Required Texts
Homer. Iliad. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, revised edition. London: Penguin, 1954, 1972.
Sophocles. Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Volume I. Translated by David Grene, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Propp, Vladimir. The Morphology of the Folk Tale. Edited by Louis A. Wagner. Translated by Laurence Scott. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.
France, Marie de. The Lais of Marie de France. Translated by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante. Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1978.
Platt, Rutherford Hayes, and J. Alden Brett, eds. "The Acts of Paul and Thecla." In The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden. New York: Plume, 1974.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel." In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov, Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by J. M. Cohen. London: Penguin, 1950.
Clos, Choderlos de la. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Translated by P. W. K. Stone. New York: Penguin, 1961.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Freud, Sigmund. "On Dreams" "Family Romances," and "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex." In The Freud Reader. Edited by Peter Gay. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, pp. 143-72, 297-300, and 661-66.
Cocteau, Jean, dir. La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast). France, 1946. (Film)
Marx, Karl. "Alienation and Social Classes." In The Marx-Engels Reader. Edited by Robert Tucker. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978.
Lang, Fritz, dir. Metropolis. Germany, 1926. (Film)
Disney-Pixar. Studios. Toy Story. USA, 1996. (Film)
Wright, Will. The Sims. Maxis-Electronic Arts.
Readings by Class Session
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS | HANDOUTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction: Orality and Literacy | (PDF) | |
| 2 | Epic Conventions | Homer. Iliad. Books 1-6. | (PDF) |
| 3 | Stories within Stories: The Social Functions of Storytelling | Homer. Iliad. Books 7-12. | (PDF) |
| 4 | Myths of Self and Society: Fates and Fatalism | Homer. Iliad. Books 13-20. | |
| 5 | Conflict Resolution | Homer. Iliad. Books 21-24. | |
| 6 | Genre and Ideology I: The Tragic Arc | Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannos. | (PDF) |
| 7 | Approaches to History: Methods and Materials | Herodotus. The Histories. Book I. | (PDF) |
| 8 | Genre and Ideology II: The Tragic View of History | Herodotus. The Histories. Book VII. | |
| 9 | Formalist Approaches to Narrative | Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the FolkTale. | |
| 10 | Character Functions in Adventure Narratives | de France, Marie. Lais. (Guigemar, Bisclavret, Lanval, Yonec, Eliduc). | |
| 11 | Narrative Perspective and the Categories of time and Space | Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Forms of Time and the Chronotope." Acts of Paul and Thecla. | (PDF) |
| 12 | Perspective and the Novelty of the Novel | Cervantes. Don Quixote. Dedication, Prologue, Part I. Chapters 1-17. | (PDF) (PDF) |
| 13 | Mediation and the Triangulated Subject | Cervantes. Don Quixote. Part I. Chapters 18-35. | (PDF) |
| 14 | Character Development and the Accumulation of Experience | Cervantes. Don Quixote. Part I. Chapters 36-52. | (PDF) |
| 15 | Realism, Sentiment, and the Epistolary Novel | Laclos. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Part 1. | |
| 16 | Experience, Experiments, and Enlightenment Epistemology | Laclos. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Part 2. | |
| 17 | The Enlightened Subject | Laclos. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Part 3. | |
| 18 | Novels of Manners, Novels of Morals: The Bildungsroman | Laclos. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Part 4. | |
| 19 | Psychology in Gothic Horror and Detective Fiction | Poe. "The Cask of Amantillado;" "The Pit and the Pendulum;" "The Imp of the Perverse;" "The Murders in the Rue Morgue;" "The Purloined Letter." | |
| 20 | Psychoanalytic Archetypes and Fairy-Tales | Freud. "On Dreams," "Family Romances," and "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex." | (PDF) |
| 21 | Film Screening I | Cocteau. La Belle et la Bête. | |
| 22 | Surrealism and the Subject of Psychoanalysis | Cocteau. La Belle et la Bête. (cont.) | |
| 23 | Film Screening II | Lang. Metropolis. | |
| 24 | Modernist Ideology: Capitalist Alienation and Class Consciousness | Marx. "Alienation and Social Classes." Lang. Metropolis. (cont.) | |
| 25 | Film Screening III | Disney-Pixar. Toy Story. | |
| 26 | Late Capitalism, Pastiche, and Post-Modernism | Disney-Pixar. Toy Story. (cont.) | |
| 27 | Narrative and New Media | Wright, Will. Electronic Arts, The Sims. | (PDF) |