Welcome to the Advanced Seminar in Literature and Literary Theory. For course syllabus and some general sources, please go to the Resources tab. Texts for individual sessions are attached to the Lessons here.

Course Introduction. M.H. Abrams’s Typology of Literary Theories Reading: - Assignments/deadlines: presentations and short essay topics assigned

Narrative Discourse vs. Story, Focalization Reading: James Joyce, “The Sisters”. Jeri Johnson, Introduction to the Oxford Classics edition of Dubliners (extract) Presentation: Ireland in the early 1900s: Political Issues of the Day

Focalization and Gender Reading: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”; Julie Bates Dock, et al. “‘But One Expects That’: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and the Shifting Light of Scholarship” Presentation: Gilman and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Modernist Narrative Strategies Reading: Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss”; Elizabeth Bowen, “Sunday Afternoon”; Peter Childs, Modernism (extract); Clair Wills, That Neutral Island (extracts) Presentation: Elizabeth Bowen and Ireland during World War II

The Uncanny and the Grotesque in Narrative Reading: Franz Kafka, “Metamorphosis”; Flann O’Brien, “John Duffy’s Brother”; the uncanny and the grotesque: definitions (pdf handout) Assignments/deadlines: short essay due

Narrative on Narrative Reading: Samuel Beckett, Ill Seen Ill Said; “Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit” (extracts); James Knowlson, Damned to Fame (extracts) Presentation: Ill Seen Ill Said

Poetic Form Reading: William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 60”; P.B. Shelley, “Ozymandias”; Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”; Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I, being born a woman and distressed”; Rita Dove, “Demeter’s Prayer to Hades” Presentation: The History of the Sonnet

Poetry and Politics Reading: W.B. Yeats, “Meditations in Time of Civil War”; R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life. Vol. 2. The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939 (extract); A. Norman Jeffares, A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (extract) Presentation: Irish History and Politics, 1891-1923

Poetry and Politics Reading: Seamus Heaney, “North”, “Punishment”, “Strange Fruit”; Stuart McLean, “Bodies from the Bog: Metamorphosis, Non-Human Agency and the Making of ‘Collective’ Memory” Presentation: The Troubles in Northern Ireland

Drama on the Page and Drama on the Stage. Positioning the Audience Reading: Samuel Beckett, Happy Days; Maurice Harmon, ed. No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (extracts) Presentation: Happy Days

Interpretive Contexts Reading: Václav Havel, The Garden Party; Jan Grossman on the theatre of the absurd (extracts) Assignments/deadlines: abstract for final essay due Presentation: Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd

Dramatic Form and Politics Reading: Suzan-Lori Parks, Venus; Christopher Innes, “Staging Black History: Re-Imaging Cultural Icons” Presentation: Suzan-Lori Parks on the “Black Play”

Positioning the Audience and the Fetishisation of Art Reading: Tim Crouch, My Arm; Seda Ilter, “‘A Process of Transformation’: Tim Crouch on My Arm”. Assignments/deadlines: final essay due Presentation: The Contexts of Crouch’s Theatrical Experiments

A summary of the class debates, including instructor feedback on final essays and student feedback on the course.