills the Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirement in "Aesthetic and
Interpretive Inquiry." With the requisite effort, students may expect to improve and
extend their skills in several broad areas. In particular students should be better able to
o appreciate the nature of human responses to meaningful cultural objects, and
distinguish among the different methods to interpret those responses;
o acquire and assess techniques of interpretation (including close reading techniques),
criticism, and analysis of cultural texts, artifacts, and practices;
o demonstrate facility with the analysis of arguments for and against different theories
and interpretations;
o recognize the frameworks for thought and action implicit in human practices, and
analyze the different assumptions underpinning those frameworks;
o understand diverse artistic, literary, and theoretical traditions, their characteristic forms
of production, and/or their development across historical time;
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o understand how expressive works articulate responses to fundamental human
problems and convey important values.