DURHAM UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
STUDIES
SPECIAL TOPIC
READING LIST
BOOKLET
2012/2013
CONTENTS
Literature under Charles 1 and Cromwell
ENGL 2061
2
Early Modern America
ENGL 2661
6
Fictions of Terrorism
ENGL 2581
10
Jewish-American Fiction
ENGL 2461
23
John Milton (1608-74)
ENGL 2611
26
Keats & Shelley
ENGL 2331
29
The Literature of Emotion, 1740-1814
ENGL 2151
34
Literature of the Second World War
ENGL 2651
36
Modern Literature and the British Secret State
ENGL 2621
41
Modern Poetry
ENGL 2191
46
Poetry and Poetics
ENGL 2641
48
Shakespeare on Film
ENGL 2281
49
Toni Morrison
ENGL 2521
52
US Cold War Literature and Culture
ENGL 2631
58
Germanic Myth and Legend
ENGL 2371
65
Literature in England, 1066-1348: From Conquest to Plague
ENGL 2531
69
Landscape and ‘the Condition-of-England’
ENGL 2551
73
1
Literature
under
Charles I and Cromwell
Reading List
ENGL 2601
Module convenor: Dr Barbara Ravelhofer
This course will be taught in ten sessions. We will establish the full programme based on
your previous knowledge of texts of the period and your preferences at the first meeting.
You are expected to bring a list of texts you have already read, and think about texts you
would like to read, to the first meeting.
In preparation of this course, you might read these works over the summer
vacation:
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Philip Massinger, The Roman Actor
James Shirley, The Lady of Pleasure
Ben Jonson, ‘To the Immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison’ (‘Cary-Morison
Ode’; in the poetry anthologies by Cummings and Norbrook listed below)
John Ford, The Broken Heart
have a look at Charles I (John Gauden), Eikon Basilike – download via EEBO
Below you will find a list of individual authors you might encounter on this course and some
recommended basic secondary reading on the subject. A full reading list will be made available
once we have established the full programme in Michaelmas Term 2012.
General Period Reading, Introductions, and Reference Works:
 Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders, eds, The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture
and Politics in the Caroline Era (Manchester UP, 2006)
 Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: U of California P, 1981)
 Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis: 1632-1642 (CUP, 1984). Important standard work.
 Peter Davidson, The Universal Baroque (MUP, 2007)
 Barbara Donagan, War in England, 1642-1649 (OUP, 2008). Drawing extensively on
primary sources, this book illuminates the human cost of war and its effect on society.
 R.C. Evans and E.J. Sterling, eds, The Seventeenth Century Literature Handbook
(London: Continuum, 2009)
 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642, 3rd edn (CUP, 1992)
 Paul Hammond, The Strangeness of Tragedy (OUP, 2009). Covering classical to neoclassical literature, including Sophocles, Seneca, Shakespeare and Racine.
 Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700 (OUP,
1994)
 Richard Leacroft, The Development of the English Playhouse (London: Methuen, 2nd
edn 1988) Excellent selection of floor plans and illustrations of designs and machinery.
 P. McCullough, H. Adlington et al., eds, The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern
Sermon (OUP, 2011)
 Leah Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of
Old Holiday Pastimes (U of Chicago P, 1986)
2
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Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975)
Graham Parry, The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of
English Literature, 1603-1700 (London: Longman, 1989). A very good starting point.
Julie Sanders, Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome
(Plymouth: Northcote, 1999). Excellent starting point for drama.
James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition
(OUP, 2010)
Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992)
Anthologies:
 Alastair Fowler, ed., The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse (OUP,
1991/2008)
 Germaine Greer, ed., Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century
Women’s Verse (London: Virago, 1988)
 Helen C. White et al., ed., Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose (New York:
Macmillan, 2nd edn, 1971-)
 David Norbrook and Henry Woudhuysen, eds, The Penguin Book of Renaissance
Verse, 1509-1659 (London: Penguin, 1992). Exemplary, lucid introduction –
recommended to anyone interested in studying Caroline poetry in greater depth.
 Robert Cummings, ed., Seventeenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
 David Lindley, ed., Court Masques (Oxford: OUP, 1995)
Individual Authors:
Thomas Carew
The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. R. Dunlap (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1949)
Secondary:
C. J. Summers and T.-L. Pebworth, Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons
of Ben (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1982)
L. E. Semler, The English Mannerist Poets and the Visual Arts (Madison: Farleigh
Dickinson UP, 1998). Also covers Marvell, Lovelace, Herrick, Donne.
Charles I [John Gauden]
Eikon Basilike: The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings, with
Selections from Eikonoklastes, ed. Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson (Peterborough, Ont:
Broadview, 2006)
Eikon Basilike: The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings, ed.
Philip A. Knachel (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1966)
Secondary:
Susan Howe, A Bibliography of The King’s Book or, Eikon Basilike (Providence, RI:
Paradigm P, 1989)
Richard Crashaw
The Poems, English, Latin and Greek, ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon P, 2nd edn,
1957)
John Cosin, A Collection of Private Devotions, ed. P. G. Stanwood (Oxford: Clarendon P,
1967)
Secondary:
Peter Davidson, The Universal Baroque (Manchester UP, 2007)
John R. Roberts, New Perspectives on the Life and Art of Richard Crashaw (Columbia: U
of Missouri P, 1990)
3
C. J. Summers and T.-L. Pebworth, ‘Bright Shootes of Everlastingnesse’: The
Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1987)
John Ford
John Ford, Three Plays: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Broken Heart, Perkin Warbeck, ed.
Keith Sturgess (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970)
Selected Plays: The Broken Heart, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Perkin Warbeck, ed. Colin
Gibson (Cambridge: CUP, 1986)
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, ed. Brian Morris (London: Black, 1990)
The Lover’s Melancholy, The Broken Heart, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Perkin Warbeck, ed.
Marion Lomax (Oxford: OUP, 1998)
Love’s Sacrifice, ed. AT Moore (Manchester UP, 2008)
Robert Herrick
Selected Poems, ed. David Jesson-Dibley (Manchester: Carcanet, 1980)
Poems, ed. L.C. Martin (London: OUP, 1965)
Complete Poetry, ed. J. Max Patrick (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1963)
Secondary:
Ruth Connolly and Tom Cain, eds, ‘Lords of Wine and Oile’: Community and Conviviality in
the Poetry of Robert Herrick (OUP, 2011)
Stephen Romer, Robert Herrick (London: Faber, 2010)
Syrithe Pugh, Herrick, Fanshawe and the Politics of Intertextuality: Classical Literature and
Seventeenth-Century Royalism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)
Ann Baynes Coiro, Robert Herrick’s Hesperides and the Epigram Book Tradition
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988)
Thomas Heywood
A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays, ed. Martin Wiggins (OUP,
2008)
David M. Bergeron, ed., Thomas Heywood’s Pageants (New York: Garland, 1986)
Secondary:
Joseph Courtland, A Cultural Studies Approach to Two Exotic Citizen Romances by
Thomas Heywood (New York: Peter Lang, 2001)
Kathleen McLuskie, Dekker and Heywood: Professional Dramatists (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1994)
Richard Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599-1639 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)
Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson, ed. C.H. Herford, P. and E. Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1925-52)
Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, ed. H. Maclean (NY:
Norton, 1974)
Secondary:
A.D. Cousins, Alison V Scott, eds, Ben Jonson and the Politics of Genre (CUP, 2009)
R.C. Evans, Ben Jonson and the Poetics of Patronage (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London:
AUP, 1989)
Sara J van den Berg, The Action of Ben Jonson’s Poetry (Newark: U of Delaware P, 1987)
Claude J Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds, Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson
and the Sons of Ben (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P; London: Feffer and Simons, 1982)
Richard S Peterson, Imitation and Praise in the Poems of Ben Jonson (New Haven: Yale
UP, 1981)
Judith Kegan Gardiner, Craftsmanship in Context: The Development of Ben Jonson’s
Poetry (The Hague: Mouton, 1975)
4
William Laud
The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, ed. William Scott and
James Bliss, 7 vols (Oxford: Henry Parker, 1847-60)
Secondary:
Graham Parry, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006). With specifics on bishop Cosin and Durham Cathedral.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 (1962; London: Phoenix, 2000).
Anthony Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The
Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester: MUP, 2007)
Andrew Marvell
The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. Nigel Smith (London: Longman, 2003)
Andrew Marvell: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Robert Wilcher (London: Methuen, 1986)
Secondary:
Nigel Smith, Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon (New Haven: Yale UP, 2010)
Annabel Patterson, Marvell: The Writer in Public Life (Harlow: Longman, 2000)
Warren Chernaik and Martin Dzelzainis, eds, Marvell and Liberty (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1999)
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger, Believe as You List (1631), in The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger,
5 vols, ed. Philip Edwards and others (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), vol. 3.
The Renegado, ed. Michael Neill (London: Arden, 2010).
The Roman Actor, ed. Martin White (MUP, 2007).
The Selected Plays of Philip Massinger, ed. Colin Gibson (Cambridge: CUP, 1978).
Features The Duke of Milan; The Roman Actor; A New Way to Pay Old Debts; The City
Madam.
The Roman Actor, Royal Shakespeare Company acting edn (London: Nick Hern, 2002)
Secondary:
Massinger: The Critical Heritage, ed. Martin Garrett (London: Routledge, 1981)
Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, ed. Douglas Howard (Cambridge, 1985), 139-70
Joanne Rochester, Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2010)
James Shirley
The Cardinal, ed. EM Yearling, Revels plays (Manchester UP, 1986)
The Lady of Pleasure, ed. Ronald Huebert, Revels plays (Manchester UP, 1986)
The Bird in a Cage, in Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance, ed.
H. Chalmers, J. Sanders, S. Tomlinson (Manchester UP, 2006)
journals:
browse: Restoration and 18th-Century Theatre Research
SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
Modern Philology: A Journal Devoted to Research in Medieval and Modern Literature
ELH (English Literary History)
ELR (English Literary Renaissance)
RQ (Renaissance Quarterly)
web sites:
 LION: Literature Online. Can be accessed via Library (go to: databases). Provides
full texts of most literary works on this reading list.
 EEBO: Early English Books Online. Can be accessed via Library (go to:
databases). Provides facsimile texts of seventeenth-century works in pdf format.
Most texts of this reading list are available on EEBO.
5
Early Modern America Module Reading List [ENGL 2661]
Module Convenor: Dr Richard Sugg
* Asterisk indicates books which are well worth buying. Ones thus marked are all available
cheaply.
Primary
Unless otherwise indicated, early-modern texts are available (usually in digitised form) on
Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
You should also find Literature Online (LION) valuable for a range of texts, especially
nineteenth century and after.
As your interests develop, you may also want to make use of newspaper databases such
as Nineteenth Century newspapers; Times Online; New York Times online; and Gale
Newsvault. Most scholars now agree that these resources have revolutionised the
possibilities of primary research.
For excellent general introductions to authors and other relevant historical figures, please
use the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) and American National
Biography. All these are available under library databases. Preliminary reading and use of
these should be undertaken as soon as possible. Similarly, please do make active use of
Jstor, MLA, and hard copy and electronic journal searches/articles in order to shape and
follow your particular interests in the subject.
This list is suggestive, rather than exhaustive. It is probably best to start with some good
secondary overviews, and then move to some of the primary texts on EEBO and other
databases. This subject is a very large and rich one, and you will be encouraged to
develop your own interests among the many possible angles available.
Please do get in touch with any questions as soon as you wish. I will be contactable on email more or less continuously across the vacation period.
PRIMARY
(I have standardised spelling here; when searching on EEBO please use 'variant spellings' or just
begin searching via authors' names).
Jean de Lery: History of a voyage to the land of Brazil, otherwise called America trans. Janet
Whatley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)
Bartolomé de las Casas, The Spanish Colony (1583)
- The Tears of the Indians (1656).
These are integral to Protestant notions of 'The Black Legend'. There are many other versions under
las Casas' name on EEBO.
Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588)
José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590)
Walter Ralegh, The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (1596)
or: The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, ed. Neil L.
Whitehead (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).
John Smith (on Pocahontas esp)
- A True Relation (1608)
- A Map of Virginia (1612)
- The General History of Virginia (1624)
6
John Donne: Complete English Poems, ed. AJ Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990)*
William Strachey, The History of Travel into Virginia (1612), ed. R.H. Major (London: Hakluyt
Society, 1849)
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford: World's Classics, 1994)*
John Donne, sermon: 'To the Honourable, the Virginia Company' in: Four Sermons Upon Special
Occasions (1625), or: Five Sermons upon Special Occasions (1626)
William Symonds, Virginia. A Sermon Preached … 25 April 1609 (1609)
Anthony Knivet, 'Anthony Knivet, his coming to the R de Janeiro...' in Purchas his Pilgrims (1625)
Thomas Hutchinson, A History of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 2 vols (1764)
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826)
John Tanner, The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (1830;
Penguin, 1994)*
Secondary
General
Louis B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies, 1607-1763 (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1957)
D.B.Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620 (London: G. Allen & Unwin
Ltd, 1974)
Hugh Honor, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to
the Present Time (Allen Lane, 1975)
Discovering the New World: based on the works of Theodore de Bry, ed. Michael
Alexander (London: London Editions, 1976)
First Images of America: the Impact of the New World on the Old, ed. Fredi Chiapelli
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)
The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America 14801650 ed. K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny and P. E. H. Hair (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1979)
Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675 (New York :
Norton, 1979)
Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest: a Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry's
Great Voyages, trans. Basia Miller Gulati (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)
Puritans among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676-1724 ed. Alden Vaughan
and Edward W. Clark. (Harvard University Press, 1981) (e-book)
The Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado (1967; repr. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996)
7
The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume 1, North America, ed. Bruce
G Trigger, Wilcomb E Washburn, 3 vols (CUP, 1996-99)
Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Gary L Ebersole, Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity
(Univ Press of Virginia, 1995)
The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) (also as electronic resource).
Karen Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (London: Harvard University Press, 2007)
Ken Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World: the Legal
Foundations of Empire, 1576-1640 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Religion and Evangelism
Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indian: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World
(London: Hollis & Carter, 1959)
W.S. Maltby, The Black Legend in England: The Development of Anti-Spanish Sentiment, 15581660 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1971)
Claire Jowitt, ‘Radical Identities? Native Americans, Jews and the English Commonwealth’, The
Seventeenth Century, 10 (1995), 101-19.
Walter S. H. Lim, The Arts of Empire: The Poetics of Colonialism From Ralegh to Milton (London:
Associated University Press, 1998)
Tom Cain, ‘John Donne and the Ideology of Colonization’, English Literary Renaissance,
31 (2001), 440-76.
Cannibalism
Hermann Helmuth, 'Cannibalism in Paleoanthropology and Ethnology', in Man and
Aggression, ed. Ashley Montagu, (New York, 1973), 229-254
Philip L Boucher, Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492-1763
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992)
Ellen B. Basso, The Last Cannibals: a South American Oral History (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1995)
Frank Lestringant, Cannibals : the discovery and representation of the cannibal from
Columbus to Jules Verne, trans. Rosemary Morris (Cambridge : Polity Press, 1997)
Eating their words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity ed. Kristen Guest
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001)
Beth L Conklin, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2001)
Daniel Korn, Mark Radice & Charlie Hawes, Cannibal: the History of the People-Eaters
(London: Channel 4 Books, 2002).
8
Merrall Llewelyn Price, Consuming Passions: the Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early
Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2003)
Hans Staden's True History : an Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil, ed. Neil L.
Whitehead ; trans. Michael Harbsmeiern (Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 2008).
Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires: the History of Corpse Medicine from
the Renaissance to the Victorians (London Routledge, 2011)
Culture and Anthropology
L.P. Kellogg, 'Pocahontas and Jamestown', The Wisconsin Magazine of History, 25.1
(1941): 38-42
Stanley Johnson, ‘John Donne and the Virginia Company’, English Literary History, 14 (1947),
127-38
Philip Young, 'The Mother of Us All: Pocahontas Reconsidered', The Kenyon Review, 24.3
(1962): 391-415
Philip L Barbour, Pocahontas and her World: a Chronicle of America's First Settlement (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1970)
Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492- 1797 (London:
Methuen, 1986
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford,
1991)
Louis Montrose, ‘The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery’, Representations, 33
(1991), 1-41.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana, 1993)
New World Encounters, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1993)
Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: the Evolution of an American Narrative (CUP, 1994)
Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (London: Athlone Press,
1995)
Karen Robertson, 'Pocahontas at the Masque', Signs, 21.3 (1996): 551-583
Anne Abrams, The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origin (Boulder,
Colorado:Westview, 1999)
Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New
York : W.W. Norton, 2008)
9
Fictions
of terrorism
Tutor: Dr S. Thomas
samuel.thomas@durham.ac.uk
10
FICTIONS OF TERRORISM [ENGL 2581]
Module Convenor: Dr Samuel Thomas
This module explores the relationship between various types of fiction and various types
of terrorism. In doing so, the module is both wide-ranging and strategically focused.
Organised around a series of historical/conceptual ‘snapshots’, it begins with dynamite
violence at the dawn of the twentieth century and moves forward to encompass the massmedia spectacles and neo-colonial wars of the present day. Within this framework, the
module touches down in a range of geopolitical settings and contexts — from Sheffield to
Nablus, New York to Khartoum. The structure of the module is therefore designed to
actively dramatise the complex network of global relations that defines the reality and
representation of terror. If, as Salman Rushdie asserts, “everywhere is now a part of
everywhere else” — if “our lives, our stories” flow “into one another’s” (with potentially
explosive results) — then the texts and topics we will study together reflect this.
Special attention will be paid to the following questions: What is the precise nature of the
relationship between fiction and terrorism? And in what ways might the line between
reality and representation become blurred? How has our understanding of terrorism
been shaped, influenced or subverted by textual production? Is it legitimate to speak of an
‘aesthetics’ of terrorism? And can a terrorist ever be described as a kind of ‘author’ or
‘interpreter’ of culture? Why do fantasies of terroristic destruction have such a hold on
the creative imagination? Does the critical analysis of fiction take us closer to (or indeed
further away from) a stable definition of what terrorism actually is? The module will also
address ongoing debates about multiculturalism, globalization, ‘disaster capitalism’, civil
liberties, trauma and so on. Students will give short seminar presentations and the
module will be examined by two extended essays.
PRIMARY READING
▪ Texts marked with an asterisk * will be provided as photocopies.
▪ A note on purchasing texts: Whilst nearly all of the texts here are readily available in
shops, bear in mind that discounted and second-hand copies can be found through online
sellers — try amazon.co.uk, alibris.co.uk, abebooks.co.uk etc. Shop around, in other words,
and you’ll most likely save yourself some money.
▪ A note on films: Group screenings will be set up when appropriate. However, given the
difficulties in finding a time slot to suit everyone, DVDs of all the films included here will be
made available through the department and the main library (online rental is another option).
Please be considerate of the needs of your fellow course-mates when borrowing films and try,
where possible, to watch films with others. If you decide to write on a particular film, it might
be advisable to purchase a copy for yourself.
▪ “We half-read a lot of theory, which we fully understood” (Anonymous member of the
Baader-Meinhof Gang). A note on theory: You should bear in mind that this module will,
necessarily, involve engaging with a range of theoretical material. As such, it should
complement and/or extend the work you’ve done (or are doing) on ‘The Theory & Practice of
Literary Criticism’. The ‘narrative’ of the course is dependent on certain theoretical concepts
and you will be expected to respond to these in class discussions and in your written work. I
should stress, however, that the course adheres to no fixed theoretical approach (although the
lessons and legacies of Marxism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis and trauma studies will
figure prominently). You should see this as an open-ended opportunity to explore and critique
a variety of contested theoretical positions on your own terms.
11
▪ And finally: Whilst there is nothing here of hefty-to-whopping length, I would strongly
recommend making a start on your reading for this course before the Michaelmas term to
ensure that you don’t fall behind as deadlines and other pressures take their toll. In weeks
when there is more than one text on the reading list, I will indicate the primary focus of the
seminar in advance.
For those of you looking for some initial background reading, I would recommend Matthew
Carr, The Infernal Machine: An Alternative History of Terrorism (2011) as a good starting point.
I. Explosions, Passions and After-Shocks (Introductory Session)
Slavoj Žižek, extracts from Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and
Related Dates (2002).*
II. “Mere common bodies”: Anarchism, Dynamite & Modernity
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907).
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908).
III. Letter Bombs: Authorship & Incorporation
Don DeLillo, Mao II (1991).
Paul Auster, Leviathan (1992).
Note: You may also want to consult selections from Theodore Kaczynski’s ‘Industrial Society
and its Future’, aka The Unabomber Manifesto (1995). Available via DUO.
IV. “Yours in Revolution”: Celebrity, Spectacle & the Cause
Film: Carlos (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2010).
Note: Please watch the full version (338 mins), which is divided into 3 parts on DVD.
V. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce…
Film: Paradise Now / ‫( ةآل ن ةّنجلا‬dir. Hany Abu-Assad, 2005).
Film: Four Lions (dir. Chris Morris, 2010).
VI. Archaeologies of Terror / Civil War and International Justice
Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (2000).
VII. Globalization and its Discontents
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown (2006).
VIII. Trauma Culture / Works of Mourning
Film: United 93 (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2006).
Bharati Mukherjee, ‘The Management of Grief’ (from The Middleman and Other Stories, 1988).*
12
IX. No Compromise in the Defense of Mother Earth! Eco-Sabotage / Eco-Terror?
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975).
Note: You should also try to watch the documentaries Earth First! The Politics of Radical
Environmentalism (dir. Chris Manes, 1987) and If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation
Front (dir. Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman, 2011).
X. Scat Attack / Entertaining Pain
David Foster Wallace, ‘The Suffering Channel’ (from Oblivion: Stories, 2004).*
Note: You should also try to read Wallace’s short magazine pieces ‘Just Asking’ and ‘9/11: The
View From the Midwest’ (both available via DUO).
FURTHER READING
▪ Please bear in mind that it would be impossible to reproduce every critical work that might
be relevant to a particular author, filmmaker or theme. The following information (divided
into clear categories to help with your planning) is therefore not exhaustive by any means and
should not prevent you from exploring the field for yourself: journalism and reportage,
legislation, documentary evidence etc. The possibilities are near enough endless, especially if
you embrace the interdisciplinary spirit of the module. I will provide more specific tips about
theoretical and historical reading as the roll by. Also note that there are numerous studies
available on the ‘major’ authors who feature on the primary list. You can of course use these in
your research, regardless of whether the question of terrorism is directly addressed. In terms
of seeking out materials on the most recent work we’re looking at (where secondary criticism
might be thin on the ground), browsing reviews and blogs can be a useful starting point.
▪ Books on fiction and terrorism
Boehmer, Elleke and Stephen Morton (eds). Terror and the Postcolonial (Wiley-Blackwell,
2009).
Bradley, Arthur and Andrew Tate. The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic After
9/11 (Continuum, 2010).
Clymer, Jeffory. America’s Culture of Terrorism: Violence, Capitalism, and the Written Word
(University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
Durand, Alain-Philippe and Hilary Mandel (eds). Novels of the Contemporary Extreme
(Continuum, 2007).
Eagleton, Terry. Holy Terror (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Gomel, Elana. Bloodscripts: Writing the Violent Subject (Ohio University Press, 2003).
Gray, Richard. After the Fall: American Literature Since 9/11 (Wiley, 2011).
Greenberg, Margaret. Trauma at Home: After 9/11 (Bison Books, 2003).
13
Hapgood, Lynne and Nancy Paxton (eds). Outside Modernism: In Pursuit of the English Novel,
1900-30 (Palgrave, 2000). See chapter by R. Caserio, ‘G. K. Chesterton and the Terrorist
Outside Modernism’.
Houen, Alex. Terrorism and Modern Literature (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Hyvärinen, Matti and Lisa Muszynski (eds). Terror and the Arts: Artistic, Literary, and Political
Interpretations of Violence from Dostoyevsky to Abu Ghraib (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir (University of
Minnesota Press, 2009).
Kaplan, Ann. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (Rutgers
University Press, 2005).
Keniston, Ann (ed). Literature After 9/11 (Routledge, 2008).
Kubiak, Anthony. Stages of Terror: Terrorism, Ideology and Coercion as Theatre History
(Indiana University Press, 1991).
Lentricchia, Frank and Jody McAuliffe, Crimes of Art and Terror (University of Chicago Press,
2003). Also available online via ‘MyiLibrary Reader’.
Melnick, Jeff, 9/11 Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Osborne, Richard. Literature and Terrorism (Pluto Press, 2007).
Pesso-Miguel, Catherine and Klaus Stierstorfer (eds). Fundamentalism and Literature
(Palgrave, 2007).
Randall, Martin. 9/11 and the Literature of Terror (Edinburgh UP, 2011).
Ray, Gene. Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to
September 11 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Scanlan, Margaret. Plotting Terror: Novelists and Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction
(University of Virginia Press, 2001). Also available online via ‘MyiLibrary Reader’.
Schopp, Andrew and Matthew Hill (eds). The War on Terror and American Popular Culture:
September 11 and Beyond (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009).
Tew, Philip. The Contemporary British Novel (Continuum, Second Edition, 2007). See final
chapter ‘The Post-Millennial, 9/11 and the Traumatological’.
Versluys, Kristiaan. Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel (Columbia University Press,
2009).
Wisnicki, Adrian. Conspiracy, Revolution and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern
Novel (Routledge, 2007).
▪ Selected Articles (these are available through Project Muse unless otherwise
indicated)
14
Go to library website. Select ‘Resources and Collections’ > ‘Online Resources’ > ‘Databases’ >
Select appropriate letter e.g. ‘P’ for ‘Project Muse’. Enter Durham log-in details when
prompted. Search for article titles, journals, authors, keywords etc.
Anker, Elizabeth S. ‘Allegories of Falling and the 9/11 Novel’, American Literary History, 23.3,
2011.
Appelbaum, Robert and Alexis Paknadel. ‘Terrorism and the Novel 1970-2001’, Poetics Today,
29:3, 2008. Online here:
http://poeticstoday.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/29/3/387?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=1
0&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=terrorism+novel&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relev
ance&resourcetype=HWCIT
Baker, Peter. ‘The Terrorist as Interpreter: Mao II in Postmodern Context’, Postmodern
Culture, 4.2, 1994.
Blessington, Francis. ‘Politics and the Terrorist Novel’, Sewanee Review, 116.1, 2007.
Burrows, Victoria. ‘The Heterotopic Spaces of Postcolonial Trauma in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s
Ghost’, Studies in the Novel, 40.1-2, 2008.
Cole, Sarah. ‘Dynamite Violence and Literary Culture’, Modernism/Modernity, 16.2, 2009.
DeLillo, Don. ‘In the Ruins of the Future’, The Guardian, Saturday 22 December 2001.
Online here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/22/fiction.dondelillo
Duvall, John N. and Robert P. Marzec. ‘Narrating 9/11’, MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 57.3, Fall
2011.
Gamal, Ahmed. ‘Encounters with Strangeness in the Post- 9/11 Novel’, Interdisciplinary
Literary Studies, 14.1, 2012.
Gana, Nouri. ‘Reel Violence: Paradise Now and the Collapse of the Spectacle’. Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 28.1, 2008.
Haines, Christian. ‘The Biopolitical Ambivalence of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent’,
Criticism, 54.1, 2012.
Hantke, Steffen. ‘God Save Us from Bourgeois Adventure: The Figure of the Terrorist in
Contemporary American Conspiracy Fiction’, Studies in the Novel, 28.2, 1996.
Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. ‘Symbolic Terror’, Critical Inquiry, 28.2, 2002.
Houen, Alex. ‘The Secret Agent: Anarchism and the Thermodynamics of Law’, English Literary
History, 65.4, 1998.
Marrouchi, Mustapha. ‘Neither Their Perch Nor Their Terror: Al-Qaida Limited’, Callaloo, 31.4,
2008.
McClanahan, Annie. ‘Future’s Shock: Plausibility, Preemption, and the Fiction of 9/11’,
Symplokē, 17.1-2, 2009.
15
Medovoi, Leerom. ‘Terminal Crisis?: From the Worlding of American Literature to WorldSystem Literature’, American Literary History, 23.3, 2011.
Michaels, Walter Benn. ‘Empire of the Senseless: (The Response to) Terror and (the End of)
History’, Radical History Review, 85, 2003.
Miller, DeMond Shondell et al. ‘Civil Liberties: The Line Dividing Environmental Protest and
Ecoterrorists’, Journal for the Study of Radicalism 2.1, 2008.
Morag, Raya. ‘The Living Body and the Corpse — Israeli Documentary Cinema and the
Intifadah’, Journal of Film and Video, 60.3-4, 2008.
Roberts, Gillian. ‘Ethics and Healing: Hospital/ity and Anil’s Ghost’, University of Toronto
Quarterly, 76.3, 2007.
Rowe, John Carlos. ‘Mao II and the War on Terrorism’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103.1, 2004.
Shostak, Debra. ‘In the Country of Missing Persons: Paul Auster’s Narratives of Trauma’,
Studies in the Novel, 41.1, 2009.
Siddiqi, Yumna. ‘Power Smashes Into Private Lives: Violence, Globalization and
Cosmopolitanism in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown’, South Asia Research, 27.3, 2007.
Simmons, Ryan. ‘What Is a Terrorist? Contemporary Authorship, the Unambomber and Mao
II’, Modern Fiction Studies, 45.3, 1999.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. ‘Terror: A Speech After 9-11’, Boundary, 31.2, 2004.
Staels, Hilde. ‘A Poetic Encounter with Otherness: The Ethics of Affect in Michael Ondaatje’s
Anil’s Ghost’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 76.3, 2007.
Taylor, Bron. ‘The Tributaries of Radical Environmentalism’, Journal for the Study of
Radicalism 2.1, 2008.
Thomas, Samuel. ‘Outtakes and Outrage: The Means and Ends of Suicide Terror’, MFS: Modern
Fiction Studies, 57.3, 2011.
Walker, Joseph S. ‘Criminality and (Self) Discipline: The Case of Paul Auster’, MFS: Modern
Fiction Studies, 48.2, 2002.
— ‘A Kink in the System: Terrorism and the Comic Mystery Novel’, Studies in the Novel, 36.3,
2004.
Whitebrook, Maureen. ‘Reading Don DeLillo’s Mao II as a Commentary on Twentieth-Century
Politics’, European Legacy 6.6, 2001.
▪ General Resources
Amis, Martin. The Second Plane: September 11 2001-2007 (Vintage, 2008).
Aust, Stefan. The Baader-Meinhof Complex (Bodley Head, revised edition, 2008).
Burleigh, Michael. Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (HarperPress, 2008).
16
Burke, Jason. Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (Penguin, 2003).
Carr, Matthew. The Infernal Machine: An Alternative History of Terrorism (Hurst & Co., 2011).
Chomsky, Noam. The Culture of Terrorism (Pluto Press, 1988).
Crenshaw, Martha and John Pimlott (eds). Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, 3 vols. (Sharpe
Reference, 1997).
Davis, Mike. Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Verso, 2007).
Follain, John. Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal (Arcade,
2011).
Gearty, Conor. Terrorism (Phoenix, 1997).
Graham, Robert (ed). Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Vols. 1 and 2
(Black Rose Books, 2005 and 2007).
Graham, Stephen (ed). Cities, War and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics (WileyBlackwell, 2004).
Hobsbawm, Eric. Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism (Little-Brown, 2007).
Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2006).
Husain, Ed. The Islamist: Why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what I saw inside and why I left
(Penguin, 2007).
Jalal, Ayesha. Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Harvard University Press, 2008).
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence
(University of California Press, 2000).
Kushner, Harvey (ed). The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium (Sage
Publications, 1998)
Laqueur, Walter. The Age of Terrorism (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987).
— A History of Terrorism, New Edition (Transaction Publishers, 2001).
— The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (Phoenix, 2001).
— No End to War: Terrorism in the 21st Century (Continuum, 2004).
Liddick, Don. Eco-terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements
(Praeger, 2006).
Mukherjee, Bharati and Clark Blaise. The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the
Air India Tragedy (Viking, 1987).
O’Sullivan, N (ed). Terrorism, Ideology and Revolution (Westview Press, 1986).
17
Pedahzur, Amir. Suicide Terrorism (Polity, 2005).
Pyszczynski, Tom et al. In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror (American Psychological
Association, 2003).
Roy, Arundhati (ed). 13 Dec: A Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament
(Penguin, 2010).
Rubenstein, R. E. Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World (Basic Books, 1987).
Rubin, B (ed). The Politics of Terrorism: Terror as a State and Revolutionary Strategy (Foreign
Policy Institute, 1989).
Smith, Colin. Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist: In Pursuit of the Jackal, 1975-2011 (Penguin, 2012).
Townshend, Charles. Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Various. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
(W. W. Norton & Co, 2004).
Wall, Derek. Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism &
Comparative Social Movements (Routledge, 1999).
Whittaker, David (ed). The Terrorism Reader (Routledge, 2003).
Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda’s Road to 9/11 (Penguin, 2006).
Zulaika, Joseba and William Douglass. Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables and Faces of
Terrorism (Routledge, 1996).
▪ Interrogations: Terror, Trauma and Critical Theory
Afary, Janet and Kevin B. Anderson (eds). Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the
Seductions of Islamism (Chicago University Press, 2005).
Agamben, Giorgio. States of Exception (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Baudrillard, Jean. The Spirit of Terrorism (Verso, 2003).
— ‘Our Theatre of Cruelty’ (1982), in Chris Kraus and Syvlvère Lotringer (eds), Hatred of
Capitalism: A Reader (Semiotext (e), 2001).
Battersby, Christine. The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference (Routledge, 2007).
Borradori, Giovanna (ed). Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and
Jacques Derrida (Chicago UP, 2003).
Buck-Morss, Susan. Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (Verso,
2003).
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (Verso, 2006).
18
Cavarero, Adriana. Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (Columbia University Press,
2008).
Chomsky, Noam. 9/11 (Open Media / Seven Stories Press, 2001).
— Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Owl Books, 2004).
Fukuyama, Francis. America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative
Legacy (Yale University Press, 2006).
Gray, John. Al-Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern (Faber and Faber: 2004).
— Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (Allen Lane, 2007).
Gregory, Derek. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan-Palestine-Iraq (Blackwell, 2004).
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire (Harvard UP: 2000).
— Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin, 2006).
Hauerwas, Stanley and Frank Lentricchia (eds). Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After
September 11 (Duke UP, 2003).
Jackson, Richard. Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism
(Manchester UP, 2005).
Klein, Naomi. Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Allen Lane, 2007).
Krishnaswamy, Revathi and John C. Hawley, The Postcolonial and the Global (University of
Minnesota Press, 2007).
Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question (Routledge, 2008).
Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine (Vintage, 1980).
Virilio, Paul. Ground Zero (Verso, 2003).
— The Original Accident (Polity Press, 2006).
Zimmerman, Michael E. Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity
(University of California Press, 1994).
Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real (Verso, 2002).
— Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (Verso, 2005).
— The Universal Exception: Selected Writings (Continuum, 2007).
— Violence (Big Ideas Series: Profile Books, 2008).
— In Defense of Lost Causes (Verso, 2008).
— First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (Verso, 2009).
19
— Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010).
▪ Some Online Resources
The Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV):
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~wwwir/research/cstpv/
Academic Info.Net. Terrorism Studies / War on Terrorism Directory of Online Resources:
http://www.academicinfo.net/terrorism.html
Library of Congress September 11 Web Archive:
http://september11.archive.org/
University of Göteborg Resistance Studies Network:
http://resistancestudies.org/
Trauma Theory Resources:
https://eee.uci.edu/faculty/zimmerman/traumalit/theory_page.htm
LSE seminars on conflict in Kashmir:
http://www.fathom.com/course/10701013/index.html
▪ Some Audiovisual Resources
— Discussion of Literature & Political Violence at the Royal Society for Literature, Monday 27
October 2008. Participants: Adam Foulds, Pankaj Mishra, Chris Petit, Kamila Shamsie.
Available as MP3 via ‘Course Documents’ on DUO.
— Discussion of Literature and Terrorism at the Centre for New Writing, Manchester
University, 3 December 2007. Participants: Martin Amis, Ed Husain, Maureen Freely. Available
via DUO.
— European Graduate School (An excellent collection of videos of various key theorists
relevant to this course — Žižek, Baudrillard, Agamben, Hardt, Badiou etc). Highly
recommended:
http://www.youtube.com/user/egsvideo
▪ More Fiction to Explore…
Again, neither an exclusive nor exhaustive list. However, for those of you inclined to seek out
fictional works beyond the primary list, here are a few suggestions of how to orientate
yourself in this ever-widening field. Basic themes have been indicated. Note that this list does
not include film.
Abish, Walter. How German Is It (1980). Baader-Meinhof-style radical group/Postwar
Germany.
20
Aldiss, Brian. Remembrance Day (1993). Irish Republicanism.
Aslam, Nadeem. The Wasted Vigil (2008). Roots of conflict in Afghanistan.
Ballard, J. G. Millennium People (2003). Middle Class terrorism/ Dystopia.
Brady, John. Kaddish in Dublin (1992). Irish Republicanism.
Castel-Bloom, Orly. Human Parts (trans. D. Bilu, 2004). Israel/Palestine.
Coetzee, J. M. The Master of Petersburg (1994). Includes fictionalised version of Russian
anarchist Sergei Nechayev.
Beigbeder, Frédéric. Windows on the World (trans. F. Wynne, 2005). Post-9/11.
DeLillo, Don. Players (1977). American anarchism/Anti-establishment violence.
— Libra (1988). Assassination of JFK.
— Falling Man (2007). Post-9/11.
Easton Ellis, Bret. Glamorama (1998). Models-as-terrorists/Consumer culture and violence.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). Post-9/11 trauma
narrative/Child’s perspective/Experimental form.
Gauhar, Feryal Ali. No Space for Further Burials (2006). Afghanistan/War on Terror.
Gibson,
William.
Pattern
Recognition
thriller/Technology/Globalization etc.
(2003).
Post-9/11/Cyber-punk
Greene, Graham. The Quiet American (1955). Terrorism and espionage in Vietnam/CIA
conspiracy.
— The Honorary Consul (1973). Paraguayan revolutionary group/Kidnapping.
Halaby, Laila. Once in a Promised Land (2007). Post-9/11 and Arab-American identity.
Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). Post-9/11 and American-Pakistani
relations.
Hanif,
Mohammed.
The
Case
of
Pakistan/Conspiracy/Assassination of General Zia.
Exploding
Mangoes
(2009).
Harris, Frank. The Bomb (1908). Novelisation of the Haymarket Bomb in Chicago/Anarchism.
Houellebecq, Michel. Platform (trans. F. Wynne, 2002). Islamist terrorist attack in
Thailand/Tourism/Globalization.
James, Henry. The Princess Casamassima (1886). Fin de siècle anarchism.
Khadra, Yasmina. The Attack (trans. J. Cullen, 2006). Israel/Palestine.
21
Khalifah, Sahar. Wild Thorns (trans. T. LeGassick and E. Fernea, 1984). Israel/Palestine.
Kuehn, Felix and Alex Strick van Linschoten (eds). Poetry of the Taliban (2012).
Le Carré, John. The Little Drummer Girl (1983). Espionage thriller/Israel-Palestine.
— Absolute Friends (2003). International espionage.
Lessing, Doris. The Good Terrorist (1985). British revolutionary group/Decline of the radical
left/Class politics/Femininity and Domesticity.
McCabe, Patrick. Breakfast on Pluto (1998). Irish Republicanism/Sexual identity.
McCarthy, Mary. Cannibals and Missionaries (1979). Hijacking/Middle East/Art and Terror.
McEwan, Ian. Saturday (2005). Post-9/11.
McNamee, Eoin. Resurrection Man (1994). Northern Irish Ultras.
Mendlesohn, Farah (ed). Glorifying Terrorism (2007). Anthology of Sci-Fi short stories. A
collective protest work. The anthology is, technically, illegal — because every story
deliberately breaks the current UK law that bans the “glorification of terrorism”.
Messud, Claire. The Emperor’s Children (2006). Post-9/11.
Moore, Lorie. A Gate at the Stairs (2009). American life post-9/11.
Naipaul, V. S. Guerrillas (1977). Caribbean revolutionary politics.
O’Neill, Joseph (2008). Netherland. Expatriate life in New York post-9/11.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club (1996). Anti-establishment violence/Masculinity etc.
Pamuk, Orhan. Snow (trans. M. Freely, 2004). Political Islamism in Turkey/Terror and
Theatricality.
Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto (2001). Peruvian revolutionary group.
Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (2006). Complex, ‘metahistorical’ reimagining of fin de
siècle anarchism in United States and Europe.
Roth, Philip. American Pastoral (1997). Weathermen-style anarchists.
Sacco, Joe. Palestine (2001). Graphic novel.
Speigelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). Post-9/11 graphic novel.
Shamsie, Kamila. Burnt Shadows (2009). Post-9/11/Migrancy/Globalization.
Stevenson, Robert Louis and Fanny Van de Grift. The Dynamiter (1884). Short stories about a
bomb plot on behalf of Irish independence.
Updike, John. Terrorist (2006). Much debated (and criticised) story of an Arab-American
teenager drawn into a suicide plot.
22
Jewish American Fiction [ENGL2461]
Module Convenor: Dr Mark Sandy
This special topic on Jewish American Fiction aims to explore a range of representative
fictional texts written by Jewish American Writers since 1945. The aim of the module is to
study the literary forms and preoccupations of Jewish American Fiction immediately before
and after the Second World War up until the close of the twentieth century. The approach
will combine an emphasis on formal close reading with an understanding of the various
cultural, religious, political, and intellectual contexts reflected in and shaping the fiction of
this period. Attention will be given both to continuities in the novel tradition and
experimental forms and new historical pressures arising from changes within Jewish and
American culture before and after World War II (typically immigration, economic
depression, and the Holocaust). Such historical forces have meant that the reality depicted
in Jewish-American Fiction of twentieth century has increasingly become as much
American as it is Jewish.
Titles marked with a single asterix (*) are on Reserve in the University Library. Titles
marked with a double asterix (**) are on 3-DAY Loan. Please note that those titles
currently on order for the University Library are indicated as such.
Primary Reading: Texts
Saul Bellow:
Seize the Day. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
Herzog. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001.
Mr Sammler’s Planet. Penguin, 1996.
The Letters of Saul Bellow, ed. Benjamin Taylor. Viking-Penguin, 2010.
Isaac Bashevis Singer:
Enemies: A Love Story. Farrar: 1997.
Bernard Malamud:
The Magic Barrel and Other Stories. Vintage, 2000.
The Fixer. New York: Strauss, Farrar, and Giroux, 2004.
The Assistant. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.
E.L. Doctorow:
Ragtime. Plume, 1997.
Jonathan Safran Foer:
Everything is Illuminated. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
Philip Roth:
Portnoy’s Compliant. 1967. London: Vintage, 1994.
Everyman. London: Cape, 2006. (E)
23
Grace Paley:
Little Disturbances of Man. London: Viking, 1994.
Please note that film adaptations of the following works by Jewish American writers
are available for loan from the departmental office:
Billy Bathgate. Dir. Robert Benton. With Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman. Touchstone,
1991.
Enemies, A Love Story. Dir. Paul Mazursky. With Ron Silver and Anjelica Huston. Warner,
1989.
Everything is Illuminated. Dir. Live Schrieber. With Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz. Warner,
2005.
Portnoy’s Complaint. Dir. Ernest Lehman-Sidney Beckerham. With Richard Benjamin,
Karen Black, and Lee Grant. Warner, 1972.
Ragtime. Dir. Milos Forman. With James Cagney, Brad Dourif, Moses Gunn, Elizabeth
McGovern, Kenneth McMillan, Pat O’Brien, Donald O’Connor, and James Olson.
Paramount, 1981.
Seize the Day. Dir. Fielder Cook. With Robin Williams, Joseph Wiseman, Jerry Stiller,
Glenne Headly, Katherine Borowitz, and Tony Roberts. Monterey, 2003 [originally made
1986].
Selected Reading: Jewish American Writers and Their Culture(s):
Berger, Alan L. Berger, ‘American Jewish Fiction,’ Modern Judaism 10 (1990): 22141 [Full text available online via JSTOR]
Bloom, James D. Gravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America.
Westport, Connetticut: Praeger, 2003.
Buddick, Emily Miller, ed. Ideology and Jewish Identity in Israeli and American
Literature. SUNY Modern Jewish Literature and Culture Ser. Albany, NY: U of New York P,
2001.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. Anti-Semitism in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Finkelstein, Norman. The Ritual of Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary
Literature. Albany: SUNY, 1992.
**Fishman, Sylvia B. Follow My Footprints: Changing Images of Women in
American-Jewish Fiction. Hanover, U of New England P, 1992.
Gingus, Sam. The New Covenant: Jewish Writers and the American Idea. Chapel
Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.
Kamel, Rose Yalow. Aggravating the Conscience: Jewish-American Literary
Mothers in the Promised Land. New York: Lang, 1988.
**Knopp, Josephine. The Trail of Judaism in Contemporary American Writing.
Urbana: Illinois UP, 1975.
**Kramaer, Michael and Hana Wirth-Nesher, Cambridge Companion to JewishAmerican Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003.
Kremer, S Lillian. ‘Post-Alienation: Recent Directions in Jewish-American
Literature,’ Contemporary Literature Vol. 34 (1993): 571-591 [Full text available online
via JStor].
Kugelmass, Jack. ed. Key Texts in American Jewish Culture. New Brunswick,
N.J. : Rutgers UP, 2003.
24
Mersand, Joseph E. Traditions in American Literature: A Study of Jewish
Characters and Authors. 1939. NY: Kennikat, 1968.
Sandy, Mark. ‘Jewish American Literature,’ The Encyclopedia of Literature and
Politics, ed. M. Keith Booker . Greenwood: Westport, CT, 2005, 384-8.
**Scott, Nathan. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notra Dame:
Notre Dame UP, 1973.
Simmons, Philip E. Deep Surfaces: Mass Culture and History in Postmodern
American Fiction. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1997. [This has a section on E. L.
Doctorow]
Showalter, Elaine (ed.). Modern American Women Writers. Macmillan: New York,
1991.
**Schulz, Max E. Radical Sophistication: Studies in Contemporary Jewish-American
Novelists. Athens: Ohio, 1969.
**Shaked, Gershon. The Shadows Within: Essays on Modern Jewish Writers.
Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society, 1987.
Shechner, Mark. After the Revolution: Studies in Contemporary Jewish-American
Imagination. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.
**Wade, Stephen. Jewish American Literature since 1945: An Introduction.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999.
**Walden, Daniel, ed. Twentieth-century American-Jewish Fiction Writers. Detroit:
Gale, 1984.
**Walden, Daniel (ed.) The Changing Mosaic: From Cahan to Malamud, Roth and
Ozick. Studies in American Jewish Literature. Vol. 12. University Park: PA, 1993.
Whitfield, Stephen J. ‘The Distinctiveness of American Jewish Humour,’ Modern
Judaism 6: 245-60 [Full text available online via JStor].
Zierler, Wendy. ‘The Making and Re-Making of Jewish American Literary History,’
Shofar 27 (2009): 69-101[Full text available online via Project Muse].
25
John Milton (1608-1674) [ENGL 2611]
Module Convenor: Dr Mandy Green
Please note that this module will be taught by weekly seminars in Michaelmas
Term only
Editions
You will need to bring the appropriate text(s) to each seminar (see draft programme), so
it’s worth considering purchasing a copy of Milton’s poetical works. There are a number of
excellent editions in print. All the editions mentioned below are available from the Main
Library, so if you intend to make a purchase, you could take a look, and try before you buy.
I have always found the notes in the Longman edition particularly detailed and helpful
(though some pages are more ‘note’ than ‘text’. NB the spelling of the poems has been
modernized, so the text is reader friendly, but not suitable for the purists amongst you! It is
available in two paperback volumes, or a more weighty, single tome:
The Complete Shorter Poems. Ed. John Carey. London: Longman. 2nd edn 1997. 826.2
Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler. London: Longman.2nd edn. 1998. 826.2
The hardback Riverside Milton, although it is rather more unwieldy, printed on very thin
paper in a small type-size, has the advantage of including some of the Early Lives of
Milton, a selection of his personal letters and some of the important English prose works
(eg the Areopagitica), together with translations of a number of the Latin prose works too.
(Unlike the Longman edition, the spelling has not been modernized so it gives a more
authentic feel to the texture of the verse.)
The Riverside Milton. Ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1998.
826.2
John Milton. Eds. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (The Oxford Authors). Oxford:
1991. 826.2 Good, affordable volume – though binding not particularly strong. The notes
are detailed, but are located at the back rather than footnoted. This cleans up the body of
the text, but may result in constant flipping of pages.
Milton: Complete Poems. Ed. John Leonard. Harmondsworth: 1998. 826.2 Wellpresented volume with informative notes. Good value for money,
Milton: The Complete English Poems. Ed Gordon Campbell. London: David Campbell.
1992 826.2 Well-presented volume with a useful chronology of the life and times of the
author and extensive.. As well the English poetry, this edition also contains the prose
works, "Of Education" and "Areopagitica".
There are a number of multi-volume editions in progress, which will prove a useful
resource when we come to focus on particular texts in the seminars:
A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1970- 826.2 MIL/HUG
The Complete Works of John Milton. Oxford: OUP. 2008- 826.2 MIL/COM
(only one volume – volume 2 (!) is available to date: The 1671 Poems: Paradise Regain’d
and Samson Agonistes. Ed Laura Lunger Knoppers)
Summer Vacation
By far the most valuable preparation for this module is to read the actual texts to be
discussed carefully over the vacation, particularly the longer works, for example, Lycidas,
A Masque at Ludlow (Comus), Areopagitica, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain’d, Samson
Agonistes.
Another helpful exercise would be to familiarise yourself with the main contours of Milton’s
life. There are a number of early ‘Lives’ compiled by those who knew him or spoke to
those who did, notably those by his nephew and pupil Edward Philips, the anonymous
biography likely to have been written by his pupil, Cyriack Skinner, and the notes towards
a biography compiled by John Aubrey. The ‘Life’ by Anthony à Wood (from the Annals of
Oxford University) is derived from the notes by Aubrey, but is still interesting for the ‘spin’
put on the material at times, showing the royalist sympathies of the biographer. (These
26
Early Lives are all included in the Riverside Milton.) Also worth reading for his strongly
pronounced views on Milton and his poetry, is Samuel Johnson’s ‘Life of Milton’ in his
Lives of the Poets.
Biographies
The Early Lives of Milton. Ed. Helen Darbishire. London: Constable. 1932. 826.2 MIL/DAR
The Riverside Milton. Ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1998.
826.2
Lives of the Poets. Samuel Johnson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2006. 827.2JOH
There are a number of recent biographies of Milton:
Milton: a biography. Walter Riley Parker. Ed Gordon Campbell. 2nd ed. Rev. version.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1996. 826.2 MIL/PAR The standard biography recently revised
and edited by Gordon Campbell.
The Life of John Milton: a critical biography. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. Malden MA:
Blackwell Publishing. 2001. 826.2 This is a richly documented, densely packed and
scholarly work (available in paperback). Very useful for reference.
John Milton: life, work and thought. Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 2010. Richly detailed and readable biography.
Also available are the following lively and accessible biographies:
Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot. Anna Beer. Bloomsbury, 2008.
John Milton: a literary life. Cedric Brown. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 1995. 826.2 MIL/BRO
John Milton: a biography. Neil Forsyth. Oxford: Lion. 2008. 826.2 MIL/FOR
A reading list of relevant secondary literature will be given out at each seminar and posted
on DUO. Meanwhile here are a couple of useful starting points:
General
The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Ed Dennis Danielson. Cambridge: CUP, 1999.
826.2 MIL/CAM (NB You can browse this volume online by following the library link)
The Oxford Handbook of Milton. Ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith. Oxford: OUP.
2011 (on order for the main library)
Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Student’s Guide. Isabel
Rivers. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1992.This is an extremely accessible guide that
supplies useful source material together with a helpful discussion of relevant contexts. (It is
useful background reading for Renaissance and Shakespeare too.)
Online resources
A valuable resource of current criticism on Milton’s works is provided by the two journals
devoted to Milton studies:
Milton Quarterly and Milton Studies.
Both are available to browse online through the library website by following the link to Ejournals.
You might also find the following websites of interest:
http://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-220 A collection of 24 lively lectures by Professor John
Rogers on Milton as part of the Open Yale Courses.
www.johnmilton.org The Milton-L Home Page is devoted to the life, literature and times
of the poet John Milton. On this site you will find links to web resources, information about
upcoming events, and information on recently published works of interest to Milton
scholars and students.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/index.shtml Milton’s works and
selected criticism.
http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darknessvisible/ A web resource for studying Paradise Lost
in particular but provides some useful contexts for Milton’s work as a whole.
Draft programme
This is an outline of the seminar programme; I would like to leave open the possibility of
some minor changes depending on the interests of the group etc. In each case
participants will be expected not simply to have read the set text(s), but to be ready to
27
discuss them in detail. (Supplementary handouts for Seminars 1, 5 and 8 will be supplied
beforehand.) After the first session, the running-order will be roughly chronological:
1
Milton and the Art of Authorial Self-representation: Elegia prima (Elegy 1’),
Elegia sexta (‘Elegy 6’), Ad Patrem (‘To his Father’), ‘How Soon Hath Time’,
Mansus; selected passages from the Prolusions, Reason of Church–government,
Defensio Secunda (Second Defence), Paradise Lost
2
Early English poems: including ‘Nativity Ode’, ‘On Shakespeare’, ‘At a Vacation
Exercise’, ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’
3
Pastoral Elegies: Lycidas (1638) and Epitaphium Damonis (1639-40)
4
Milton and the Masque Tradition: A Masque at Ludlow (Comus, 1637)
5
Milton and Education: Selected passages from the Prolusions, Of Education
(1644)
6
Milton and Marriage: Selected passages from the divorce tracts (1644-45) and
Paradise Lost (1667); ‘Methought I saw’ (1658?).
7
Milton and Civil Liberty: Areopagitica (1644)
8
Milton and the Classical and Christian Tradition: Paradise Lost (1667); selected
passages from De doctrina Christiana (1655?)
9
The Genre of the Brief Epic: Paradise Regain’d (1671)
10
A Greek Tragedy on a Biblical Theme: Samson Agonistes (1671)
28
Keats and Shelley: Special Topic [ENGL 2331]
Reading List 2012/2013
Module convenor: Professor Michael O’Neill
(single asterisk indicates that the book has been recommended as Essential Reading in
the University Library; double asterisks indicate that the book has been recommended as
Recommended Reading).
We shall study Shelley and Keats, concentrating on the following:
Shelley: Alastor, Julian and Maddalo, Prometheus Unbound, The Mask of Anarchy, some
lyrics including ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’, ‘Mont Blanc’, and ‘Ode to the West Wind’,
‘Ozymandias’, ‘The Two Spirits – An Allegory’, ‘England in 1919’, and ‘To a Skylark’,
Adonais, The Triumph of Life. You should also read A Defence of Poetry and ‘On Love’.
Keats: Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, the Odes, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes
and ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. You should also read a good sample of the letters (see
recommended editions below):
Editions: it is recommended that you buy:
EITHER Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, edited by Donald H Reiman and Neil Fraistat, Norton
Critical Edition (2002).* [This is the second edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Shelley;
the first edition, edited by Reiman and Powers, was published in 1977 and is also on short
loan (*).] It contains a valuable amount of criticism, as well as good annotation and
headnotes.
OR Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works, edited by Zachary Leader and Michael
O’Neill (Oxford, 2009 reissue). Contains a wide range of poems and prose, an
introduction and extensive notes.
AND
EITHER John Keats, edited by Elizabeth Cook (Oxford Authors series, 1990; recently
reissued (2001) in OUP’s Major Works series). *
OR John Keats: The Complete Poems, edited by John Barnard (Penguin, 3rd edition,
1988)*.
Both these editions of Keats contain useful selections of the letters, but see also:
John Keats: Selected Letters, edited by Robert Gittings, with a new introduction and notes
by Jon Mee (Oxford, 2002).*
Please note that vols. 1, 2 and 3 of the Longman edition of Shelley’s poems, ed. Matthews
and Everest, are placed on Three-Day Loan (**) in the University Library. The same is
true of vol 3 of the Complete Poetry, ed. Reiman and others (Johns Hopkins UP).
Preliminary Reading (before the course begins in October):
The best preparation is to read and re-read the poems above.
29
You should also have a general sense of the Romantic period in English Poetry (see J R
Watson, English Poetry of the Romantic Period 1789-1830, 2nd edn. (1992)) and of the
lives and work of the two poets, by reading a biography or a ‘literary life’ or relevant
sections of anthologies taken from this list:
K N Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years (1974) *
R Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (1974)
M O’Neill, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Literary Life (1989) *
W J Bate, John Keats (1963) *
R Gittings, John Keats (1968)
J Barnard, John Keats (1987) *
A Motion, Keats (1997) **
D Wu (ed), Romanticism: An Anthology, 3rd edn (2006).
M O’Neill and C Mahoney (eds), Romanticism: An Annotated Anthology (2007) **
Critical Books
I am happy to offer specific advice on books and articles throughout the course. The list
which follows is a selection of the many critical works available.
H Bloom, Shelley’s Mythmaking (1959; 1969 rpt.)
E Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading (1971) *
J Chernaik, The Lyrics of Shelley (1972)**
T Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood (1977) **
P M S Dawson, The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics (1980) **
R Cronin, Shelley’s Poetic Thoughts (1981) **
A Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime (1984) **
S Sperry, Shelley’s Major Verse (1988) **
T Clark, Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley (1989) **
T Clark and J Hogle (eds.), Evaluating Shelley (1996)
M O’Neill, The Human Mind’s Imagining: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley’s Poetry
(1989) *
M O’Neill (ed.), Shelley, Longman Critical Reader (1993) *
S Haines, Shelley’s Poetry: The Divided Self (1997) **
P Hamilton, Percy Bysshe Shelley (2000)**
E Wasserman, The Finer Tone: Keats’s Major Poems (1953) **
I Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art (1967)
J Jones, John Keats’s Dream of Truth (1969)
M Dickstein, Keats and his Poetry (1971)
S Sperry, Keats the Poet (1973) *
C Ricks, Keats and Embarrassment (1974)
D Simpson, Irony and Authority in Romantic Poetry (1979)**
H Vendler, The Odes of John Keats (1983) *
M Levinson, Keats’s Life of Allegory (1988) **
A Bennett, Keats, Narrative and Audience: The Posthumous Life of Writing (1994) **
N Roe (ed.), Keats and History (1995) **
N Roe, John Keats and the Culture of Dissent (1997) **
M O’Neill (ed.) Keats: Bicentenary Readings (1997) **
M O’Neill, Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem (1997) * (chapters on Shelley and
Keats)
J O’Rourke, Keats’s Odes and Contemporary Criticism (1998)
A Christensen and others (eds.), The Challenge of Keats (2000)
T McFarland, The Masks of Keats: The Endeavour of a Poet (2000)
Susan J. Wolfson, Formal Charges (1997) (chapters on Shelley and Keats)
30
Susan J. Wolfson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Keats (2001) *
C Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime (2005)
M Sandy, Poetics of Self and Form in Keats and Shelley : Nietzschean Subjectivity and
Genre (2005)
S Wootton, Consuming Keats (2006) **
M O’Neill, The All-Sustaining Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American,
and Irish Poetry since 1900 (2007) ** [See under Keats and Shelley in index.]
A Weinberg and T Webb (eds.), The Unfamiliar Shelley (2009).
M. O’Neill and T. Howe, with assistance of M. Callaghan (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Percy Bysshe Shelley (to be published in December 2012)
Facsimile Editions of Manuscripts
See relevant volumes in Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, gen. ed. Donald H.
Reiman, 1985-97), 9 volumes devoted to Shelley, 6 vols to Keats, and see The Bodleian
Shelley Manuscripts, 22 vols. so far, gen. ed. Donald H. Reiman (1986-1997). See also
Shelley and his Circle, 8 vols so far, ed. K. N. Cameron and Donald H. Reiman (19611986) and J. Stillinger (ed.), John Keats: Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard, 1990. Many of
these editions have valuable critical and biographical material.
Journals
Keats - Shelley Review
Keats - Shelley Journal
Romanticism
Studies in Romanticism
Wordsworth Circle
Web-Sites
Romanticism on the Net
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385
Romantic Circles
http://www.rc.umd.edu/indexjava.html
Meetings and Topics
In Michaelmas Term we shall read poems by Shelley. We list below the primary texts you
should read carefully before each session and some suggestions about critical reading.
Please remain in the groups to which you will have been assigned by the start of
Michaelmas Term 2012.
1. Primary Texts: Shorter Lyrics: ‘Ode to the West Wind’, ‘The Two Spirits – An Allegory’,
‘To a Skylark’, ‘Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples – December 1818’, ‘England
1819’.
Criticism: Keach, Chernaik, Everest (ed.), O’Neill (in Norton 2), Sandy.
2. Primary Texts (i): Alastor
Criticism: essay by Evan K. Gibson in Norton 1, Michael Ferber in Norton 2, Stuart Sperry,
Shelley's Major Verse, Timothy Clark's and Tilottama Rajan's essays in Shelley, Longman
Critical Reader, Earl Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading, Marilyn Butler, Romantics,
Rebels and Reactionaries, O'Neill (Human Mind's Imaginings).
31
AND
Primary Texts (ii): 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty', 'Mont Blanc' (see also texts of these
poems in the Scrope Davies Notebook; texts are printed in the Matthews and Everest
edition, vol 1, Webb, 1995, and in Leader and O’Neill).
Criticism: For poems of 1816, Angela Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime, Frances
Ferguson's essay in Longman Critical Reader, William Keach, Shelley's Style (excerpted
in Norton 2), Judith Chernaik, The Lyrics of Shelley, Harold Bloom, Shelley's Mythmaking,
Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood.
3. Primary Texts: Prometheus Unbound (mainly Acts 1 and II)
Criticism: Essays by Hogle and Armstrong in Longman Critical Reader and by Webb in
Norton 2, Angela Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime, Earl Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical
Reading, Stuart Sperry, Shelley's Major Verse, O'Neill in Wu (ed.) A Companion to
Romanticism (Blackwell, 1998).
4. Julian and Maddalo and The Mask of Anarchy.
Criticism: For J and M, see Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reader, Newey's and O'Neill's
essays in DUJ Special Issue, and Cronin's Shelley's Poetic Thoughts. For The Mask, see
Behrendt's essay in Longman Critical Reader, Cronin's Shelley's Poetic Thoughts, and
Wolfson’s essay in Norton 2..
5. Primary Texts: Adonais and The Triumph of Life. Also re-read A Defence of Poetry for
this session.
Criticism: For Adonais, see Leighton, and essays by Sacks in Longman Critical Reader
and Scrivener in Norton 2, and by O’Neill (in Wordsworth Circle 35:2 (2004), 50-7, and
Everest, in Essays in Criticism 57:3 92007), 237-64. For The Triumph of Life, see Sperry,
O'Neill, The Human Mind's Imaginings, and essays by Hillis Miller and Rajan in Longman
Critical Reader and Roberts in Norton 2.
Summary of Aims of Shelley Sessions
* in seminar 1 we shall explore some of Shelley’s shorter poems to explore characteristic
tones, styles, and themes;
* we shall look in seminar 2 at a poem (Alastor) in blank verse which illustrates Shelley's
fascination with the role of the poet, the collision of perspectives, and the theme of quest,
and two poems (the 'Hymn' and 'Mont Blanc') which show his individual handling of the
lyric as a means of exploring 'the human mind's imaginings'.
* we then consider the first two acts of the lyrical drama, Prometheus Unbound, in which
Shelley seeks to create a poetic structure which will embody what in the Preface to the
poem he calls 'beautiful idealisms of moral excellence';
* in the fourth session we shall look at two medium-length poems. One (Julian and
Maddalo) reveals Shelley's capacity to dramatise different points of view; this poem makes
a fascinating contrast with Prometheus Unbound, written about the same time. The other
(The Mask of Anarchy), written in response to Peterloo but never published in Shelley's
lifetime, is a sophisticated mix of political satire and visionary ballad, and illustrates
Shelley's desire to reach an audience (or different audiences).
* in the last session we shall look at two of Shelley's greatest poems, Adonais, the elegy
for Keats, and The Triumph of Life, left unfinished at Shelley's death. Some critics have
detected a deepening pessimism in the work of Shelley's final years; we shall consider
whether this is the case.
6. ‘The Eve of St Agnes' and 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'
32
Criticism: (on The Eve); Bate, Ricks, Barnard, Bennett; (on 'La Belle Dame'): Barnard
and Bate.
7. Primary Texts: 'Ode to a Nightingale', 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', ‘Ode on Indolence’
8. 'To Autumn', 'Ode on Melancholy' and 'Ode to Psyche'. (Also ‘Bright Star!’).
Criticism (for both Odes seminars): Sperry, Bate, Barnard, Vendler, Jones
9. Primary Text: Lamia
Criticism: Sperry, Jones and Levinson
10. Primary Texts: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion
Criticism: Vendler, Sperry, Jones, and Sandy; see also Newey's essay in The Yearbook of
English Studies (1989) and O’Neill in Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem.
Summary of Keats Sessions
* In the first Keats seminar we shall look at two poems that deal, among other things, with
the interaction and clash between dream and reality in his work.
* in the second and third seminars we shall look in detail at arguably his greatest
achievement, his Odes, analysing their themes and modes of poetic operation.
* in the fourth seminar we shall focus on Lamia, and discuss its affinities with and
differences from Keats’s other work.
* in the final seminar we shall assess the meaning and success of Keats’s epic project in
his two Hyperion poems.
The texts chosen represent some of Shelley's and Keats’s most impressive achievements.
What we hope you will get out of the course is:
(i) by virtue of close reading and discussion, a deeper sense of the poets’ artistry and
value;
(ii) an awareness of their formal and thematic variety as a poet;
(iii) a greater awareness of the possible ways of reading the two poets; the course will not
prescribe any one way of reading them, but it will ask that you read the poems attentively
and test theories and ideas against the imaginative experience of reading the poetry.
33
The Literature of Emotion: Preliminary Reading List
[ENGL2151]
Robert Lovelace preparing to abduct Clarissa Harlowe (Francis Hayman, 1753)
Module convenor: Dr Gillian Skinner
We’ll be concentrating on six novels for this module. There will be other primary reading of a briefer
nature, which will be provided in photocopied form as and when needed during the year. The six
novels and recommended editions are:
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1747-8)
Please buy the Penguin edition, edited by Angus Ross (£25), if at all possible. There are other
editions, some of which may cheaper, but the Ross is, I think, the best. Also, Ross reproduces the
text of the first edition, which differs in places from later editions in ways significant enough to
make working from different editions in seminars potentially somewhat confusing. (Richardson was
a great reviser of his own work.) In any case, with such a big book, it is helpful if we’re all working
with the same page numbers!
Frances Sheridan, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761)
2011 Broadview edition (£18.95). This is the best edition currently in print and includes some
appendices (conduct literature for women, contemporary reviews of the novel) as well as
introduction, chronology, further reading, and so on. The 1995 Oxford World’s Classics edition is
still available second-hand and is also a good choice.
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
2008 World’s Classics edition (£6.99) or 2001 Penguin edition (£5.99). The World’s Classics
edition has the advantage of also including a number of other brief texts by Sterne, but the Penguin
edition has just as good an introduction and notes.
Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
2001 World’s Classics edition (reissued 2009; £5.99).
Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman (1798)
World’s Classics, edited by Gary Kelly (2007 or 2009 – the newer one has a different cover but
isn’t different in any other way; £7.99)
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)
World’s Classics (£6.99) or Penguin (£3.99) – the World’s Classics edition has a couple
34
of useful appendices, and the introduction to the Penguin edition (by Tony Tanner) can also be
found in Tanner’s book on Austen (in the library).
I’ve recommended what I think are the best editions, but if money is tight, get what you can. The
Ross Clarissa is the most important. It’s always worth looking for second-hand copies on Amazon,
and also on www.alibris.co.uk and www.abebooks.co.uk .
* * *
Such Simplicity, such Manners, such deep Penetration into Nature; such Power to raise
and alarm the Passions, few Writers, either ancient or modern, have been possessed of.
My Affections are so strongly engaged, and my Fears are so raised, by what I have already
read, that I cannot express my Eagerness to see the rest.
Henry Fielding, having read the first volumes of Clarissa, in The Jacobite’s Journal, No. 2 (2 January
1748)
Richardson is certainly the beginning of the ‘psychological’ novel, at least in English. He is
primarily interested in consciousness, he probes deeper into the recesses of the mind than
any other eighteenth-century writer, and this leads to the first really honest and revealing
exposure of the ‘unconscious’ since Shakespeare.
Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Samuel Richardson: Dramatic Novelist (London: Methuen, 1973)
Reading Clarissa is probably the biggest challenge you’ll encounter on this module. Its length can
be intimidating, but it is a fascinating and influential text, admired by figures as diverse as Diderot,
Austen and Balzac. As you can see, it was even praised highly by Richardson’s contemporary and
erstwhile critic Henry Fielding. Once you’ve finished it, you’ll be able to feel a quite justifiable sense
of achievement, and you’ll join a select band of people who have actually read the novel rather
than simply heard of it or talked about it! It is the earliest of the novels on the module, and the first
text we’ll tackle, and I urge you strongly to read it during the summer vacation. If you arrive in
October having already read it, the other novels on the module should present no particular
problem – the Sterne, Mackenzie and Wollstonecraft are all short, and neither the Sheridan and
nor the Austen are especially long. On the other hand, if you leave Clarissa until you come back to
Durham, you’ll almost certainly find your workload unnecessarily burdensome, not to mention
possibly not getting the most from early seminars. The BBC dramatised Clarissa in 1991, with
Sean Bean and Saskia Wickham, and the DVD is available to borrow from the Department.
Although watching it is a very different experience from reading the novel, it makes an interesting
comparison.
If you’d like some suggested secondary reading to look at over the summer, Janet Todd’s
Sensibility: An Introduction (1986) would be a good place to start. Also extremely useful are G. J.
Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1991)
and, for broader but important historical context, Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People:
England 1727-1783 (1989). On Clarissa specifically, you could look at Terry Eagleton, The Rape of
Clarissa (1982) or Thomas Keymer’s Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’ and the Eighteenth-Century Reader
(1992). These are probably all books to borrow from a library rather than purchase. If you don’t
have access to a university library in the vacation, don’t worry. The most important thing is to
read Clarissa; if you finish it with time to spare, you can always move on to another of the primary
texts.
I look forward to meeting you in October. In the meantime, have a good vacation, and enjoy your
reading!
35
LITERATURE OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR [ENGL 2651]
Module Convenor: Dr Marina MacKay
Overview:
This module examines the literature of and about the Second World War, the major historical
watershed of the twentieth century. As students of English literature, our emphasis will be on
English-language works (UK and US), but we shall be reading them alongside writings in
translation from other combatant nations (France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union),
aiming to approach the literature in the global terms appropriate to the war’s catastrophic scope.
Close attention to the details of individual works will lead us to some of the broader literarytheoretical questions these texts raise, about, for example, the ways in which literary and historical
representations intersect and diverge, the psychological consequences and social effects of historical
crisis, literature’s engagements of ethical and juridical problems, and literature’s relationships,
whether propagandistic or antagonistic, to political authority.
Reading:
Here are the longer works we’ll be discussing, arranged according to the order in which they appear
on the schedule (below). I’d like you to buy these ten books if you can, so please don’t feel obliged
to stick with the named editions if you find cheaper/second-hand alternatives.
Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square (Penguin: 978-0141185897)
Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (Vintage: 978-0099286189)
Keith Douglas, Alamein to Zem Zem (Faber: 978-0571241941)
Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (Vintage: 978-0099276463)
Albert Camus, The Plague (Penguin: 978-0141185132)
Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Methuen: 978-0413478108)
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Vintage: 978-0099800200)
Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (Abacus: 978-0349100135)
Heinrich Böll, The Silent Angel (Andre Deutsch: 978-0233989600)
Ian McEwan, Atonement (Vintage: 978-0099429791)
Introductory/general reading:
The module won’t assume that you are already familiar with the war’s history, but if you would like
to feel more confident you might seek out a single-volume history to read in advance and then
consult as the module goes on. Most histories of the war can feel forbiddingly long and involved
when you’re just starting out, but R.A.C Parker’s The Second World War: A Short History (2001) is
only about 300 pages in length. It costs £10 new.
The general orientation of the module is the same as that of (I know, unsurprisingly) Marina
MacKay, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Second World War (2009), and
(much more surprisingly!) there isn’t any other single-volume introduction to the war’s literature.
Don’t buy this book, though, since you have full-text access to it via the library catalogue. The same
goes for Kate McLoughlin’s excellent Cambridge Companion to War Writing (2009), which you
might find useful for situating the Second World War in a broader historical and theoretical
perspective.
If you would like to survey the current state of the field of war studies, you might take a look at the
‘war’ issue of the journal PMLA (October 2009), where you’ll find discussions of many of the
topics that will keep showing up in this module: about seeing and witnessing, about the body, about
individuality and collectivity, about state power, about war and gender, about the gaps between
cultural/collective memory and first-hand experience – and so on.
36
PROVISIONAL SCHEDULE:
Important preliminaries:
1. You’ll see from the below that reading has been assigned for our first seminar, so please
read the Auden poem and Hamilton novel by then, even if you don’t get further than those
before the beginning of term.
2. Short works without sources indicated will be made available in advance of each seminar.
3. Some adjustments may be necessary (e.g. if a particular book goes unexpectedly out of
print), but please don’t let the ‘provisional’ nature of the schedule put you off your summer
reading – the changes are likely to be minor, and none of the reading you do in advance will
be wasted.
4. The final version of the schedule will include a full bibliography of secondary works; the
‘optional reading’ below is just to get you started. Call numbers for books available from the
main library are noted in parenthesis; books that aren’t in the library (or aren’t there yet) are
marked with (***) after the title.
Seminar 1: 1930s literature and the ends of appeasement
Required reading:


W.H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’
Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square
Optional reading:
‘Cato’, Guilty Men (320.94109043 CAT)
Cunningham, Valentine. British Writers of the 1930s (820.91 CUN)
Goulding, Simon. ‘Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square and the Landscapes of Fascism’,
E-Rea, 2006 (E-Rea is open access; just do an internet search with the essay’s title)
Hynes, Samuel. The Auden Generation (820.91 HYN)
Parker, R.A.C. Chamberlain and Appeasement (327.41 PAR)
Taylor, A.J.P. Origins of the Second World War (940.53112 TAY)
Seminar 2: Blitz warfare and the battle for Britain
Required reading:



Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
T. S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’
Louis MacNeice, ‘Brother Fire’
Optional reading:
Calder, Angus. The Myth of the Blitz (941.084 CAL)
Harrisson, Tom. Living Through the Blitz (941.084 HAR)
Mellor, Leo. Reading the Ruins: Modernism, Bombsites and British Culture (***)
Miller, Kristine. British Literature of the Blitz (820.91 MIL)
Piette, Adam. Imagination at War (820.91 PIE)
Rawlinson, Mark. British Writing of the Second World War (***)
Smith, Malcolm. Britain and 1940 (941.084 SMI)
37
Stansky, Peter. The First Day of the Blitz (940.54211 STA)
Seminar 3: The soldier’s story
Required reading:



Keith Douglas, Alamein to Zem Zem
-----------------, ‘Vergissmeinnicht’, ‘How to Kill’, ‘Dead Men’
Sorley MacLean, ‘Death Valley’ and ‘Going Westwards’
Optional reading:
Bourke, Joanna. An Intimate History of Killing (355.9 BOU)
Fussell, Paul. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War
(840.5488673 FUS)
Graham, Desmond. Keith Douglas 1920-1944: A Biography (829.3 DOU/GRA)
Kendall, Tim. Modern English War Poetry (821.29 KEN)
---------------, ed. Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry (820.92 OXF)
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain (128.6 SCA)
Shires, Linda. British Poetry of the Second World War (820.92 SHI)
Seminar 4: Women and war
Required reading:



Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day
Marguerite Duras, ‘La Douleur’
Virginia Woolf, ‘Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid’
Optional Reading:
Higonnet, Margaret, et al. Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars
(940.315 BEH)
Lassner, Phyllis. British Women Writers of World War II (***)
-------------------. Elizabeth Bowen (829.1 BOW/LAS)
Plain, Gill. Women’s Fiction of the Second World War (***)
Rose, Sonya O. Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain, 19391945 (941.084 ROS)
Schneider, Karen. Loving Arms: British Women Writing the Second World War
(820.91 SCH)
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas (829.1 WOO)
Seminar 5: Literature of occupation and resistance
Required reading:



Albert Camus, The Plague
Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Vasily Grossman, ‘The Old Man’
Optional reading:
Atack, Margaret. Literature and the French Resistance (840.95 ATA)
Camus, Albert. Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (***)
38
Cruickshank, John. Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (849.2 CAM/CRU)
Grossman, Vasily. A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945
(829.1 GRO/GRO)
Ousby, Ian. Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-44 (944.09 OUS)
Thomson, Peter, and Glendyr Sacks, The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (electronic)
Seminar 6: Prisoners of war
Required reading:


Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Selections from William V. Spanos, In the Neighborhood of Zero
Optional reading:
Allen, William. Understanding Kurt Vonnegut (819.3 VON/ALL)
Antelme, Robert. The Human Species (940.547243 ANT)
Friedrich, Jörg. The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 (940.54213 FIR)
Singh, Sukhbir. The Survivor in Contemporary American Fiction (810.95 SIN)
Vonnegut, Kurt. Armageddon in Retrospect (***)
Walsh, Jeffrey. American War Literature: 1914 to Vietnam (810.91 WAL)
Seminar 7: Genocide
Required reading:


Primo Levi, If This Is a Man
Tadeusz Borowski, ‘This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen’
Optional reading:
Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz (940.5318 AGA)
Bigsby, Christopher. Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust (809.93358 BIG)
Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War against the Jews, 1933-45 (940.5318 DAW)
De Pres, Terence. The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (940.5472 DES)
Gordon, Robert S.C., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi (electronic)
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews (940.5318 HIL)
Langer, Lawrence. The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination (809.93 LAN)
Young, James. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences
of Interpretation (940.5318 YOU)
Seminar 8: Traumatic aftermaths
Required reading:



Heinrich Böll, The Silent Angel
Tamiki Hara, ‘Summer Flowers’
J. G. Ballard, ‘The Dead Time’
Optional reading:
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History
(809. 93353 CAR)
Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature,
39
Psychoanalysis, and History (801.92 FEL)
Hersey, John. Hiroshima (XX 355.94053 HER)
Ryan, Judith. The Uncompleted Past: Postwar German Novels and the Third Reich (***)
Tachibana, Reiko. Narrative as Counter-Memory: A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in
Germany and Japan (***)
Treat, John Whittier. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb
(PLJ470 TRE)
Seminar 9: Justice?
Required reading:



Martha Gellhorn, ‘Das Deutsche Volk’ and ‘Dachau’
Rebecca West, ‘Greenhouse with Cyclamens’
Jean Améry, ‘Resentments’
Optional reading:
Barnouw, Dagmar. Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence (943.087 BAR)
Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious (***)
Gellhorn, Martha. The Face of War (***)
McLoughlin, Kate. Martha Gellhorn: The War Writer in the Field and in the Text (***)
Reichman, Ravit. The Affective Life of Law (***)
Sebald, W.G. On the Natural History of Destruction (830.91 SEB)
Stonebridge, Lyndsey. The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg (***)
Seminar 10: Millennial and memorial perspectives
Required reading:

Ian McEwan, Atonement
Optional reading:
Barnouw, Dagmar. The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators and Postwar
Germans (940.53072043 BAR)
Head, Dominic. Ian McEwan (829.4 MCE/HEA)
Maier, Charles S. ‘A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy, and
Denial’, History and Memory 5, 2 (Fall-Winter 1993): 136-152 (electronic)
Stewart, Victoria. The Second World War in Contemporary Fiction (***)
Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Crises of Memory and the Second World War (940.53019 SUL)
Torgovnick, Marianna. The War Complex: World War II in Our Time (940.53 TOR)
Whitehead, Anne. Memory (128.3 WHI)
Winter, Jay, and Emmanuel Sivan. War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century
(355.9 WAR)
40
Modern Literature and the British Secret State [ENGL 2621]
Provisional Seminar Plan and Reading List
Module convenor: Dr James Smith
This module will analyse the numerous and often highly controversial interactions Britain’s
secret services (such as MI5 and MI6) had with twentieth century literature and culture. It
will look at how the espionage novel has portrayed British intelligence agencies and their
engagement with major political events of the twentieth century, how key espionage
scandals have been depicted in literary works, and how ex-intelligence officers have
launched careers as writers or memoirists. It will also examine elements such as the actual
surveillance records kept on authors, and how the secret state subsidised or supported
certain events in literary history.
As is clear from the provisional seminar plan below, we will be ranging widely in the
material we cover, moving across novels, plays, memoirs, archival documents, films and
television shows. Over summer, it would be worthwhile acquiring and starting to read the
texts listed as required reading (there might be some last minute additions, deletions or
substitutions in these lists, but these texts will form the core). Some seminars do have two
texts listed as required reading (so don’t leave everything until the night before class!), but
as most of these are either short and/or quite readable, the reading load shouldn’t be
unduly onerous if you plan ahead. Many of these texts are available cheaply second-hand,
and unless specified, it will not matter which particular edition of a work you read. Most
seminars will also have a small amount of further suggested reading, which I will discuss in
more detail once we begin the module. Where possible I will attempt to provide this further
reading as PDF files.
Seminar Plan
1) The British Secret State: Fiction, Fantasy, and Reality
In the opening seminar we will undertake an overview of the various bodies that have
made up the British intelligence community over the years, and consider some of the
myths and realties that surround it, using arguably the most famous British literary
character of the twentieth century – James Bond – as our jumping-off point. Required
reading: Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1953), chapters from the official histories of MI5 and
MI6 (to be provided).
2) Invasion Paranoia, the Spy Novel, and the Founding of the Secret State
This seminar will look at the fears that gripped early twentieth-century Britain concerning
the activities of foreign spies, and how such fears gave rise to the British intelligence
services and the British spy novel. Required reading: Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the
Sand (1903, any edition, although the Oxford World’s Classics edition is recommended as
it has a good introduction by David Trotter and is available for Kindle for only £1.90), John
Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915).
3) Authors and the Secret State: Surveillance and Censorship
In this seminar we will look at the concerns various authors held about the reach of state
surveillance, with a specific focus on Orwell’s great dystopian vision, Nineteen EightyFour. We will also look at the actual surveillance records kept on many authors, and ask
what impact such surveillance had upon the literary culture of the era. Required reading:
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), MI5 files (to be provided).
41
4. The Cold War and the Espionage Novel
An examination of how the covert manoeuvres of the Cold War were depicted in British
literature of the era, with a focus on novels by two of Britain’s most sophisticated
espionage writers (who also happen to be former MI6 officers). Required reading: John le
Carré, The Spy who Came in from the Cold (1963), Graham Greene, The Quiet American
(1955).
5. Authors and the Secret State: Collaboration and Subsidy
A surprising range of authors consciously liased with covert arms of the government during
the twentieth century. Using Orwell as a case study, we will trace how authors worked as
collaborators, employees, and informants, and see how intelligence agencies had a hand
in modifying and disseminating certain literary works deemed to be ideologically useful.
Required reading and viewing: George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945), Animal Farm, cartoon
directed by Halas and Batchelor (and sponsored by the CIA) (1954).
6. The Cambridge Spies
The Cambridge Spy ring was arguably the greatest espionage scandal of the twentieth
century, and in this seminar we shall consider how these spies became a prism through
which issues such as sexuality, class, and political ideology were viewed. Required
reading and viewing: Alan Bennett, Single Spies (1989), Cambridge Spies (BBC television
drama, 2003, available on DVD).
7. Official Secrets and the Intelligence Officer Memoir
This seminar will study how the Official Secrets Act has been deployed to restrict the
publication of information concerning British intelligence services, and how various
intelligence officers have nonetheless attempted to publish their autobiographies. Required
reading: Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987), Stella Rimington, Open Secret (2001).
8. The Spy Satire and Parody
This seminar will consider how certain ex-intelligence officers drew on their experiences to
create works that both parodied the conventions of the espionage novel and also the
activities of the intelligence services themselves. Required reading: Graham Greene, Our
Man in Havana (1958), Compton Mackenzie, Water on the Brain (1933).
9) The Post 9/11 Spy Novel
In this seminar we will examine the impact that events such as the ‘War on Terror’ have
had upon perceptions of the secret state, and ask how espionage novelists have
responded to these recent political and social developments. Required reading: John le
Carré, Absolute Friends (2003), Stella Rimington, At Risk (2005).
10) The Secret State on the Screen
Specific films will be determined in discussion with the class, but we are likely to focus on
the film adaptations of texts already covered in the course. Thus Casino Royale (2006,
directed by Martin Campbell; the original 1967 spoof is cringeworthy), The 39 Steps (1935,
directed by Alfred Hitchcock), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965, directed by
Martin Ritt), Our Man in Havana (1959, directed by Carol Reed), and the two versions of
42
The Quiet American (1958, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, and 2002, directed by Phillip
Noyce) are recommended for summer viewing.
Further Reading
The following is a select list of material that could provide useful background for this
course. Further critical material, of direct relevance to specific seminars, will be suggested
as the course proceeds.
Intelligence Histories
While there are quite a few works that offer accounts of Britain’s intelligence services,
many are patchy in their accuracy or reliant on unverifiable sources. The following are
some of the more important works based on credible archives and research, and it is
highly recommended that you consult at least one or two as background reading.
Andrew, Christopher, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
(Allen Lane, 2009).
Andrew, Christopher, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence
Community (Sceptre, 1986).
Jeffery, Keith, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949
(Bloomsbury, 2010).
Hennessey, Thomas and Claire Thomas, Spooks: The Unofficial History of MI5
(Amberley, 2009).
The Cultural Cold War
A selective list of books that study the involvement of covert government agencies in the
battle for ‘hearts and minds’ during the Cold War.
Caute, David, The Dance Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy
during the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Defty, Andrew, Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945-53:
The Information Research Department (Routledge, 2004). The best available book
on Britain’s Cold War propaganda unit, of interest for this course in the details it
gives about books that the IRD subsidised.
Piette, Adam, The Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam
(Edinburgh University Press, 2009). Excellent recent study of the literature of the
era.
Saunders, Frances Stonor, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War
(Granta, 1999). A detailed but readable account – probably the best place to start.
Wilford, Hugh, The CIA, The British Left, and the Cold War: Calling the Tunes?
(Frank Cass, 2003).
Intelligence Officer Memoirs
Despite the supposed blanket ban on such memoirs being published, there have been
quite a number penned by former British intelligence officers. Besides those listed as
seminar readings, other interesting accounts are:
Mackenzie, Comptom, Greek Memories (1932).
(NB: any edition will do, although a 2011 edition by Biteback publishing contains
material that was censored from earlier editions).
43
Maugham, W. Somerset, Ashenden: Or, The British Agent (1928) (stories loosely
based on Maugham’s experiences as an intelligence officer. Hitchcock drew on
them for his film The Secret Agent).
Philby, Kim, My Silent War (1968). (Philby was a senior MI6 officer and also one of
the Cambridge Spies.)
Tomlinson, Richard, The Big Breech (Cutting Edge, 2001). (Ex MI6
officer Tomlinson was gaoled for attempting to publish his memoirs; upon
leaving prison, he published them anyway. Electronic copies were made freely
available, so it is available to download)
Also, for an article that details the range of intelligence officers who have tried their hand
as authors, see Nigel West, ‘Fiction, Faction and Intelligence’, Intelligence and National
Security 19:2 (2004), pp. 275-289.
The FBI and modern literature
Those who are interested in questions of censorship and surveillance might find it
worthwhile to see how authors fared in the United States. Some of the most useful works
that examine this issue are as follows:
Culleton, Claire A., Joyce and the G-Men: J. Edgar Hoover’s
Manipulation of Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004),
Culleton, Claire A. and Karen Leick (eds), Modernism on File: Writers, Artists and
the FBI, 1920-1950, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Stephan, Alexander ‘Communazis’: FBI Surveillance of German Émigré Writers
(Yale University Press, 2000)
The secret state in fiction
There are, of course, a vast number of fictional works that depict aspects of the secret
state (with many being of forgettable quality). Conrad’s novels The Secret Agent (1907)
and Under Western Eyes (1911) stand out as modernist works that tackle the espionage
genre. Of the dedicated espionage novel writers, John le Carré’s works are probably the
most sophisticated and, besides the novels already specified for seminars, the Looking
Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), Smiley’s People (1980) and A Perfect
Spy (1986) are recommended for reading. But there are many other authors that you might
want to browse through, to get a sense of how the genre has developed: William LeQueux,
E. Phillips Oppenheim, Len Deighton, Eric Ambler, just to name a few…
Espionage novels: overviews and criticism
(This is a very selective list)
Aronoff, Myron J., The Spy Novels of John le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics
(Macmillan, 1999).
Atkins, John, The British Spy Novel: Styles in Treachery (Calder, 1984).
Beene, Lynn, John Le Carré (Twayne, 1992).
Bennett, Tony and Janet Woollacott, Bond and Beyond (Macmillan, 1987).
Black, Jeremy, The Politics of James Bond: from Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen
(Praeger, 2001).
Bloom, Clive (ed.), Spy Thrillers: from Buchan to Le Carré (Macmillan, 1990).
Bloom, Harold (ed.), John Le Carré (Chelsea, 1987).
Bold, Alan Norman, The Quest for Le Carré (Vision, 1988).
Bruccoli, Matthew and Judith Baughman (eds), Conversations with John Le
Carré (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004).
Buzard, James M., ‘Faces, Photos, Mirrors: Image and Ideology in the Novels of
John le Carré’, in David B. Downing and Susan Bazargan (eds),
44
Image and Ideology in Modern/Postmodern Discourse (State University of New
York Press, 1991), pp. 153-79.
Cawelti, John G. and Bruce A Rosenberg, The Spy Story
(University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Chace, William M., ‘Spies and God's Spies: Greene's Espionage Fiction’,
in Jeffrey Meyers (ed.), Graham Greene: A Revaluation: New Essays (St. Martin's,
1990), pp. 156-180.
Cobbs, John L., Understanding John Le Carré
(University of South Carolina Press, 1998).
Comentale, Edward P, Stephen Watt and Skip Willman (eds), Ian Fleming & James
Bond: the Cultural Politics of 007 (Indiana University Press, 2005).
Denning, Michael, Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).
Foertsch, Jacqueline, ‘ “Ordinary Pocket Litter”: Paper(s) as Dangerous
Supplement(s) in Cold War Novels of Intrigue’, Contemporary Literature
48:2 (2007), pp. 278-306.
Hepburn, Allan, Intrigue: Espionage and Culture
(Yale University Press, 2005).
Hindersmann, Jost, ‘ “The Right Side Lost but the Wrong Side Won”: John le Carré's
Spy Novels before and after the End of the Cold War’,
Clues: A Journal of Detection 23:4 (2005), pp. 25-37.
Homberger, Eric, John Le Carré (Methuen, 1986).
Hull, Christopher, ‘Prophecy and Comedy in Havana: Graham Greene's Spy Fiction
and Cold War Reality’, in Dermot Gilvary and Darren J. N Middleton (eds),
Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene: Journeys with Saints and Sinners
(Continuum, 2011), pp. 149-165.
Lewis, Peter, John le Carré (Ungar, 1985).
Lindner, Christoph (ed.), The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader
(Manchester University Press, 2003).
Martin, B. K., ‘Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold:
A Structuralist Reading’, Sydney Studies in English, 14 (1988-9), pp. 72-88.
Masters, Anthony, Literary Agents: the Novelist as Spy (Blackwell, 1987).
Panek, LeRoy L., The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890-1980
(Bowling Green Popular Press, 1981).
Palmer, Jerry, Thrillers: Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre
(Arnold, 1978).
Pepper, Andrew, ‘Policing the Globe: State Sovereignty and the International in the
Post-9/11 Crime Novel’, Modern Fiction Studies 57:3 (2011), pp. 401-424.
Robinson, Richard, ‘ “The Dangerous Edge of Things”: Geopolitical Bodies and Cold
War Fiction’, in Petra Rau (ed.), Conflict, Nationhood, and Corporeality in Modern
Literature: Bodies-at-War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 185-204.
Sauerberg, Lars Ole, Secret Agents in Fiction: Ian Fleming, John le Carré and
Len Deighton (Macmillan, 1984).
Snyder, Robert Lance, The Art of Indirection in British Espionage Fiction:
A Critical Study of Six Novelists (McFarland, 2011).
Stafford, David, The Silent Game: the Real World of Imaginary Spies
(Viking, 1988).
Wark, Wesley K. (ed.), Spy Fiction, Spy Films and Real Intelligence
(Cass, 1991).
Wolfe, Peter, Corridors of Deceit: The World of John le Carré
(Bowling Green Popular Press, 1987).
45
Modern Poetry [ENGL 2191]
Module Convenor: Professor Stephen Regan
This module will focus on the work of six poets, three American and three British: Robert Lowell,
Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, and Tony Harrison. Seminars will
foreground poetic texts, contextualising and exploring themes and more general issues where
appropriate. Through close examination of the poetry, we shall investigate the ways in which
individual talents work. We shall also consider such topics as the relationship between British and
American poetry in the post-war period, aesthetic strategies for addressing personal material in lyric
poetry, the relationship between 'private' and 'public' in poetic discourse, the role and operation of
memory in poetry, and issues concerning poetic 'voice' and technique, such as lineation, 'formal' and
'free' verse, diction, syntax, imagery - as and when these topics and issues arise in the study of
particular poets and poems.
READING LIST
Titles marked with a single asterisk (*) are on RESERVE in the University Library. Titles
marked with a double asterisk (**) are on 3-DAY LOAN.
The following six books are the set texts for this module. They are available in both new and used
copies from Amazon, and can also be obtained through Waterstone’s Bookshop in Durham.
Reserve copies are held in the University Library.
Robert Lowell (1917-77)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79)
John Berryman (1914-72)
Philip Larkin (1922-85)
Ted Hughes (1930-98)
Tony Harrison (1937- )
Life Studies (1959. Reprint: Faber, 2001)
Complete Poems (Chatto, 2004)
Poems Selected by Michael Hofmann (Faber, 2004)
Collected Poems (Faber 2003)
New Selected Poems (Faber, 2001)
Selected Poems (Penguin, 1987)
PLEASE NOTE: The Library holds many individual volumes of poetry by these poets, and it is
well worth consulting these, in addition to the relevant Selected and Collected editions listed above.
SECONDARY AND CRITICAL READING
The recommended reading below is mainly of a general kind. Further works of criticism, including
books and articles on the work of specific poets, will be provided at the start of the module.
General Criticism
Corcoran, Neil. English Poetry Since 1940 (1993). **
Davie, Donald. Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (1973).
Davie, Donald. Two Ways Out of Whitman: American Essays (2000).
Day, Gary and B. Docherty, eds. British Poetry from the 1950s to the 1990s (1997).
Draper, R.P. An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (1999). **
Ferguson, Suzanne. Jarrell, Bishop, Lowell & Co: Middle Generation Poets (2003).
Fredman, S. A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2005). **
Haffenden, John. Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation (1981). **
Howard, Richard. Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry (1969). **
Jarrell, Randall. Poetry and the Age (Faber, 1955). **
Jarrell, Randall. The Third Book of Criticism (Faber 1975). **
46
Jones, P. & M. Schmidt, eds. British Poetry Since 1970 (1980).
Kalstone, David. Five Temperaments (1977). **
King, Peter R. Nine Contemporary Poets (1979). **
Meyers, Jeffrey. Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle (1987).
Morrison, Blake. The Movement: English Fiction and Poetry of the 1950s (1980). **
Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy (1994). **
Robinson, Alan. Instabilities in Contemporary British Poetry (1988). **
Schmidt, M. & G. Lindop, eds. British Poetry Since 1960 (1972).
Thurley, Geoffrey. The Ironic Harvest (1974).
Thwaite, Anthony. Poetry Today: A Critical Guide to British Poetry (1985). **
Travisano, T. Midcentury Quartet (1999). **
Vendler, Helen. The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics (1988).
Vendler, Helen. The Given and the Made: Recent American Poets (1995). **
Von Hallberg, R. American Poetry and Culture 1945-1980 (1985).
Wilmer, Clive. Poets Talking (1994).
47
Poetry and Poetics [ENGL 2641]
Module convenor: Professor Jonathan Hart
Required Text: (reading moves systematically through the text as in Contents)
Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland, eds. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms.
New York: Norton, 2000.
Recommended Texts:
Ferguson, Margaret W. et al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Full Fifth Edition. New York:
Norton, 2004.
Finch, Annie. The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Furniss, Tom, and Michael Bath. Reading Poetry: An Introduction. Brighton: Harvester, 1996.
Giola, Dana. Barrier of a Common Language:
An American Looks at Contemporary British
Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Hollander, John. Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse . New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981. The Third Edition is 2000.
Larkin, Philip. Further Requirements
Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews, 195285. Ed. Anthony Thwaite Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Lennard, John. The Poetry Handbook Oxford, 1996. The Second Edition is 2005.
Nowottny, Winifred. The Language Poets Use. London: Athlone, 1962. There is a reprint in 2002
Pinsky, Robert, The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar Straus, 1998.
Preminger, Alex. et al. ed. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. The 1965 and 1974 editions are also helpful.
Roberts, Philip Davies, How Poetry Works. London: Penguin, 1986. There is a Second Edition in
2000
Wainwright, Jeffrey. Poetry: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2004.
48
Shakespeare on Film, 2012-2013 [ENGL 2171]
Course Outline. Vacation Reading and Viewing
Module conveners: Professor Corinne Saunders & Professor David
Fuller
The seminars will discuss a range of Shakespeare films including a selection from the
following: the classic films of Laurence Olivier (Henry V, Hamlet, Richard III and Othello),
Orson Welles (Macbeth, Othello and The Chimes at Midnight), Peter Brook (King Lear),
Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet), Peter Hall (A Midsummer Night’s Dream),
and Roman Polanski (Macbeth); Hollywood versions, such as the Max Reinhardt A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the Julius Caesars of 1953 and 1969; foreign language
versions, such as the Russian Hamlet and King Lear directed by Grigori Kozintsev, and
the Japanese adaptations of Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood, Ran); television versions,
including the BBC series of the complete plays; more recent films, including those of
Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and
As You Like It), Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet), Julie Taymor (Titus, The Tempest), and
Ralph Fiennes (Coriolanus); and experimental work by Celestino Coronado (Hamlet, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream), Derek Jarman (The Tempest; The Angelic Conversation) and
Peter Greenaway (Prospero’s Books).
During the vacation you should read some of the appropriate plays, and view a selection of
these films. See the following draft seminar programme for guidance.
The course will begin with Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V. You will be expected
to have read the play, seen both this film and Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V,
and read chapters 1 and 9 of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film
before the first seminar. A full booklist will be distributed at the first seminar.
The Library has multiple copies of the films to be discussed in seminars. It will be helpful in
using these if you can check that your college has DVD players (which must be multiregion, to play material sourced from the US). For the first time in 2011-12 the library
mounted weekly screenings of films to be studied in seminars. These screenings will
continue in 2012-13. Those taking the course will need to obtain their own copies of films
discussed in assessed essays, and should make appropriate arrangements for doing this
well in advance of the need. Copies cannot be obtained from the University bookshop, and
the University has no multiple-copy ordering arrangements with video and DVD stores.
Copies must, therefore, be ordered individually, in good time, from an appropriate supplier.
With the exception of the films of Akira Kurosawa, assessed essays must be about films
(or television productions) of works actually by Shakespeare (not films based on
Shakespeare scenarios, such as Ten Things I Hate About You, or Kiss Me Kate).
An up-to-date introduction providing a basic survey of the topic is:
Russell Jackson (ed.), Shakespeare on Film. Cambridge Companions, Cambridge, 2000,
2nd edition 2007. Everyone taking the course should have his or her own copy of this.
The module will also propose some reading in the practices of film and performance
criticism, using David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (McGrawHill, 9th edn., 2010). Please request a copy of this for your college library now.
All seminars will be concerned with one play and two films, which all participants will be
expected to read and to view. (This is a relatively new structure, devised in response to
questionnaire comments.)
49
Each seminar will also call for one or more pieces of critical reading – usually relevant
sections of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (ed. Russell Jackson,
CUP, 2000; 2nd edition, 2007), sometimes an essay or article from some alternative
source. Also for the first term’s seminars chapters on basic issues in film criticism are
recommended from David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 5th,
6th, 7th, 8th or 9th editions. (There are several copies of each of these editions in the
University Library, some in Short Loan, some available on 3-day loan.)
Play Texts and Film Texts. You should use up-to-date annotated editions of the plays
on which you write assessed essays. Editions of individual works with introductions,
annotation and textual apparatus include the Arden and Arden 3 (in which over thirty titles
have now been issued), New Penguin, New Cambridge and Oxford series (now available
as World’s Classics). It is best to use these, where you can, for seminar preparation. Many
of these editions are available in multiple copies in the University Library and in College
Libraries (all of which have been specifically asked to buy the Arden 3 titles as they come
out – so please enquire of your college librarian if your college library does not have them).
The full reading list for the module (to be distributed at the first seminar) will give details of
audio recordings held by the University Library which may be helpful in getting to know the
full text of a play relatively independent of directorial intervention.
Seminars will be organized partly round two student-led introductions, one of which will
use a short passage from the primary film to consider detail of the film text and / or the
play text, using either the particular issues raised by the section of Film Art read for that
seminar (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, style), or the textual detail of the
play for the section of the film chosen.
The organization of the course is largely in historical sequence, from the 1940s to the
present. This means that experiments with alternative modes of adaptation (opera, ballet,
and the completely filmic transformation, Ran) are automatically spaced out in the
syllabus. For obvious reasons, films selected for comparison cannot be considered in
historical sequence. The first term is concerned with twentieth-century films, the second
term sequenced largely with twenty-first century productions. The emphasis of the course
is on range of film types and variety of dramatic realizations. All types of Shakespeare
films are represented: general release, ‘art house’, television, foreign language films,
filmed theatre, and radical adaptation.
50
Draft Seminar Programme
Michaelmas Term
1. Laurence Olivier, Henry V (1944). Kenneth Branagh, Henry V (1989).
2. Orson Welles, Macbeth (1948). Roman Polanski, Macbeth (1971).
3. Franco Zeffirelli, Romeo and Juliet (1968). Kenneth Macmillan, Romeo and Juliet (2000,
La Scala Ballet).
4. Derek Jarman, The Tempest (1979). Peter Greenaway, Prospero’s Books (1991).
5. Trevor Nunn, Twelfth Night (1995). John Gorrie, Twelfth Night (1979, BBC).
Epiphany Term
6. Oliver Parker, Othello (1996). Franco Zeffirelli, Verdi, Otello (1986).
7. Michael Radford, The Merchant of Venice (2004). Trevor Nunn, The Merchant of Venice
(2003).
8. Trevor Nunn, King Lear (2007). Akiri Kurosawa, Ran (1985 – based on King Lear)
9. Gregory Doran, Hamlet (2009). Michael Almereyda, Hamlet (2000).
10. Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus (2011). Elijah Moshinsky, Coriolanus (1984, BBC).
Twenty films in ten seminars means that we are not, of course, able to accommodate all
the films that have recently proved popular on the course, particularly:
Orson Welles, Othello (1952), and The Chimes at Midnight (1965), Joseph Mankiewicz,
Julius Caesar (1953), Akiri Kurosawa, Throne of Blood (1957 – an adaptation of Macbeth),
and Ran (1985 – an adaptation of King Lear), Grigori Kozintsev, Hamlet (1964), and King
Lear (1971), Peter Brook, King Lear (1971), Richard Loncraine, Richard III (1995),
Kenneth Branagh, Hamlet (1996), and Julie Taymor, Titus (2000).
For assessed essays you may write about these, or any other films not on the seminar
syllabus but with a Shakespeare text.
51
Special Topic - Toni Morrison: Texts and Contexts
(ENGL2521)
Module Convenor: Dr Jennifer Terry
One of the most highly acclaimed contemporary novelists, Toni Morrison in her fiction
offers a powerful engagement with black diasporic experience and US society. This
module will encourage students to gain a detailed understanding of the full range of
Morrison’s writing, examining her short fiction, novels, children’s literature and critical work,
as well as introduce significant political, historical, intellectual and cultural contexts and a
selection of supplementary material, including literature by African American
contemporaries and samples of oral and musical heritage.
As an introduction to the module and the fiction, it might be useful for you to take a look at
the chapter on African American literature in Beginning Ethnic American Literatures by
Helena Grice, Candida Hepworth, Maria Lauret and Martin Paget (2001). Jill Matus’s book
Toni Morrison (1998) is another very good starting point. Because of the substantial
primary reading load for this module, it is also highly recommended that you make a start
on the programme’s novels (which are indicated in bold below) over the summer break,
although you will probably need to return to them during term time. DUO resources are
available for this module and should be of use in getting started at the beginning of the
year as well as with seminar preparation and writing your essays.
Week One – Introduction: A sample of music, short fiction (‘Recitatif’) and Morrison’s
critical commentary [I will provide these materials at the start of term]
Week Two – The Bluest Eye (1970) and Morrison’s children’s literature [You do not need
to
buy the children’s literature. The Big Box (1980), The Book of Mean People (2002),
Who’s Got Game?: Three Fables (2003), Peeny Butter Fudge (2009) and Little
Cloud and Lady Wind (2010) will be on reserve in the library]
Week Three – Sula (1973) and ‘Roselily’ and ‘Everyday Use’ by Alice Walker (1967) [I will
provide the Walker short stories]
Week Four – Song of Solomon (1977), ‘Sonny’s Blues’ by James Baldwin (1957) and a
representative black ‘flying’ tale [I will provide the Baldwin short fiction and the folk
story]
Week Five – Tar Baby (1981). Our supplementary text this week is an extract from
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (1983) [Which I will provide]
Week Six – Beloved (1987) and Dessa Rose by Sherley Anne Williams (1986) [We will
also
be looking at the historical documentation of Margaret Garner’s story but I will
provide these materials.]
Week Seven – Jazz (1992) and a selection of early twentieth century music and poetic
representations of Harlem [I will provide the poetry]
Week Eight – Paradise (1998)
Week Nine – Love (2003) / Home (2012)
52
Week Ten – A Mercy (2008)
Other Key Publications
Demme, Jonathan (dir.) Beloved (1998) [The DVD of this film adaptation is available in the
library and the department collection]
Denard, Carolyn (ed.) Toni Morrison: Conversations (2008)
Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay (eds) The Norton Anthology of African American
Literature (2004)
Hasnaoui, Mustapha (dir.) Margaret Garner (2007) [A documentary about the Margaret
Garner opera, including Morrison talking about her involvement – DVD available in
the library]
Hill, Patricia Liggins, Bernard W. Bell et al (eds) Call and Response: The Riverside
Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (1997)
Lee, Spike (dir.) Do the Right Thing (1989) [This film is available in DVD format in the
department collection]
Mitchell, Angelyn, Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism
from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present (1994)
Morrison, Toni, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993)
[Morrison’s main critical contribution, exploring how issues of race underlie
canonical American literary texts]
Morrison, Toni (ed.) Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence
Thomas and the Construction of Social Reality (1993)
Morrison, Toni, Remember: The Journey to School Integration (2004)
Morrison, Toni, Toni Morrison: What Moves at the Margins ed. by Carolyn Denard (2008)
[collects together many of Morrison’s essays, reviews and articles]
Morrison, Toni, and Claudia Brodsky Lacour (eds) Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script and
Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case (1997)
Taylor-Guthrie, Danille (ed.) Conversations with Toni Morrison (1994)
Selected Criticism on Toni Morrison
Significant resources for this module are the library’s periodical holdings. You will find
useful articles on Toni Morrison’s work in the journals listed below and these might be
especially helpful if you choose to write on her most recent novels: African American
Review, American Literature, Journal of American Studies, Modern Fiction Studies,
Contemporary Literature, Twentieth Century Literature, Callaloo, MELUS, Obsidian and
Black American Literature Forum.
There are special issues on Toni Morrison’s writing in Studies in the Literary Imagination
(1998), African American Review (2001) and Modern Fiction Studies (1993 and 2006). I
recently co-edited a special issue of MELUS, ‘Toni Morrison: New Directions’ 36, 2 (2011)
and this includes criticism on the latest novels.
Andrews, William L, and Nellie Y. McKay (eds) Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Casebook
(1999)
Babb, Valerie, ‘E Pluribus Unum?: The American Origins Narrative in Toni Morrison’s A
Mercy,’ MELUS 36, 2 (2011): 147-164
Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann (ed.) The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia (2003)
Bloom, Harold (ed.) Toni Morrison (2002)
Bloom, Harold (ed.) Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1999)
Bow, Leslie, ‘“Playing in the Dark” and the Ghosts in the Machine,’ American Literary
History 20, 3 (2008): 556-65
Carlacio, Jami (ed.) The Fiction of Toni Morrison: Reading and Writing on Race, Culture,
and Identity (2007)
53
Conner, Marc C. (ed.) The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable (2000)
Delois Jennings, La Vinia, Toni Morrison and the Idea of Africa (2008)
Durrant, Sam, Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning: J.M. Coetzee, Wilson
Harris, and Toni Morrison (2004)
Dussere, Erik, Balancing the Books: Faulkner, Morrison and the Economies of Slavery
(2003)
Duvall, John N, The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and
Postmodern Blackness (2000)
Eckard, Paula Gallant, Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason and
Lee Smith (2002)
Ferguson, Rebecca, ‘History, Memory and Language in Toni Morrison’s Beloved’ in Susan
Sellers, ed., Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice (1991), 109-28
Ferguson, Rebecca, Rewriting Black Identities: Transition and Exchange in the Novels of
Toni Morrison (2007)
Fultz, Lucille, Toni Morrison: Playing with Difference (2003)
Furman, Jan, Toni Morrison’s Fiction (1996)
Furman, Jan (ed.) Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon: A Casebook (2003)
Gates, Henry Louis, and K.A. Appiah (eds) Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and
Present (1993)
Gillespie, Carmen, Critical Companion to Toni Morrison: A Literary Reference to Her Life
and Work (2007)
Goyal, Yogita, ‘The Gender of Diaspora in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby,’ Modern Fiction
Studies 52, 2 (2006): 393-414
Grewal, Gurleen, Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle: The Novels of Toni Morrison (1998)
Heinert, Jennifer Lee Jordan, Narrative Conventions and Race in the Novels of Toni
Morrison
(2009)
Heinze, Denise, The Dilemma of "Double-Consciousness": Toni Morrison’s Novels (1993)
Higgins, Therese E, Religiosity, Cosmology and Folklore: The African Influence in the
Novels
of Toni Morrison (2001)
Iyasare, Solomon Ogbede, and Marla Iyasare (eds) Toni Morrison: Critical Insights (2010)
Kella, Elizabeth, Beloved Communities: Solidarity and Difference in Fiction by Michael
Ondaatje, Toni Morrison and Joy Kogawa (2000)
King, Lovalerie, and Lynn Orilla Scott (eds) James Baldwin and Toni Morrison:
Comparative
Critical and Theoretical Essays (2006)
Kolmerten, Carol A, Stephen M. Ross and Judith Bryant Wittenberg (eds) Unflinching
Gaze:
Morrison and Faulkner Re-envisioned (1997)
Lister, Rachel, Reading Toni Morrison (2009)
Lourdes López Ropero, María ‘“Trust Them to Figure It Out”: Toni Morrison's Books for
Children,’ Atlantis 30, 2 (2008): 43-57
Matus, Jill, Toni Morrison (1998)
Mayberry, Susan, Can’t I Love What I Criticize?: The Masculine and Morrison (2007)
Mbalia, Doreatha Drummond, Toni Morrison's Developing Class Consciousness (2008)
McKay, Nellie Y. (ed.) Critical Essays on Toni Morrison (1988)
Middleton, David L. (ed.) Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Contemporary Criticism (1997)
O’Reilly, Andrea, Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (2004)
Page, Philip, Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison’s Novels
(1995)
Peach, Linden, Toni Morrison (2000)
Peach, Linden (ed.) Toni Morrison New Casebooks (1998)
Peterson, Nancy, Beloved (2008)
54
Plasa, Carl, Toni Morrison: Beloved (1998)
Reames, Kelly, Toni Morrison's Paradise: A Reader's Guide (2001)
Russell, Danielle, Between the Angle and the Curve: Mapping Gender, Race, Space, and
Identity in Willa Cather and Toni Morrison (2006)
Smith, Valerie (ed.) New Essays on Song of Solomon (1995)
Solomon, Barbara H. (ed.) Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1998)
Stave, Shirley A. (ed.) Toni Morrison and the Bible: Contested Intertextualities (2006)
Tally, Justine (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison (2007)
Tally, Justine, Paradise Reconsidered: Toni Morrison’s (Hi)stories and Truths (1999)
Tally, Justine, The Story of "Jazz": Toni Morrison's Dialogic Imagination (2001)
Tally, Justine, Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Origins (2009)
Weinstein, Philip M., What Else But Love?: The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison
(1996)
Winfrey, Oprah, and Ken Regan, Journey to Beloved (1998) [About the making of the film
Beloved]
Wyatt, Jean, ‘Love's Time and the Reader: Ethical Effects of Nachträglichkeit in Toni
Morrison's Love,’ Narrative 16, 2 (2008): 192-221
Zauditu-Selassie, K, African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison (2009)
Social and Historical Contexts
Abrahams, Roger D, Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture in
the
Plantation South (1992)
Berlin, Ira, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (2003)
Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller (eds) Remembering Slavery: African
Americans Talk about their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation
(1998)
Carson, Clayborne (ed.) The Eyes on the Prize: Civil Rights Reader (1991)
Cook, Robert, Sweet Land of Liberty?: The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in
the
Twentieth Century (1998)
Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African
Americans (2000) [Helpful historical overview]
Giddings, Paula, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex
in
America (1984)
Klein, Martin A, Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition (2002)
Lerner, Gerda, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972)
Morgan, Kenneth J. (ed.) Slavery in America: A Reader and Guide (2004)
Weisenburger, Steven, Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from
the
Old South (1998) [Examines the Margaret Garner case]
General Critical and Theoretical Reading
Abel, Elizabeth, Barbara Christian and Helene Moglen (eds) Female Subjects in Black and
White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (1997)
Andrews, William L, Frances Smith Foster and Trudier Harris (eds) The Concise Oxford
Companion to African American Literature (2001)
Baker, Houston A, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory
(1984)
Baker, Houston A, Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing
(1991)
Balshaw, Maria, Looking for Harlem: Urban Aesthetics in African American Literature
(2000)
55
Bell, Bernard W, The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition (1987)
Bell, Bernard W, The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Modern
Literary Branches (2004)
Binder, Wolfgang (ed.) Slavery in the Americas (1993)
Boyce Davies, Carole, Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject
(1994)
Bracks, Lean'tin L, Writings on Black Women of the Diaspora: History, Language and
Identity (1998)
Braxton, Joanne M, Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition
(1989)
Bröck, Sabine, White Amnesia Black Memory?: American Women's Writing and History
(1999)
Carby, Hazel V, Race Men (1998)
Carby, Hazel V, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American
Woman
Novelist (1987)
Cartwright, Keith, Reading Africa into American Literature: Epics, Fables and Gothic Tales
(2002)
Christian, Barbara, Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers (1985)
Christian, Barbara, Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976
(1980)
Diedrich, Maria, Henry Louis Gates and Carl Pedersen (eds) Black Imagination and the
Middle Passage (1999)
Dixon, Melvin, Ride Out the Wilderness: Geography and Identity in Afro-American
Literature (1987)
Evans, Mari (ed.) Black Women Writers: Arguments and Interviews (1983)
Eversley, Shelly, The Real Negro: The Question of Authenticity in Twentieth-Century
African
American Literature (2003)
Eyerman, Ron, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity
(2001)
Fabre, Geneviève, and Michel Feith (eds) Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the
Harlem Renaissance (2001)
Fabre, Geneviève, and Robert O'Meally (eds) History and Memory in African-American
Culture (1994)
Gates, Henry Louis (ed.) Black Literature and Literary Theory (1990)
Gates, Henry Louis (ed.) Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (1990)
Gates, Henry Louis, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
(1988)
Gilroy, Paul, Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures (1993)
Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993)
Gordon, Lewis R, and Jane Anna Gordon (eds) A Companion to African American Studies
(2006)
Graham, Maryemma (ed.) Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel (2004)
Greene, Gayle, and Coppélia Kahn (eds) Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism
(1985)
Grice, Helena, Candida Hepworth, Maria Lauret and Martin Paget, Beginning Ethnic
American Literatures (2001)
James, Joy, and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (eds) The Black Feminist Reader (2000)
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia (ed.) Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism:
Writings on Black Women (1996)
Jones, Gayle, Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature (1991)
Kanneh, Kadiatu, African Identities: Race, Nation and Culture in Ethnography, PanAfricanism, and Black Literatures (1998)
56
King, Nicola, Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (2000)
Lewis, Samella, African American Art and Artists (1990)
McClure, John, Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Thomas Pynchon and Toni
Morrison (2007)
McDowell, Deborah E, and Arnold Rampersad (eds) Slavery and the Literary Imagination
(1989)
Nielsen, Aldon Lynn, Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation (2004)
Ostrom, Hans, and J. David Macey (eds) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African
American
Literature (2005)
Peterson, Nancy J., Against Amnesia: Contemporary Women Writers and the Crises of
Historical Memory (2001)
Plasa, Carl, and Betty J. Ring (eds) The Discourse of Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni
Morrison
(1994)
Pryse, Marjorie, and Hortense J. Spillers (eds) Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction and
Literary
Tradition (1985)
Rainwater, Catherine, and William J. Scheick (eds) Contemporary American Women
Writers:
Narrative Strategies (1985)
Rice, Alan, Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (2003)
Rushdy, Ashraf, Neo-Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of A Literary Form
(1999)
Russell, Sandi, Render Me My Song: African-American Women Writers from Slavery to
the
Present (2002)
Simawe, Saadi A. (ed.) Black Orpheus: Music in African American Fiction from the Harlem
Renaissance to Toni Morrison (2000)
Smith, Valerie, Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative (1987)
Sollors, Werner, and Maria Diedrich (eds) The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in
African American Literature and Culture (1994)
Spillers, Hortense J. (ed.) Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in
the
Modern Text (1991)
Sundquist, Eric J, To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature (1993)
Tate, Claudia, Black Women Writers at Work (1984)
Walker, Alice, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)
Walker, Melissa, Down from the Mountaintop: Black Women's Novels in the Wake of the
Civil Rights Movement, 1966-1989 (1991)
Wall, Cheryl A, (ed.) Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory and Writing
by
Black Women (1989)
Wall, Cheryl A, Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage and Literary Tradition
(2005)
Wallace, Maurice, Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African
American Men’s Literature and Culture 1775-1995 (2002)
Washington, Mary Helen, Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women, 1860-1960 (1987)
Wilentz, Gay, Binding Cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora (1992)
Willis, Susan, Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience (1987)
Zamora, Lois Parkinson (ed.) Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class,
Ethnicity (1998)
57
US Cold War Literature and Culture [ENGL 2631]
Module Convenor: Dr Daniel Grausam
2012-2013
Primary Texts: Literature (in order of reading). I have listed readily available editions, but please
feel free to use any that you find/have.
