Lahore University of Management Sciences
ENGL 2611
The Sins of the Reader: M asterworks of the W estern Canon II
Spring 2015
Instructor
Room No.
Office Hours
Email
Telephone
Secretary/TA
TA Office Hours
Course URL (if
any)
Maryam Wasif Khan
136 Humanities and Social Sciences
[email protected]
8055
Course Basics
Credit Hours
Lecture(s)
Recitation/Lab (per week)
Tutorial (per week)
Course Distribution
Core
Elective
Open for Student Category
4
Nbr of Lec(s) Per
Week
Nbr of Lec(s) Per
Week
Nbr of Lec(s) Per
Week
2
Duration
110 Minutes
Duration
Duration
No
Yes
All
COURSE DESCRIPTION
“That day, we read no further.” Canto V, Inferno, The Divine Comedy
From St. Augustine who wept over the death of Dido in the Confessions to Emma Bovary, who
wished equally to live and die in Paris, the figure of the reader has remained a tortured figure
in the Western tradition from perhaps as far back as late Antiquity. In this course, we will
examine a series of canonical works that extend from the 4th century well into the period we
have come to understand as “modern.” The crisis common to each of these otherwise varied
works can perhaps be understood in terms of the utter worldliness of the fictional narrative.
Fictions—epic poetry, heroic tales, and novels—drive, perhaps even inspire, the sins and
insanities of characters in works such as The Divine Comedy and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Some
of the questions we will ask as we move from the early Christian formation into the period of
the European Enlightenment and its aftermath include: what kinds of literary works are
“right” or productive for the figure in search of a higher calling? How does the “consumption”
of stories bring upon a kind of insanity, obsession, or perhaps, corruption in the human? Are
women more susceptible readers, translating stories they read or hear into a reality of
discontent? And finally, what is the place of the writer in these texts—isolated, unfixed, yet
strangely rooted in the desire to speak to the concept of canonicity itself.
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Grading Breakup and Policy
15 % Class participation
10 % Paper 1 (3 pages)
15% Midterm exam
15 % Paper 2 (5 pages)
20% Paper 3 (7 pages)
25 % Take-home final exam
Sample texts
St. Augustine, Confessions, translated by F. J Sheed. New York: Hackett, 2006
Dante Aligheiri, The Divine Comedy in The Portable Dante, translated by Mark Musa. New
York: Penguin, 1984
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, translated by Geoffrey Wall. New York: Penguin, 2003.
Texts/Reading
Week
I. The
biography
of guilt
II.
III. The
quest to
cleanse
IV.
1. Introduction
2. St. Augustine, Confessions (Books 1, 2 and 3) pg. 3-54
3. Confessions (Books 4-8) pg. 55-162
4. Confessions (9-13) 163-320
“Autobiography and Perspective in the Confessions of St. Augustine”
Comparative Literature, Summer 1981 pg. 209-231
5. Dante Alighieri, Inferno (Cantos 1-4), pg. 3-25
6. Inferno (Canto 5) pg 26-31, Jorge Luis Borges, “Inferno V,”
paintings by Rodin, Gustav Dore, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti,
7. Inferno (Cantos 6-20) pg 31-111
8.: Inferno (Cantos 21-34) pg. 111-191
Erich Auerbach, “Historical Introduction: The Idea of Man in
Literature,” from Dante: Poet of the Secular World, pg. 1-23
Lahore University of Management Sciences
V.
VI.
9. Purgatorio (Cantos 1-16) pg. 195-281
10. Purgatorio (Cantos 17-34) pg. 281-387
11. Paradiso, (Canto 1, 30-33) pg. 391-396, pg.563-585
12. Midterm Exam
VII.
13. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote pg. 8-82
Fiction: fits 14. Don Quixote, pg. 83-185
and starts
15. Don Quixote pg. 280-337, 433-456, 467-482
VIII.
16. Don Quixote, pg. 483-486, 520-531, 939-975
David Quint, “The Geneaology of the Novel from the Odyssey to Don
Quixote,” Comparative Literature Winter 2007, pg. 23-32
17. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, pg. 1-77
IX. The
18. The Sorrows of Young Werther pg. 78-155
epistolary
Thomas P. Saine, “The world Goethe lived in: Germany and Europe,
novel
1750-1830” in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, 6-22
X.
19. The Sorrows of Young Werther pg. 156-210
20. The Sorrows of Young Werther pg. 210-264
XI. The
21. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, pg. 3-64
novel: self- 22. Madame Bovary, pg. 65-173
consciously
23. Madame Bovary pg. 173-240
XII.
24. Madame Bovary pg. 241-327
Michael Riffaterre, “Flaubert’s Presuppositions.” Diacritics, Winter
1981, pg. 2-11.
25. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin (Metropolitan Opera,
XIII.
DVD)
Opera:
Isaiah Berlin, “Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, and Onegin,” The Musical Times,
Literature, 1980, pg. 163-168.
the Arts,
and a
26. Concluding remarks
Western
Culture