Literary Theme Courses Spring 2011
English II
Learning Outcomes
On completion of a theme course students should be able to
 give an account of the content of the literary texts studied in the course
 define the basic literary genres and describe some literary works from each genre
 identify and describe a number of literary works from different periods in the history of
literature in English
 demonstrate a critical understanding of basic concepts and methods of literary criticism
 analyse literary texts, applying such concepts and methods, orally and in writing
 formulate an independent interpretation of a literary text
 justify their own interpretations in a scholarly essay and in discussions.
Literature of Crisis
Irina Golubeva Rasmussen
Course Description
Shortly before her suicide in 1940, Virginia Woolf wrote in an autobiographical essay that one’s
real life has not one crisis but many, that we experience real life when we lose the plot. Is one
function of literature to handle what we find in reality as meaningless and shapeless? Could
literature be seen as an attempt to give a plot to real life, to be that ―lie that leads to the truth‖–
what Picasso famously claimed on behalf of all art? Literary works reverberate with crises—
individual and collective, national and international, personal and interpersonal. Crisis underlies
the themes of human struggle, of individuals, nations, and communities making and unmaking
themselves. Crisis also operates as an organizational, aesthetic device, which we find in a
narrative’s turning points, resolutions or anticlimactic crescendos and in the way the characters
change and develop. Crisis is also part of literary texts’ philosophical and historical frameworks,
as literary works assimilate in various ways, what Bakhtin called, ―real historical time‖ with its
complicated webs of disparate ideas and outlooks.
In this course, we will examine the ways literary works navigate the breaking points of history
and the individual psyche, to respond to real historical time. Our main focus will be on how the
formal, thematic, and ideological aspects of the works combine to make sense of historical
exigencies.
Required reading
Reading will include a selection of 1800-2000 pages from the following list.
Booth, A. & K.J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature . Shorter Tenth Edition. New York:
W. W. Norton, 2010.
Shakespeare, William The Merchant of Venice
Milton, John. Paradise Lost, Books 1-3 & 10
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders
Poe, Edgar Alan. ―The Purloined Letter‖
Schreiner, Olive. The Story of an African Farm
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood
DeLillo, Don. White Noise
Additional readings will be made available as PDF files via Mondo.
Films
The Merchant of Venice (2004), M. Radford, dir.
Moll Flanders (1996), P. Densham, dir. …OR Any recent filmatizations of one of Jane Austen’s
novels
Modern Times (1936), Charlie Chaplin, dir.
Death of a Salesman (1985), V. Schlöndorff, dir.
Memento (2000), C. Nolan, dir. OR Fight Club (1999), D. Fincher, dir.
The films are available for viewing in Lärostudion.
Love and its Discontents
Adnan Mahmutovic
Course description
As Jeffrey Eugenides says in the foreword to a love-story collection, ―Love stories depend on
disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one
cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.‖ In this course on love
and its discontents, we will take Eugenides at his word, and team around an analytical task of
dissecting love stories.
Some of the questions raised in and by the course will be: Can love be analyzed like a thing,
like an object, like a subject? How is love? What on earth is love? And most importantly, where in
the world is love? We will borrow guidelines from different theoreticians on love, and base each
seminar on one strong type of love and spin off from there to complicate and problematize the
suggested type. We will tackle aspects such as romantic love and altruism, ecstatic love and
solidarity love, and many more. Is love like a fax machine, useless if you are the only one that
has it?
Required Reading
Reading will include a selection of 1800-2000 pages from the following list.
Novels and short stories
Eugenides, Jeffrey. My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein
Morrison, Toni. Beloved
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea
Magendie, Kathryn. Tender Graces
Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient
The Bible ―Genesis 39‖, and The Qur’an chapter ―Joseph‖ (handout)
Films
Othello (any version).
Wright, Sussana. Jane Eyre (BBC version). 2006.
Coppola, Francis Ford. The Godfather. 1972.
Theoretical Works (optional, for your theoretical development)
Barthes, Roland (2002). Lover's Discourse: fragments. Transl. Richard Howard. London: Vintage.
Evans, Mary (2003). Love: An Unromantic Discussion. Cambridge, Polity.
Cowburn, John (2003). Love. Marquette University Press.
Blanchot, Maurice. ―The Community of Lovers‖ (handout).