Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines literary “classics”, variously defined, apprehending them both on their own terms and within larger critical conversations. May incorporate the comparative study of work in related artistic fields and engage relevant media trends. Includes attention to writing skills. Students with credit for ENGL 101W may not take this course for further credit. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Reading the Classics / Redefining the Classics

What is a ‘classic’? Or perhaps more importantly, why is something a ‘classic’? What are we doing when we call something a ‘classic’, or read one, or tell someone we read one?

English literature has a canon—its list of ‘classics’—and this canon is loaded with all kinds of power: political, aesthetic, emotional, romantic, ideological, more. You should have that power, understand it, be able to critique it, write and say useful, smart, productive things about it and with it. Those initial questions are a starting point in knowledge, skill, insight, imagination, and discovery in literature’s canon of classics.

This course is an introduction to reading literature, thinking about it, and writing about it. We will adventure through five undeniably canonical classics, representing three major forms (poetry, drama, prose), ranging from the most ancient English epic, through the medieval era, the Renaissance, the Modern period, to the (almost) present day. And to understand how classics continue to speak, shape, and mean, each will be paired with a recent reimaginative subversion or counterpoint. We will start with the oral heroic poem about monsters, death, and glory, Beowulf (c. 1000) and we will rethink it in light of a short essay by Toni Morrison (2018), and two incredible poems by Roger Reeves (2022). Geoffrey Chaucer’s wild and hilarious Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale (c. 1390) is celebrated and undone in Patience Agbabi’s “What Do Women Like Bes’?” (2014). Can we do ‘classics’ without Shakespeare: no (why? something worth talking about), so we will read the bittersweet comedy Twelfth Night (c. 1601)—trauma, crossdressing, drunken tomfoolery, brilliance—and then look at several filmic adaptations, including two multiracial productions (Supple 2003 and Smethurst 2018) as well as the teen-comedy She’s the Man (2006). From the early modern, we arrive in the modern: we will read Leslie Marmon Silko’s masterpiece Ceremony (1977) in counterpoint to a poem it plays on and off, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922): both grail romances. For each, we will situate these texts in their time and place, within their literary and aesthetic traditions, and consider their language and form, as well as explore the formations of identity and expression for Anglo-North American, Black, South Asian, and Indigenous writers and readers that these ‘classics’ participate in.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Understand the ways in which literary texts create, maintain, subvert, and reimagine ideas and ways of seeing and being in the world.

Gain basic knowledge of literary history, forms, and genres as a framework for critical thought about the past and present.

Build and sharpen abilities in creative and imaginative reading, understanding, analyzing, interpreting, and thinking with literary texts.

Develop writing as a means to think, communicate, discover, and create critical argumentation, interpretive insight, and your own voice and ideas.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you have paper hard copies of these texts for reference in lecture and tutorial, not to mention for the exams, where there will be an open book element, but not an open phone, tablet, computer or any other device. I have ordered these books to the SFU bookstore, but you may seek them out at your favorite bookstore. The Morrison, Reeves, Chaucer, and Agbabi, since they are small excerpts of bigger books, will be available through Canvas, so the cheapest option would be to print out your own copy. Please bring a notebook, pen and paper to lecture and tutorial, as there will be in-class writing from time to time. All of these will be required texts.

Beowulf, trans. Maria Dahvana Headley (MCDxFGS Originals 2020). ISBN: 978-0374110031

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The Canterbury Tales Ed. David Lawton. (WW Norton 2019). ISBN: 978-0393643503 (on Canvas).

Agbabi, Patience. “What Do Women Like Bes’?” Telling Tales (Canongate, 2014) ISBN: 978-1782111573 (on Canvas).

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will (Oxford University Press, 2010) ISBN: 978-0198328711

Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Poems (Signet, 1998) ISBN: 978-0451526847

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Anniversary Edition (Penguin 2006) ISBN: 978-0143104919

Plus other shorter texts distributed in class or via Canvas.

REQUIRED READING NOTES: