Reading Genre 2 Q3125 (Spring 2017)
Module Description
How do texts locate themselves in literary conventions to develop their own
expression and meaning? How does genre act to shape a text and a reader's
understanding of it? How do we identify and understand genre?
These are some of the questions that we shall approach by focusing on three
genres: lyric, tragedy and film noir. In each instance we shall concentrate on either
one or a small number of representative examples, allowing us to widen our
understanding of genre while we deepen our acquaintance with key illustrations from
it. This module may be taken in consort with or independently of Reading Genre 1.
A crucial aspect of the module is to develop close reading skills, so seminars and
lectures will combine larger ideas about genre with detailed explorations of
examples.
Learning Outcomes
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Identify the conventions of the genres studied and understand the principles
of genre theory in order to apply these in addressing issues of literary analysis
and interpretation.
Gain confidence in the close reading and analysis of literature.
Develop critical thinking and methods for literary analysis.
Acquire some understanding of how other media such as film transform
literary genre, and develop some knowledge of the principles of analysing and
interpreting film.
Assessment
Definitive assessment information for both modules, including exact submission
deadlines and word length, will be published on Sussex Direct.
Reading Genre 2 is assessed by a group presentation, worth 30 per cent of the
mark, to be given during the module (your tutor will give you further guidance on
this); and by an essay, worth 70 per cent of the mark, to be submitted at the end of
the module.
Academic Misconduct and Plagiarism
It is vital for your own integrity as a person, a thinker, and a writer that you avoid
academic misconduct and plagiarism. Moreover, the School of English carefully
scrutinises students’ writing for academic misconduct and plagiarism. Academic
misconduct and plagiarism carry heavy penalties. These can include the deduction
of marks for an assignment, failing an assignment, failing a module, failing your
degree, and being disqualified from the University. So that you have a clear
understanding of what plagiarism is, please review this definition provided by
the University’s Academic Office:
“Plagiarism is the use, without acknowledgement, of the intellectual work of other
people, and the act of representing the ideas or discoveries of another as one's own
in written work submitted for assessment. To copy sentences, phrases or even
striking expressions without acknowledgement of the source (either by inadequate
citation or failure to indicate verbatim quotations), is plagiarism; to paraphrase
without acknowledgement is likewise plagiarism. Where such copying or paraphrase
has occurred the mere mention of the source in the bibliography shall not be deemed
sufficient acknowledgement; each such instance must be referred specifically to its
source. Verbatim quotations must be either in inverted commas, or indented, and
directly acknowledged.”
Please make it a priority to check the University’s “Writing Well” web pages at
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/index.php?id=26
In particular, make sure you follow the links to the pages on “Referencing” and
“Academic misconduct.” These pages provide further information about what
plagiarism is. They also provide resources that will help you to avoid plagiarism,
including information on referencing and access to Turnitin, a service that allows you
to check your work for plagiarism. Finally, in your submitted work, make sure that
you select and consistently use one referencing system. It is important that your
referencing is correct and consistent. You can find information about referencing on
the “Writing Well” web page.
Materials Recommended for Student Purchase
You must make sure to get hold of the books listed below in time for the start of the
module for which they are assigned.
These books are available at a specially discounted price from John Smith’s book
shop, in the University Library.
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Duncan Wu (ed), Romanticism: An Anthology (fourth edition) (Blackwell,
2006)
Euripides, Medea, trans. Rex Warner, in Euripides I, The Complete Greek
Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago
Press, 1955) (and much reprinted), or:
Morwood, James, trans., Euripides: Medea and other plays (Oxford World’s
Classics, 1998)
William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford World’s Classics,
2008), or:
William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Ernst Honingman, Arden Shakespeare 3rd
series edn (Bloomsbury, 2016), or:
The Oxford Compact Shakespeare, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Ibsen, Henrik, Doll’s House, in Four Major Plays, trans. James McFarlane and
Jens Arup (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008)
Kane, Sarah, Blasted, in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays (Methuen
Contemporary Dramatists, 2001)
Outline
Week 1: Introducing Genre 2
Pam Thurschwell [Seminar: Hayden White, 'The Historical Text as Literary
Artifact']
How can we tell the difference between history and myth? Does history have a
genre? In his article, 'The History Text as Literary Artifact' the critic Hayden White
argues that 'Historical situations do not have built into them intrinsic meanings in the
way that literary texts do. Historical situations are not inherently tragic, comic, or
romantic' (1540). Do you agree? In this lecture, taking off from White’s arguments, I’ll
consider the possibility that our ideas about history and the literary are intertwined,
and that we unconsciously use different literary genres all the time, to understand
our lives and our current historical and political situations. I’ll consider briefly how
assumptions about genre might affect our enjoyment and understanding of the things
we read and the lives we lead. I’ll use some contemporary examples to make
connections between gender and genre, and I will briefly introduce the three genres
you will be studying in Reading Genre 2: lyric, tragedy and film noir.
Required Reading
 White, Hayden, 'The Historical Text as Literary Artifact', The Norton Anthology
of Theory and Criticism, 2nd edn (Norton, 2010), pp. 1533-53
Recommended Reading on Genre
You should look at some of the following in preparation for this week, but these are
works that you might also continue to consult during the course of the module:
Dubrow, Heather, Genre (Methuen, 1982)
Duff, David, ed., Modern Genre Theory (Longman, 1999)
Fowler, Alastair, Kinds of Literature (Oxford University Press, 1982)
Frow, John, Genre (Routledge, 2005)
Gerhart, Mary, Genre Choices, Gender Questions (University of Oklahoma
Press, 1993, new edn)
Gledhill, Christine, ‘Genre’, in The Cinema Book, ed. Pam Cook (British Film
Institute, 1985)
Todorov, Tzvetan, Genres in Discourse (1978), trans. Catherine Porter
(Cambridge University Press,1990)
Lyric Block: Weeks 2-5
N.B. All primary texts for the block on Lyric, unless otherwise specified, are available
in Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology. Make sure you read the assigned
texts in time for the lecture on them. (There are multiple editions of this anthology
available, but page numbers are given for the 4th edn; please be aware there may
be some variation in other editions.)
Lectures 1 and 2 (Weeks 2-3): Keston Sutherland
The first two weeks of the Lyric block will ask students to think in detail about two
particular types of lyric, the sonnet and the ode. The two lectures will offer close
readings of some original, challenging or successful sonnets and odes by
Wordsworth and by Keats. A brief history of the forms and how poets and critics
have thought them will give some sense of how they have been enlarged,
complicated and refined since their first introduction into English. We will ask what
was at stake for Wordsworth and Keats in their complex inheritance of the forms,
why they chose to write in them, and how they reimagined them; and finally, we will
offer a theoretical reflection on the significance of poetic form in general. The
lectures will say something about the special difficulties both poets experienced in
practising these forms, and something about what they thought could be done with
them.
Students should by the end of the lectures be able both to read individual sonnets
and odes with an appreciation of their formal and technical accomplishment, and to
think historically and speculatively about the meaning of poetic forms and types.
Week 2: Sonnets
Required Reading:
Wordsworth:
 ‘The world is too much with us’ (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 545-6)
 ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’ (Wu, 4th edn, p. 546)
 ‘London 1802’ (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 548-9)
 'I grieved for Buonaparte' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 545)
 'To Touissant L'Ouverture' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 547)
 'It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free' (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 547-8)
 '1 September 1802' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 548)
 'Great men have been among us' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 549)
Keats:
 'Sonnet: When I have fears that I may cease to be' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 1406)
 ‘On first looking into Chapman's Homer' (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 1396-7)
 'Addressed to Haydon' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 1397)
 'On the Grasshopper and the Cricket' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 1398)
 'On Sitting down to read King Lear Once Again' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 1405)
 ‘Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art' (Wu, 4th edn, p. 1507)
In addition, one sonnet not in Wu, but provided as a handout:
 ‘O though whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind’
Please see Study Direct for further sonnets you might also read.
Week 3: Odes
Required Reading:
Wordsworth:
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‘Ode, Intimations of Immortality' (“There was a time”) (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 54954)
Keats:
 ‘Ode to Psyche’ (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 1462-3)
 ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 1464-6)
 ‘To Autumn’ (Wu, 4th edn, p. 1489)
 'Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (Wu, 4th edn, pp. 1466-8)
Please see Study Direct for further odes you might read.
Recommended Reading for Weeks 2-3
Bate, Jonathan, The Song of the Earth (Harvard University Press, 2000)
Bate, W. Jackson, The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Norton,
1972)
Duff, David, ‘The Retuning of the Sky: Romanticism and Lyric', in The Lyric
Poem: Formations and Transformations, ed. Marion Thain (2013), pp. 135-55
Hosek, Chaviva, and Patricia Parker, eds., Lyric Poetry: Beyond New
Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)
Johnson, W. R. The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry
(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982)
Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City (Hogarth Press, new edition,
1985)
Lectures 3 and 4 (Weeks 4 and 5): Emma Newport
As a genre of writing, the conversation poem is an informal but thoughtful act of
reflection that is written in response to a particular stimulus. Although more generally
regarded as developing from the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, lecture 3 in this
block will give particular to attention to the ways in which recent critical attention has
revealed the significant role of other writers, including women poets, in developing
this type of lyric poem.
Lecture 4 will explore the lyric genre’s long history of association with liberty and with
giving voice to the voiceless. Beginning with a focus on landscape and seascapes,
the lyric genre will be considered through ideas of liberty, loss and suffering as well
as how the genre relates to the politics of liberty and Romanticism.
Week 4: Lyric and Conversation
Required Reading:
Barbauld:
 ‘To Mr Coleridge’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 45-6]
 ‘A Summer's Evening Meditation’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 37-40]
Robinson:
 ‘Mrs Robinson to the Poet Coleridge’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 259-61]
Seward:
 ‘Advice to Mrs Smith’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 31-2]
Coleridge:
 ‘To William Wordsworth’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 706-8]
Additional reading (optional):
Coleridge:
 ‘This Lime Tree Bower my Prison’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 633-7]
Week 5: Lyric and Liberty: Smith, Robinson, Williams and Blake
Required Reading:
Smith:
 ‘To Melancholy’ [Wu, 4th edn, p. 102]
 ‘Written on the Seashore’ [Wu, 4th edn, p. 93]
 ‘To the South Downs’ [Wu, 4th edn, p. 90]
Additionally: ‘On being cautioned against walking on a headland overlooking the
sea’, not available in Wu, but provided as a handout on Study Direct
Robinson:
 ‘The Haunted Beach’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 255-7]
Additionally: ‘The Negro Girl’ – not available in Wu, but provided as a handout on
Study Direct. See also:
http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=35470
Williams:
 ‘Vision: Bastille’ [Wu, 4th edn, pp. 304-7]
Blake:
 ‘The Little Black Boy’ [Wu, 4th edn, p. 188]
 ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ [Wu, 4th edn, p. 189]
Additionally students might watch the BBC documentary with Peter Ackroyd on
Liberty and Romanticism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLwRXlSgiSQ
Recommended Reading for Weeks 4-5
Berlin, Isaiah, ‘The Idea of Freedom’, in Political Ideas in The Romantic Age:
Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (Random House, 2012), pp. 88-154
Cox, Philip, Gender, Genre, and the Romantic Poets: An Introduction
(Manchester University Press, 1996)
Curran, Stuart, ‘Mary Robinson and the New Lyric’, Women’s Writing, vol.9,
issue 1 (2002) 9-22
____________, ‘Charlotte Smith and British Romanticism’, South Central
Review, 11.2 (1994) 66-78
Janowitz, Anne, Women Romantic Poets: Anna Barbauld and Mary Robinson
(Northcote House, 2004)
Mee, John J., Conversable Worlds: Literature, Contention, and Community
1762-1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) [esp. Chapters 1 and 4]
Rajan, Tilottama, and Julia Wright, eds, Romanticism, History, and the
Possibilities of Genre (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Tragedy: Weeks 6-9
Tragedy in Aristotle’s definition is: ‘the imitation of an action that is serious....with
incidents arousing pity and fear’. What is a serious action and how does it arouse
both pity and fear? Has tragic experience remained somehow essentially the same
over the centuries or does it alter according to cultural and historical context? Is
tragedy gendered? Despite suffering, can tragedy be viewed as a positive
experience? Through an examination of four plays from antiquity to the present we
shall consider this most contested and argued over genre.
Week 6, Lecture 1: Euripides' Medea [Tom Healy]
Violence often seems central to tragic experience. Can tragic violence also involve
justice? Can a perpetrator of violence remain heroic?
Required Reading
It is important to read a reliable translation of Medea. Two good ones are translations
by:
 Warner, Rex, trans., Medea, in Euripides I, The Complete Greek Tragedies,
ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press, 1955)
(and much reprinted), or:
Morwood, James, trans., Euripides: Medea and other plays (Oxford World’s
Classics, 1998).
(My own preference is for the Warner translation but you will need to order it from
e.g. Amazon.)
Week 7, Lecture 2: Othello [Tom Healy]
With our brief exploration of tragedy focusing on the implications of gender and
identity within the tragic, this lecture will explore how constructions of the masculine
and the feminine operate within Othello. Is identity established through subjective
interiority and in intimate relations or is it formed publicly/socially/culturally?