John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946; 1985). You need an edition that includes
Hersey’s 1985 addition (‘The Aftermath’).
James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover (1982; Knopf, 2011).
Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1952; Penguin, 2000).
E.L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel (1971; Penguin, 2006).
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977; Penguin, 2006).
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1987; Titan, 1987).
Richard Powers, Prisoner’s Dilemma (1988; Atlantic, 2010).
Don DeLillo, Underworld (1997; Picador, 1999).
Lydia Millet, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (2004; Vintage, 2007).
Films we will be viewing/discussing (in order).
Alain Resnais (dir.), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
Fred Zinnemann (dir.), High Noon (1952).
John Frankenheimer (dir.), The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
Stanley Kubrick (dir.), Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb (1964).
Nicholas Meyer (dir.), The Day After (1983).
Errol Morris (dir.), The Fog of War: Eleven Lesson from the Life of Robert S.
McNamara (2003).
Seminar Schedule
Seminar 1: The (Early) Nuclear Age
John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946; 1985).
Alain Resnais (dir.), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Seminar 2: The Cold War Intensifies: What Will the Future Hold?
James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover (1982) (with a focus on ‘The
Book of Ephraim’ (1976))
Fred Zinnemann (dir.), High Noon (1952)
Seminar 3: McCarthyism and Political Repression
Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1952)
E.L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel (1971)
Seminar 4: The Body Politic: Domesticity, Gender and Sexuality in the
Cold War
Sylvia Plath, selected poems (to be supplied)
John Frankenheimer (dir.), The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
58
Seminar 5: Laughing at the End of the World: Black Humour and Nuclear Threat
Donald Barthelme, ‘Game’ (1965)
Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’
Signs 12.4 (Summer 1987): 687-718. Available through JSTOR
Stanley Kubrick (dir.), Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb (1964)
Seminar 6: After: Traumatised Subjects
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977)
Nicholas Meyer (dir.), The Day After (1983)
Seminar 7: The Ends of Victory Culture
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1987)
Errol Morris (dir.), The Fog of War (2004)
Seminar 8: ‘Nuclear’ Families: Dread, Community and World War Three
Richard Powers, Prisoner’s Dilemma (1988)
Jacques Derrida, ‘No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles,
Seven Missives)’. Diacritics 14.2 (1984): 20–31. Available through
JSTOR.
Paul K. Saint-Amour, ‘Bombing and the Symptom: Traumatic Earliness and the
Nuclear Uncanny’. Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 30.4 (
2000): 59–82. (please pay particular attention to the first half of the
article). Available through Project Muse.
Seminar 9: Cold War Nostalgia?
Don DeLillo, Underworld (1997)
John Mearsheimer, ‘Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War’. The Atlantic
Monthly 266.2 (August 1990): 35-50. Available online at
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/foreign/mearsh.htm
Seminar 10. Time Travel; or After the Cold War
Lydia Millet, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (2004)
Alan Burdick ‘The Last Cold-War Monument’. Harper’s (August 1992): 62-67.
Selected Background Reading: This list is extensive, and by no means do I expect you to read all
(or even most) of it! However, those interested in getting a head start on engaging some of the key
issues of the module would do well to begin with the following:
Belletto, Steven. ‘Curbing Containment: Cold War Studies in the Twenty-First
Century’. Contemporary Literature 48.1 (2007): 150–164. (A very useful
review essay that discusses cultural criticism concerning the
Cold War)
Douglas, Ann. ‘Periodizing the American Century: Modernism, Postmodernism, and
Postcolonialism in the Cold War Context’. Modernism/Modernity 5.3
(1998): 71–98.
(An account of how these various periodizing terms might be put into conversation with
59
each other)
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound. New York: Basic Books, 2008. (The
appearance of the first edition in 1988 helped to launch the field of Cold
War studies, and Homeward Bound continues to be a very useful account
the impact of foreign on domestic life during the Cold War.)
of
Nadel, Alan. Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the
Atomic Age. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. (Along with May and Schaub,
Nadel helped to define the field’s contours, and this book offers an elegant blend of close
readings and broad claims.)
Piette, Adam. The Literary Cold War, 1945-Vietnam. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2009. (Piette’s introductory chapter is an especially
survey of critical responses to Cold War literature and culture.)
helpful
Schaub, Thomas H. American Fiction in the Cold War. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1991. (Those interested in the relationship between
politics
(esp. the history of the left) and fiction will find Schaub’s book
especially stimulating).
Cold War Literature
Belletto, Steven. No Accident, Comrade: Chance and Design in Cold War American Narratives.
New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2011.
Belletto, Steven, and Daniel Grausam, eds. American Literature and Culture in an Age of Cold
War: A Critical Reassessment. Iowa City: University Of Iowa Press, 2012.
Brians, Paul. Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984. Kent, Ohio: Kent State
University Press, 1987.
Brunner, Edward J. Cold War Poetry. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Caute, David. Politics and the Novel During the Cold War. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction
Publishers, 2010.
Cordle, Daniel. States of Suspense: The Nuclear Age, Postmodernism and United States Fiction and
Prose. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
Davidson, Michael. Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003.
Dewey, Joseph. In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear
Age. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1990.
Gery, John. Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry: Ways of Nothingness.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.
Grausam, Daniel. On Endings: American Postmodern Fiction and the Cold War. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Hammond, Andrew. Cold War Literature. Taylor & Francis, 2007.
Hammond, Andrew, ed. Cold War Literature: Writing the Global Conflict. New York: Routledge,
2009.
---. Global Cold War Literature: Western, Eastern and Postcolonial Perspectives. New York:
Routledge, 2011.
Hungerford, Amy. The Holocaust of Texts: Genocide, Literature, and Personification. Chicago:
University Of Chicago Press, 2003.
Jackson, Tony. ‘Postmodernism, Narrative, and the Cold War Sense of an Ending’. Narrative 8.3
(2000): 324–338.
Kim, Jodi. Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War. Minneapolis, MN: Univ Of
Minnesota Press, 2010.
Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.
60
Mickenberg, Julia L. Learning from the Left: Children’s Literature, the Cold War, and Radical
Politics in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005.
Nadel, Alan. Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Nelson, Deborah. Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America. New York: Columbia University Press,
2002.
Piette, Adam. The Literary Cold War, 1945-Vietnam. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
Schaub, Thomas H. American Fiction in the Cold War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1991.
Seed, David. American Science Fiction and the Cold War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2002.
Spanos, William V. The Errant Art of Moby-Dick: The Canon, the Cold War, and the Struggle for
American Studies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Cold War Culture
Belletto, Steven. ‘Curbing Containment: Cold War Studies in the Twenty-First Century’.
Contemporary Literature 48.1 (2007): 150–164.
Belletto, Steven, and Daniel Grausam, eds. American Literature and Culture in an Age of Cold
War: A Critical Reassessment. Iowa City: University Of Iowa Press, 2012.
Engelhardt, Tom. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a
Generation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
Field, Douglas, ed. American Cold War Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Foertsch, Jacqueline. Enemies Within: The Cold War and the AIDS Crisis in Literature, Film, and
Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Henriksen, Margot A. Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.
Kuznick, Peter J. Rethinking Cold War Culture. Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2010.
May, Lary, ed. Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War. Chicago:
University Of Chicago Press, 1989.
Medovoi, Leerom. “Cold War American Culture as the Age of Three Worlds.” Minnesota Review:
A Journal of Committed Writing 55-57 (2002): 167–186.
---. Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity. Durham: Duke University Press Books,
2005.
Nadel, Alan. Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Redding, Arthur. Turncoats, Traitors, and Fellow Travelers: Culture and Politics of the Early Cold
War. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2008.
Rubin, Andrew N. Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2012.
Saunders, Frances Stonor. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New
York: New Press, The, 2001.
Schreiber, Rebecca M. Cold War Exiles in Mexico: U. S. Dissidents and the Culture of Critical
Resistance. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2008.
Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. 2nd ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996.
Cold War Film, Television, and Visual Art
Corkin, Stanley. Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2004.
Doherty, Thomas. Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago:
61
University Of Chicago Press, 1985.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye, and Gaspar Gonzalez. What Have They Built You to Do?: The
Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 2006.
Litvak, Joseph. The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist, and Stoolpigeon Culture. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2009.
Shaw, Tony. Hollywood’s Cold War. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
Shaw, Tony, and Denise J. Youngblood. Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle
for Hearts and Minds. Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas, 2010.
Nuclear Culture
Bartter, Martha A. The Way to Ground Zero: The Atomic Bomb in American Science Fiction. New
York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Belletto, Steven. “The Game Theory Narrative and the Myth of the National Security State.”
American Quarterly 61.2 (2009): 333–357.
Binstock, Jonathan P., and Corcoran Gallery of Art. Atomic Time: Pure Science and Seduction.
Washington, D.C: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2003.
Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert
Oppenheimer. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.
Boyer, Paul S. By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the
Atomic Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Bradley, John. Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader. Tucson, AZ: U of Arizona P, 2000.
Canaday, John. The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
Chaloupka, William. Knowing Nukes: The Politics and Culture of the Atom. Minneapolis, MN:
Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Cirincione, Joseph. Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2008.
Cordle, Daniel. States of Suspense: The Nuclear Age, Postmodernism and United States Fiction and
Prose. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
Davis, Tracy C. Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2007.
DeGroot, Gerard J. The Bomb: A Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Derrida, Jacques. “No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives).”
Diacritics 14.2 (1984): 20–31.
Dowling, David. Fictions of Nuclear Disaster. Iowa City: Univ of Iowa Press, 1987.
Ghamari-Tabrizi, Sharon. The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear
War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Goin, Peter. Nuclear Landscapes. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Grausam, Daniel. “Games People Play: Metafiction, Defense Strategy, and the Cultures of
Simulation.” ELH 78.3 (2011): 507–532.
Jacobs, Robert A. The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2010.
Klein, Richard. “The Future of Nuclear Criticism.” Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 76–100.
Luckhurst, Roger. “Nuclear Criticism: Anachronism and Anachorism.” Diacritics: A Review of
Contemporary Criticism 23.2 (1993): 89–97.
Norris, Margot. Writing War in the Twentieth Century. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2000.
Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1996.
---. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Saint-Amour, Paul K. “Bombing and the Symptom: Traumatic Earliness and the Nuclear Uncanny.”
Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 30.4 (2000): 59–82.
62
Schell, Jonathan. The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2000.
Schwenger, Peter. Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Zins, Daniel L. “Exploding the Canon: Nuclear Criticism in the English Department.” Papers on
Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature
26.1 (1990): 13–40.
Nuclear Strategy
Freedman, Lawrence. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 3rd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Kahn, Herman. On Thermonuclear War. New Brusnwick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 2007.
Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.
Landa, Manuel de. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. New York: Zone, 1991.
Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence: With a New Preface and Afterword. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008.
Cold War History
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2006.
---. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1998.
McMahon, Robert J. The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003.
Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
The Cold War and Domesticity
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
McEnaney, Laura. Civil Defense Begins at Home. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Monteyne, David. Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War. Minneapolis, MN:
Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Rose, Kenneth D. One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture. New York:
NYU Press, 2004.
The Cold War and Gender/Sexuality
Clark, Suzanne. Cold Warriors: Manliness on Trial in the Rhetoric of the West. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.
Corber, Robert J. Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, National Identity, and Hollywood Cinema.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.
---. Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity. Durham: Duke
University Press, 1997.
---. In the Name of National Security: Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of
Gender in Postwar America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
Friedman, Andrea. “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War
Politics.” American Quarterly 57.4 (2005): 1105–1129.
Jackson, Tony. “The Manchurian Candidate and the Gender of the Cold War.” Literature Film
Quarterly 28.1 (2000): 34–40.
Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the
Federal Government. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2006.
The Cold War and Political Repression
Carmichael, Virginia. Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War. Minneapolis,
MN: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Carruthers, Susan L. Cold War Captives: Imprisonment, Escape, and Brainwashing. Berkeley and
63
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.
Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000.
Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the
Federal Government. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2006.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
The Cold War and Religion
Herzog, Jonathan P. The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against
Communism in the Early Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2011.
Stevens, Jason W. God-Fearing and Free: A Spiritual History of America’s Cold War. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 2010.
The Cold War’s Cultural Legacy
Cohen, Samuel. After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s. Iowa City: University Of
Iowa Press, 2009.
Gallagher, Carole. American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War. New York: Random House,
1994.
Grausam, Daniel. “‘It Is Only a Statement of the Power of What Comes After’: Atomic Nostalgia
and the Ends of Postmodernism.” American Literary History 24.2 (2012): 308–336.
Knight, Peter. ‘Beyond the Cold War in Don DeLillo’s Mao II and Underworld.’ American Fiction
of the 1990s: Reflections of History and Culture. London, England: Routledge, 2008. 193–
205.
Mraović-O’Hare, Damjana. “The Beautiful, Horrifying Past: Nostalgia and Apocalypse in Don
DeLillo’s Underworld’. Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 53.2 (2011):
213–239.
Schaub, Thomas Hill. ‘Underworld, Memory, and the Recycling of Cold War Narrative’. Don
DeLillo: Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man. New York, NY: Continuum, 2011. 69–82.
Shambroom, Paul. Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality After the Cold War. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Taylor, Bryan C. ‘Radioactive History: Rhetoric, Memory, and Place in the Post-Cold War Nuclear
Museum’. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials. Tuscaloosa,
AL: U of Alabama P, 2010. 57–86.
Vanderbilt, Tom. Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America. Chicago:
University Of Chicago Press, 2010.
Wegner, Phillip E. Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: U.S. Culture in the Long Nineties.
Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2009.
64
GERMANIC MYTH AND LEGEND [ENGL 2371]
Module convenor: Dr David Ashurst
The module offers the student three major opportunities:
 to engage in detailed analysis of the legends surrounding Sigurd the dragon-slayer
and analogous stories as preserved chiefly in Old Norse but also in Old English and
German works
 to acquire a sophisticated understanding of Old Norse mythology
 to appreciate the ways in which this material has been used in major works of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
All medieval and foreign texts will be studied in modern English translation. In the first part
of the course we will discuss the main primary texts, including Völsunga saga and Snorri
Sturluson’s Edda in relation to the poems of The Elder Edda; and we will seek to
understand their nature as literary creations. The second part of the module will focus on
particular gods – Odin, Loki and the deities of fertility – for in-depth analysis of their myths.
The final part will be devoted to modern works that draw inspiration from these sources,
with emphasis on Richard Wagner, William Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien
During the summer please prepare by reading Völsunga saga, The Poetic Edda and the
first part of Snorri’s Edda. For context, a good place to start would be with Lindow 2001.
For the first seminar please be ready to discuss Völsunga saga.
You will need to buy your own copies of the asterisked items (please note the asterisked
text by Morris). Secondary works marked ^ are especially useful.
Basic Reading List – a longer version will be available on Duo
1. MAIN MEDIEVAL SOURCES
*The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore, trans. Andy Orchard, London: Penguin Classics,
2011. (‘Elder Edda’ is an alternative title for what is more commonly called ‘The
Poetic Edda’. You could use The Poetic Edda (1997), trans. Carolyne Larrington, if
you already own that.)
*Völsunga saga, trans. Jesse L. Byock (as The Saga of the Volsungs), London: Penguin,
1999.
*Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes, London: Dent, 1987. If you are unable to
obtain a copy, use the translation by Byock (2005).
The Saga of Thidrek of Bern, trans. Edward R. Haymes, New York: Garland, 1988.
Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney, London: Faber, 1999 (or later editions).
The Nibelungenlied, trans. A. T. Hatto, London: Penguin, 1965.
2. OTHER MEDIEVAL SOURCES
The Poetic Edda (1969/1997/2011), ed. Ursula Dronke, 3 vols, Oxford: OUP. (I - Heroic
Poems; II - Mythological Poems; III - Mythological Poems 2). All vols contain ed.,
trans. and detailed discussion of several poems.
The Poetic Edda (1997), trans. Carolyne Larrington, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, trans. Jesse Byock, London: Penguin, 2005 (NB, this is
not a complete version but it has the merit of making some of the material more
accessible).
65
Snorri Sturluson (1998, 2005). Edda. Vol.1, Prologue and Gylfaginning, 2nd edn (2005);
vol. 2, Skáldskaparmál, 2 parts (1998). London: Viking Society. (Edition of the Old
Icelandic text, without translation but with useful notes in English.)
Völsunga saga, The Saga of the Volsungs, ed. and trans. R.G. Finch, London: Nelson,
1965. Available as a PDF for free download at http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/.
Beowulf and its Analogues, trans. G.N. Garmonsway and Jacqueline Simpson, London:
Dent, 1980 (includes a translation of Beowulf and much other legendary material on
Ermanneric, Sigemund and others).
Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, 4th edn, Toronto:
Toronto UP, 2008 (standard edition of the Old English, with extensive notes).
3. MODERN TEXTS AND STUDIES
a) Wagner
Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Metropolitan Opera conducted by James
Levine, Deutsche Grammophon DVD. (Complete performance in a production that
looks much as Wagner would have expected.)
Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Complete recordings on CD: conducted by
Georg Solti, Decca; conducted by Daniel Baremboim, Telarc. There are many
more: Levine, Karajan, Böhm, Janowski, Boulez. Complete versions on DVD:
conducted by Baremboim; conducted by Levine; conducted by Boulez. Productions
involving jackboots are best avoided.
Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion, ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington,
London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Text, translation and some commentary.
^Árni Björnsson, Wagner and the Volsungs, London: Viking Society, 2003. Available as a
PDF for free download at http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/.
Thomas Grey, ed., Cambridge Companion to Wagner, Cambridge: CUP, 2008.
^Bryan Magee, Aspects of Wagner, London: Ross, 1968 (and later editions, OUP, 1988 still the best short introduction).
Barry Millington, ed., The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner’s Life and Music,
London: Thames and Hudson, 1992.
Ernest Newman, Wagner Nights, London: Putnam, 1949 (sensible and detailed accounts
of the operas).
Michael Tanner, Wagner, London: HarperCollins, 1996 (an excellent study focused not on
the man but on his works).
b) Morris
*William Morris, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs, Place not
specified: Elibron, 2004. ISBN-13: 978-1402150067. Available through Amazon.
Other printings by other publishers are also available. Note that the Kindle edition is
abridged and the poem is formatted like prose.
William Morris, The Collected Works of William Morris, ed. May Morris. 24 vols, London:
Longmans, 1910-15. The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs (i.e. trans. of
Völsunga saga) is in vol. VII; The Story of Sigurd occupies vol. XII; The Story of the
Volsungs is also available online at http://omacl.org/Volsunga/preface.html and
http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/volsungasagatext.html; The Story of Sigurd the
Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs is available in an abridged form at
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13486
^David Ashurst, ‘William Morris and the Volsungs’ in Old Norse Made New, ed. David
Clark and Carl Phelpstead, London: Viking Society, 2007, pp. 43-61.
Peter Faulkner, William Morris. The Critical Heritage, London: Routlege and Kegan Paul,
1973.
Peter Faulkner, Against the Age. An Introduction to William Morris, London: Allen and
Unwin,1980.
66
Peter Faulkner and Peter Preston, eds., William Morris. Centenary Essays, Exeter: Exeter
UP, 1999.
Paul Thompson, The Work of William Morris, Oxford: OUP, 1991.
c) Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, (any edition), The Hobbit (any edition), The
Silmarillion (any edition).
J.R.R. Tolkiien, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, ed. Christopher Tolkien, London:
HarperCollins, 2009.
^Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-Earth, 3rd edn, London: HarperCollins, 2005.
Robert Eaglestone, Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien’s Trilogy,
Continuum, 2005.
Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, eds, Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best
of Tolkien Criticism, Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
d) General
Old Norse Made New, ed. David Clark and Carl Phelpstead, London: Viking Society, 2007.
(Recent studies of nineteenth and twentieth-century reception of the material.)
Andrew Wawn, ed. (1994). Northern Antiquity: The Post-Medieval Reception of Edda and
Saga. London: Hisarlik. (See especially chapters 3, 9 and 12.)
4. STUDIES ON LEGEND AND MYTH
^Christopher Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, London: Continuum, 2011.
Paul Acker and Carolyne Larrington, eds., The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse
Mythology. London: Routledge, 2002.
^Theodore M. Andersson, The Legend of Brynhild, Islandica XLIII, Cornell 1980.
Marlene Ciklamini, Snorri Sturluson, Boston MA: Twayne, 1978.
Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, 2 vols., Odense: Southern Denmark UP, 19948.
Hilda Ellis-Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, London: Penguin, 1964.
Hilda Ellis-Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe, London: Hutchinson paperback,
1993.
G. Dumézil, Gods of the Ancient Northmen, ed. Einar Haugen, Berkeley / Los Angeles /
London: University of California, 1973.
^John Lindow, Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals and Beliefs,
Oxford: OUP, 2001.
John McKinnell and Maria-Elena Ruggerini, Both One and Many: Essays on Change and
Variety in late Norse Heathenism, Rome: Il Calamo, 1994.
John McKinnell, Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer,
2005.
Myth in Early Northwest Europe, ed. Stephen O. Glosecki, Tempe: Arizona Centre for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Turnhout: Brepols), 2007.
Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions, ed.
Anders Andrén, Kritina Jemmbert and Catharina Raudvere, Vägar till Midgård 8,
Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006. (Contains many interesting and useful
essays.)
Reflections on Old Norse Myths, ed. Pernille Hermann, Jens Peter Schødt and Rasmus
Tranum Kristensen, Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. (Almost all the essays in this book
could be useful, and there is a lot of bibliography.)
Jens Peter Schødt, Initiation Between Two Worlds: Structure and Symbolism in PreChristian Scandinavia. Viking Collection 17. Odense: Southern-Denmark UP,
2008.
67
J. Michael Stitt, Beowulf and the Bear’s Son: Epic, Saga, and Fairytale in Northern
Germanic Tradition, New York: Garland, 1994.
^E.O.G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, London, 1964. (Apart from the
authoritative discussion of myths, see ch. 10, ‘The Divine Heroes’, on Ermanneric,
Sigurðr and the Burgundians).
Kevin J. Wanner, Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in
Medieval Scandinavia. Toronto: Toronto UP, 2008.
5. MYTH THEORY
D.S. Brewer, Symbolic Stories. Traditional Narratives of the Family Drama in English
Literature, 2nd ed., London: Longmans, 1987.
J. Campbell, The Masks of God, 4 vols., New York, 1974.
Kathryn Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis, Responses to Reality in Western Literature, London
and New York, 1984.
C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, The Collected Works of C.G.
Jung, vol. 9, part 1, 2nd ed., London, 1968.
Edmund Leach, Lévi-Strauss (Fontana Modern Masters Series), London: Fontana, 1970.
^John McKinnell, Meeting the Other (see section 5 above); see ch. 2 for summaries of the
contributions of important theorists.
Myth, a Symposium, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok, University of Indiana, 1955, paperback 1961.
6. REFERENCE AND BACKGROUND READING
A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk, Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005 and 2007.
Joseph Harris, ‘Eddic Poetry’, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, A Critical Guide, ed. Carol
J. Clover and John Lindow, Islandica XLV, Cornell, 1985, pp. 68-156.
Richard North and Joe Allard, eds, Beowulf and Other Stories: A New Introduction to Old
English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures, Harlow: Pearson, 2007.
Jónas Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas. Iceland's Medieval Literature, Reykjavík, 1988.
^P. Pulsiano and others, Medieval Scandinavia, an Encyclopedia, New York and London:
Garland, 1993.
Margaret Clunies Ross, Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society, Odense: Southern
Denmark UP, 2003.
^R. Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer,
1993.
E.O.G. Turville-Petre, The Heroic Age of Scandinavia, London 1951.
E.O.G. Turville-Petre, Origins of Icelandic Literature, Oxford, 1953.
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English Literature 1066-1348: From Conquest to Plague
[ENGL 2531]
Module convenor: Dr Neil Cartlidge
Please note that this module will be taught by weekly seminars in Michaelmas
Term only
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This module addresses texts written in English, French and Latin – but students taking
this course will be given access to all of them in translation (and are not expected to
study any of them in their original form, though not discouraged from doing so either).
The selected texts include:
the extraordinary twelfth-century biography of one of the most formidable female
personalities of the Middle Ages, the anchoress Christina of Markyate;
the beautiful illuminated manuscript known as the St Albans Psalter (now in
Hildesheim, Germany) – a manuscript that Christina probably once owned – and its
version of one of the seminal texts in French literature, the Life of St Alexis;
the Bayeux tapestry’s portrait of the Battle of Hastings (a “masterpiece of spin, in
every sense of the word”), which we will read in conjunction with the poem on the
history of the Normans by the Jerseyman, Wace
a group of thirteenth-century prose-texts (the AB-group) designed as reading-matter
for religious women, which constitute, in effect, the first flourishing of Middle English
prose;
British legendary history (including the legend of King Arthur), as first formulated by
Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s, and also in a thirteenth-century English version
by a certain “La3amon”
an interesting ‘local’ writer – the prolific Lawrence of Durham – who witnessed
Durham’s struggle against virtual annexation by the Scots during the so-called
“Anarchy” of King Stephen’s reign
three entertaining works by the mysterious Anglo-Norman writer known only as
“Chardri” (The Seven Sleepers, St Josaphaz – i.e. the Buddha – and the Little
Debate), which survive with the Middle English poem, The Owl and the Nightingale,
the earliest extant long comic text in English
NB Descriptions of the course published before May 2011 promise seminars on Gui de
Warewic, The Song of the Battle of Hastings and Walter Map: in the past I have been
able to teach these texts by judicious photocopying. Unfortunately this is not
sustainable; and I have had to alter the run of seminars to include some more
accessible texts instead.
course web-page: http://www.neilcartlidge.co.uk/Conquest/ [login/password: purple]
Before the course begins, you are advised to read the whole of the Roman de Rou
and to try and familiarize yourself with the Bayeux Tapestry – which will be
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discussed in the first two seminars; and also to read the whole of Christina’s Life (in
Talbot’s translation) – which will be central to the third and fourth seminars.
Books to buy (if at all possible):
Talbot, C.H., ed./trans., The Life of Christina of Markyate, revised paperback edition by
Henrietta Leyser and Samuel Fanous (Oxford: OUP, 2008) [currently £4.55 on Amazon]
Burgess, Glyn S., The History of the Norman People: Wace’s ‘Roman de Rou’
(Woodbridge, 2004) [£19 new; second-hand copies at about £15; one copy in DUL]
Millett, Bella, & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ed./trans. Medieval English Prose for Women:
from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990) [getting rather
expensive at £38, but there are plenty of second-hand copies @ about £18; there is also
one copy in the Main Library, and no fewer than four copies in various college libraries]
Barron, W.R.J., & S.C. Weinberg, trans., La3amon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of
La3amon’s Brut (Harlow, Longman, 1989; or Exeter: U of Exeter P, 2001) [@ about £18, if
you have difficulty getting hold of this particular book, there are other translations
available, listed in the description of seminars below; and some of these might be cheaper
too – e.g. Ros Allen’s translation is only about £13 second-hand, and just as good]
Reeve, Michael D. & Neil Wright, ed./trans., Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the
Kings of Britain, ed. & trans. (Woodbridge: 2007) [up-to-date new edition, but pricey at £23
new] OR trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1966, freq. repr.) [as little as £8 new and
many second-hand copies – some copies in DUL]
Books you might like to think about buying (but are certainly not obliged to):
Hicks, Carola, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (London, 2007) – a
paperback, only £7 new [only the first chapter is strictly relevant to this course, but the
whole book is entertaining – light reading for the train, maybe?]
Musset, Lucien, The Bayeux Tapestry, trans. Richard Rex (Woodbridge, 2005) – a
facsimile of the whole tapestry, beautiful book, currently just £18 on Amazon
Fanous, Samuel, & Henrietta Leyser, eds, Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy
Woman, (London: Routledge, 2004) [a very recent and remarkably lavish collection of
essays about Christina: currently £19 new – plenty of second-hand copies, but they aren’t
usually much cheaper]
Some background reading:
Ashe, Laura, Fiction and History in England, 1066-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2007)
Barlow, Frank, ed./trans., The Carmen de Hastingae proelio (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999) [a
useful literary analogue to the Bayeux Tapestry, and which I have in the past taught along
with the Tapestry: still recommended as background reading]
Bartlett, Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000) [history; the most authoritative, recent account of the period]
Bennett, J.A.W., & G.V. Smithers, Early Middle English Verse and Prose, 2nd edn (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1968) [a selection of ME texts (in the original, but with plenty of useful help):
long out of print, but very widely available second-hand, often for as little as £5 – DUL has
one copy]
Clanchy, M.T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307: Second Edition
(Oxford and Cambridge MA: Blackwell, 1993) [a historical survey of literacy in this period:
very readable and informative]
Crick, Julia, and Elisabeth van Houts, eds, A Social History of England, 900–1200
(Cambridge: CUP, 2011)
Dickins, Bruce, & R.M. Wilson, eds, Early Middle English Texts (London: Bowes & Bowes,
1951) [also long out of print: a similar book to Bennett & Smithers and a possible
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alternative: again quite widely available second-hand, but probably more expensive than B
& S – DUL has one copy]
Gray, Douglas, From the Norman Conquest to the Black Death: An Anthology of Writings
from England (Oxford: OUP, 2011) [quite a lot of useful background material, though the
translations are often less than elegant]
Harper-Bill, Christopher, and Elisabeth van Houts, A Companion to the Anglo-Norman
World (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002)
James, M.R., ed./trans., Walter Map, De nugis curialium: Courtiers' trifles, revised by
C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) [1 copy in the library: this is a
book that I would like to have been able to make a set-text, since its contents are intriguing
– but it is too expensive, unfortunately…]
Legge, M. Dominica, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon,
1963) [survey of Anglo-Norman literature: now getting rather outdated]
Leyser, Henrietta, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500
(London: Phoenix, 1995) [a brilliantly readable synthesis of the current state of knowledge
about medieval women]
Prestwich, Michael, Plantagenet England, 1225-1360 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005) [history:
in the same series as Bartlett’s book: see above]
Rigg, A.G., A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 1066-1422 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992) [a rather uneven book, but still the best and most up-to-date
survey of Anglo-Latin literature in this period; and quite readable in its way]
Salter, Elizabeth, English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of
Medieval England, ed. Derek Pearsall and Nicolette Zeeman (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge
UP, 1988), pp. 1-100 (‘An obsession with the continent’) [an excellent survey of England’s
trilingual literary culture: still the best discussion of the subject available, even though it
was unfinished at the author’s death]
Weiss, Judith, The Birth of Romance: An Anthology: Four Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman
romances (London: Everyman, 1992) [A new edition of this book has appeared in the
French in England Translations Series – http://www.acmrs.org/publications/mrts/frets.html
– At £28 before p&p, it is a little pricey – DUL will have one copy of each of the two
editions: it would have been nice to make this a set-text: I don’t think that’s practicable, but
I still recommend this volume to anyone interested in romance]
Weiss, Judith, Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic, FRETS (Tempe AZ, 2008) – only
available via FRETS (see above): the same problem, it’s a little pricey: DUL will have one
copy: again I can’t make this a set-text, but I recommend it as background reading
Wilson, R.M., Early Middle English Literature, 3rd edn (London: Methuen, 1968) [also quite
outdated, but continues to be influential in some ways, not least in institutionalizing the
idea of “early Middle English literature”]
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, ‘”Clerc u lai, muïne u dame’: women and Anglo-Norman
hagiography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,’ in Women and Literature in Britain:
1150-1500, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993) [medieval women:
perhaps particularly useful as background for Christina of Markyate and/or the AB-texts]
Seminar-Order
This is the plan for the ten seminars in the course. It can be changed if the participants
agree that it should be:
1. The Battle of Hastings: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Roman de Rou (Part 1: The
Tapestry)
2. The Battle of Hastings: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Roman de Rou (Part II: The
Roman)
3. Christina of Markyate, St Alexis and the St Albans Psalter (Part I: Christina)
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4. Christina of Markyate, St Alexis and the St Albans Psalter (Part II: St Alexis and the
Psalter)
5. The Legendary History of Britain (Part I: Geoffrey of Monmouth)
6. Lawrence of Durham: Dialogues
7. The AB-Group (Part I: Ancrene Wisse)
8. The AB-Group (Part II: Holy Maidenhood and St Margaret)
9. “Chardri” and The Owl and the Nightingale
10. The Legendary History of Britain (Part II: La3amon’s Brut)
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Landscape and ‘the Condition of England’ [ENGL 2551]
Module convenor: Dr Simon Grimble
This is an introductory reading list of primary texts, in a roughly chronological order: it
would be excellent if you read widely in the texts you are unfamiliar with, thinking about the
various ways in which they see and imagine the landscape of England and how they relate
that to the condition of its people.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) (R.E.: Norton, ed. George Ford and Sylvère
Monod, 0393975606)
John Ruskin, ‘Unto This Last’ and Other Writings, ed. Clive Wilmer (Penguin,
0140432116), especially ‘The Two Boyhoods’.
Richard Jefferies, After London; or, Wild England (1885) (the Echo Library,
1846378672)
A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896) in Collected Poems (Penguin, 0140587500)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895) (R.E.: Norton, ed. Norman Page,
039397278X)
E.M. Forster, Howards End (1910) (R.E.: Penguin, ed. Oliver Stallybrass,
0141183357)
Edward Thomas, Collected Poems (R.E.: Faber, ed. R. George Thomas, 0571222609)
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Four Quartets in Collected Poems (Faber:
0571105483)
W.H. Auden, Poems (1930), in The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic
Writings (Faber, 0571115020: available second-hand via Amazon. Auden’s
Collected Poems (Faber, 0571237401) also contains the same poems)
Edward Upward, ‘The Railway Accident’, in The Railway Accident and Other Stories
(Penguin: available second-hand via Amazon; photocopies of this story will
be distributed next year)
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) (R.E: Penguin, ed. Peter Davison,
0141185295)
Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (Faber, 0571216544)
Roy Fisher, ‘City’ in The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 (Bloodaxe,
1852247010)
Jonathan Coe, What A Carve Up! (Penguin 0141033290)
Iain Sinclair, Lights Out For the Territory (1997) (Penguin, 0141014830)
It would also be very helpful to read widely in Raymond Williams’ critical work, The
Country and the City (1973). A full reading list, including all secondary works (contextual,
theoretical, philosophical as well as critical), will be distributed at the beginning of the
academic year.. During the module connections will be made to various other media and
art forms, including painting, photography, film and music. Do feel free to contact me if you
have any questions.
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