Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced seminar on selected literary works as they intersect with and are shaped by their historical, social, and cultural environments. May be organized by theme, critical approach, historical period, or individual author. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Witchcraft and Belief among the Victorians

Why in June 1692 did people living in Salem, Massachusetts start hanging their neighbors, thinking them witches? Well, for one thing, they sincerely believed in witchcraft. In this they were not alone. Just the opposite. Most early modern North Americans and Europeans believed in the reality of witchcraft. Most nineteenth-century Victorians, on the other hand, did not. Yet they obsessed over what British social critic Harriet Martineau called the “Salem story.” And it wasn’t just Salem that fascinated American and British writers; it was witchcraft and supernatural belief generally. And it wasn’t just historical. It was clear to anyone reading Nathaniel Hawthorne that this angry great-great-grandson of a Salem judge wasn’t writing only about the past. He was writing about his own time. It was clear, too, that when Charlotte Brontë repeatedly deployed iterations of the word “witch” in Jane Eyre she wasn’t writing only about her own time but about the past.

What did the history of witchcraft tell the nineteenth century about itself? What does Victorian literature tell us about belief generally? In this class we’ll explore these topics from a ‘postsecular’ perspective, that is, from a perspective that takes seriously faith and the history of faith in the supernatural, and by the ‘supernatural’ I mean not just witches but also God and religion. We’ll also ask what witchcraft literature tells us about the nineteenth century itself. After all, via its stories about witchcraft, historical and otherwise, Victorian Anglo-America grappled with its own supernatural fixations, not to mention its own crimes against humanity, crimes that continue to haunt us today.

Our tentative reading list includes work by Joana Baillie, Charlotte Brontë, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Elizabeth Gaskell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As well we’ll likely read theoretical/critical work by Jenny Franchot, Jürgen Habermas, William James, Sarah Rivett, and Charles Taylor. A heads up that we’ll also be doing some reading in trauma theory, namely work by Jean Améry and Thomas Brudholm.

Of course, this being a 400-level seminar, we’ll also spend a lot of time talking about our writing. You should be ready to share both your writing and your thoughts on it—everything from paragraphing to argumentation, terror to joy.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1. comprehend the mechanics of language and especially figurative language;
2. recognize complex relationships between literary and non-literary texts and their historical, philosophical, religious, and cultural contexts;
3. attain knowledge of the history of nineteenth-century Anglo-American literature and current methods and theories for understanding it;
4. refine directed and independent research skills; and
5. fine-tune the ability to design and execute cogent written and oral arguments advancing informed claims about language and literary cultures, their expression, and their contexts.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Most texts will be available as PDFs on our Canvas site, but you do need to purchase the Brontë and Hawthorne. Please try to get the editions listed below, since they’re the ones we’ll be close-reading in class. Also, please get the books on your own; I have not ordered them through the SFU bookstore. If you’re not in a rush, consider ordering through one of the local independent bookstores. My faves are Iron Dog Books (irondogbooks.com) and Massy Books (www.massybooks.com).

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: