Both the readings by class session and a complete bibliography of all readings are listed below.
| 1 |
Introductions
Comedy as a Literary Genre
As a World-view
As a Relation to Power
As an Attitude
As a Textual Strategy
As a Relation to "Truth" or Truth-telling |
Welsch. Trickster Tales.
Sheridan's School for Scandal. |
| 2 |
Why Does Dante put Ulysses in Hell?
Is Comedy Funny? |
Dante. "Ulysses" section, "Canto XXVI" of Inferno.
Tennyson. "Ulysses."
Stevens. "The Sail of Ulysses."
Eco. "The Frames of Comic Freedom." |
| 3 |
Subversion, Restlessness, and Established Orders |
Dante. "Ulysses" section, "Canto XXVI" of Inferno. (cont.)
Tennyson. "Ulysses." (cont.)
Stevens. "The Sail of Ulysses." (cont.)
Eco. "The Frames of Comic Freedom." (cont.)
For reference: Bakhtin and Freud.
Sheridan's School for Scandal. |
| 4 |
Character and Psychology in Chaucer
Irony and Tone: Chaucer's Narrator and Questions of Knowledge and Judgment (What he knows and what he tells; What the characters know about themselves; What we know.) |
Chaucer. "General Prologue." Canterbury Tales.
———. "Prologue," and "Tale." Wife of Bath.
Apt. "Sexual Inequality in Humor."
Walker. "Humor of the Minority." |
| 5 |
Gender and Humor |
Chaucer. "General Prologue." Canterbury Tales. (cont.)
———. "Prologue," and "Tale." Wife of Bath. (cont.)
Apt. "Sexual Inequality in Humor." (cont.)
Walker. "Humor of the Minority." (cont.) |
| 6 |
Satanic Irony
Satan as "Hero"
Satan as the Butt of the Joke
Cosmic Order, Milton's Diction, and Grammatical Subordination
Milton's Style: (Greek Epic / Homeric Similes, Biblical Story, Christian Allegory) |
Milton. Paradise Lost. Book III. |
| 7 |
Milton's Problem: Aesthetics vs. Morality
Why Eve Falls First
Why Adam Follows Eve
Why the Great Love-poems of Book IX are Evidence of Original Sin; Blake on Milton |
Milton. Paradise Lost. Book IV. |
| 8-10 |
Why Romeo is in Love with Someone Else
Why Juliet is Smarter than Romeo
Literary Allusion and "The Book": Cultural Forms and Renaissance Autonomy
What Kind of Love is This?
Modes of Love in Romeo and Juliet (Familial Duty, Civic Citizenship, Erotic Infatuation, Friendship, Identification, Religious Observance, Caretaker (Nurse / Friar), Platonic Form and Difference, Christian Caritas, Christ-like Sacrifice)
Stylistic Analogues and Different Discourses for the Different Modes of Love |
Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet and Sonnets.
(Sonnets 1, 3, 12,18, 20, 29, 30, 33, 55, 65, 71, 73, 94, 106, 107, 116, 129, 130, 18, 146)
Donne. Especially "Valediction." (Session #10) |
| 11 |
Satire
Must We Mean What We Say?
Satire and its Implied Moral Norm
Is Satire Inherently Conservative? |
Pope. Especially "Dunciad."
Swift. Especially "Modest Proposal." |
| 12-13 |
Is "Bunburying" a Linguistic Strategy or a Moral Position?
How is Wilde's Irony Different from the Irony of the l8th Century Satirists?
If We Can't Trust What They Say
How Do We Know What the "Meaning" Is?
Wildean Comedy and Indeterminancy
Are These Boys Encoded as What We Would See as "Gay"?
Comedy, Irony, and Deviance |
Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest. |
| 14 |
Lies, Lies, Lies
Huck's Country Style and Ethics
Tom as the Center of the Comedy at the Start |
Twain. Huck Finn. |
| 15 |
Life on the Raft
Huck and Jim and the Race Question = Huck and Jim and the Question of Language = Huck and Jim and the Question of Lies
Huck's Ethical Development and the Language he Uses to Represent it |
Twain. Huck Finn. (cont.) |
| 16 |
Are the Last Chapters a Disappointment?
In What Ways are the Duke and the Dauphin Different from Tom?
Does Huck Backslide? |
Twain. Huck Finn. (cont.) |
| 17 |
Can Comedy be Progressive?
Brecht's Theories of Comedy and of Epic Theater: What are His Expectations, and How Plausible are They (Do his effects actually work, in your experience of the play?)
Black Humor |
Brecht. Mother Courage. |
| 18 |
Lecture on Film Montage and Hegelian Triads |
|
| 19-20 |
Chaplin |
Chaplin. Modern Times (1936). |
| 21 |
Old World vs. New World and the Comedy of Cultural Misunderstanding
Humbert Humbert and Self-creation by Text
Literacy and Psychologism
Lolita's Names
Track the Poe Poem Through Humbert's Accounts of His Past, and What Do You Have? |
Poe. "Annabelle Lee."
Nabokov. Lolita. |
| 22 |
What to Do With Your Moral Repugnance?
Where Does the Satire Stop?
Is Irony Uncontrollable?
Does "Pure" Aestheticism Preclude Social Critique or Emotional Authenticity? |
Nabokov. Lolita. (cont.) |
| 23-24 |
Yossarian as Anti-hero
The Style of Self-cancelling Assertion: How does Heller Differ from Wilde? From Nabokov? From Humbert? |
Heller. Catch-22. |
| 25 |
The Comedy of Voice/The Comedy of Place
Self-revelation and Grace
Gender and Irony |
Welty. "Why I Live at the P.O." |
|
Bibliography
Welsch, Roger L. Omaha Tribal Myths and Trickster Tales. Chicago: Sage Books, 1981, pp. 17-21, 30-38, 48-55, and 78-87. ISBN: 0804007004.
Eco, Umberto. "The Frames of Comic Freedom." In Carnival! Berlin and New York: Mouton Publishers, 1984, pp. 1-9. ISBN: 3110095890.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 1-58. ISBN: 0253348307.
Alighieri, Dante. "Canto XXVI." In Inferno. Translated by Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994, pp. 270-279. ISBN: 0374176744. (Download a version of the text from Bartleby.)
Tennyson, Alfred. "Ulysses." In Poems of Tennyson. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1958. ISBN: 039505124X. (Download a version of the text from Bartleby.)
Stevens, Wallace. "The Sail of Ulysses." In Collected Poetry and Prose. New York: Library of America, 1997, pp. 462-467. ISBN: 1883011450.
Fowler, H. W. "Humour." In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 4-5. ISBN: 0198605064.
Johnson, Samuel. "The Difficulty of Defining Comedy." The Rambler, 1751, pp. 10-11. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Goldsmith, Oliver. "A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy." The Works of Oliver Goldsmith. London: John Murray, 1854.
Aristotle. On the Art of Fiction. An English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, with an introductory essay and explanatory notes by L.J. Potts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, pp. 5-6.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 2nd ed. Edited by Alastair Fowler. London and New York: Longman, 1998, Book IX, lines 511-1088. ISBN: 0582215188. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Wife of Bath" (including prologue). In The Canterbury Tales. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. ISBN: 0553210823. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Swift, Jonathan. "A Modest Proposal." In Gulliver's Travels. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1967.
Donne, John. "The Flea." In The Poems of John Donne . New York: The Grolier Club, 1895, p. 320.
Bergson, Henri. "Laughter." In Comedy: An Essay on Comedy/Laughter. Edited by Wylie Sypher. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984, pp. 104-145. ISBN: 0801823277.
Meredith, George. An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897, pp. 34-37. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Shaw, Bernard. "Meredith on Comedy." In Our Theatres in the Nineties. London: Constable and Co., 1932, pp. 38-42.
Freud, Sigmund. Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious. New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1916, pp. 69-75 (page nos. refer to 1938 edition).
Kronenberger, Louis . The Thread of Laughter. New York: Knopf, 1952, pp. 116-121.
Langer, Suzanne. Feeling and Form. New York: Scribner, 1953, pp. 81-86.
Welty, Eudora. "Why I Live at the P.O." In A Curtain of Green, and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941, pp. 159-170.
Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 298-366. ISBN: 019502088X.
Apte, Mahadev L. "Sexual Inequality in Humor." In Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, pp. 67-81. ISBN: 0801417201.
Walker, Nancy. "Humor of the Minority." In A Very Serious Thing: Women's Humor and American Culture. Minneapolis: Unviersity of Minnesota Press, 1988, pp. 101-138. ISBN: 0816617023.
Walker, Nancy, and Zita Dresner. Redressing the Balance: American Women's Literary Humor from Colonial Times to the 1980s. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1988, pp. 44-50, 251-67, 271-78, and 391-432. ISBN: 087805368.
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22 . New York: Knopf, 1995. ISBN: 0679437223.
Nabakov, Vladimir. Lolita . New York: Knopf, 1992. ISBN: 0679410430.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Annabelle Lee." In The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: AMS Press, 1965.
Brecht, Bertolt. "Mother Courage." In Mother Courage and Her Children . New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1991. ISBN: 0802130828.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Modern Library, 2001. ISBN: 0375757376. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. London: Routledge, 1993. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Pope, Alexander. The Dunciad . London and New York: Longman, 1999. ISBN: 0582089247.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN: 0521532531. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)
Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. (Download a version of the text from Project Gutenberg.)