Required Reading
There are a number of good, scholarly editions you may use, but note that the first
two listed here (Oxford World’s Classics, and Arden) provide a good preface and
notes and so students are encouraged to purchase either of these:
 William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford World’s Classics,
2008), or:
William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Ernst Honingman, Arden Shakespeare 3rd
series edn (Bloomsbury, 2016), or:
The Oxford Compact Shakespeare, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Week 8, Lecture 3: Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House [Tom Healy]
Greek tragedy is a highly stylised art form, reflecting the place of theatre in Athenian
society. Does tragedy maintain its intensity when it moves to a more realistic, located
setting?
Required Reading
 Ibsen, Henrik, Doll’s House, in Four Major Plays, trans. James McFarlane and
Jens Arup (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008)
Week 9, Lecture 3: Kane's Blasted [Tom Healy]
Can extreme violence nullify tragic experience? What is the relation of violence to
gender? Does Kane's weaving of the type of stylised symbolic drama of plays such
as Medea with the realistic modes reflected by Ibsen create a tragedy for the 21st
century?
Required Reading
 Kane, Sarah, Blasted, in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays (Methuen
Contemporary Dramatists, 2001)
Recommended Reading for Weeks 6-9
Students should be acquainted with Aristotle’s Poetics. You may have already
encountered this in Vincent B. Leitch, et al., eds, The Norton Anthology of Theory
and Criticism, 2nd rev edn (Norton, 2010). For those wishing for a separate edition
you can purchase Poetics, ed. Malcolm Heath (Penguin, 1996), or the Poetics is
available in the collection Classical Literary Criticism, ed. D. A. Russell and Michael
Winterbottom (Oxford World’s Classics, 1998).
Eagleton, Terry, Sweet Violence: The Idea of The Tragic (Blackwell, 2002)
Benson, Sean, Shakespeare, Othello and Domestic Tragedy (London:
Continuum, 2012)
Garner, Shirley Nelson, and Madelon Sprengnether, eds., Shakespearean
Tragedy and Gender (Indiana University Press, 1996) [see part II in particular]
Goldhill, Simon, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
McEvoy, Sean, Tragedy: The Basics (Routledge, 2016) [see chapters 5 and 6
in particular]
Moi, Toril, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theatre, Philosophy
(Oxford University Press, 2006)
Poole, Adrian, Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction (2005)
Saunders, Graham, About Kane (Faber and Faber, 2009)
Other theoretical/critical material is usefully assembled in John Drakakis and Naomi
Conn Liebler, eds, Tragedy (London: Longman, Longman Critical Reader, 1998).
Film Noir: Weeks 10-11
You must make sure to attend the screenings that are provided for this section
of the module.
In this section of the module you will explore genre as it is manifested in film noir. But
we will also be exploring whether the film noir examples we will be examining can at
the same time be understood in terms of tragedy.
Week 10, Lecture 1: Double Indemnity [Tom Healy]
In seminars and in the lecture we will think about the murky origins of film noir and
explore its status as genre, style, or movement, and pay special attention to the role
that gender— especially the representation of the female (film noir’s femme fatale)—
plays in blurring the boundaries among these modes of categorisation. We will also
be thinking about links that can be made between film noir and tragedy.
Screening
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
Required Reading
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Elisabeth Bronfen, ‘Femme Fatale – Negotiations of Tragic Desire’, in
Rethinking Tragedy, ed. Rita Felski (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, 2008), 287-301
Edward Buscombe, 'The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema’, Screen,
11:2 (March-April 1970), 33-45
Jennifer Fay and Justus Nieland, Film Noir: Hard-Boiled Modernity and the
Cultures of Globalization (Oxford: Routledge, 2010), pp. 124-82
Recommended Reading for Week 10
Johnston, Clare, ‘Double Indemnity’, in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan
(London: British Film Institute, 1980), pp. 100-111
Place, Janey, ‘Women in film noir’, in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan
(London: British Film Institute, 1980), pp. 35-67
Week 11, Lecture 2: Mulholland Drive [Hope Wolf]
This lecture explores the historical and aesthetic problem of ‘neo-noir’ and of the
self-conscious reinvention of a genre over time. We will consider how later iterations
of noir seem to consolidate the generic consistency of noir. We will continue our
consideration of the tension between style and content as an ongoing problem of
noir’s status as a genre. We will also consider whether Mulholland Drive can be
considered in terms of tragedy.
Screening
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
Required Reading
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Heather K. Love, ‘Spectacular Failure: The Figure of the Lesbian in
Mulholland Drive’, in Rita Felski (ed.), Rethinking Tragedy (Baltimore, John
Hopkins University Press), pp. 302-318
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Todd McGowan, ‘Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch’s
Panegyric to Hollywood’, Cinema Journal, 43:2 (Winter 2004), 67-89
David Desser, ‘Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age of Transnationalism’, Film
Genre Reader III, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin, Texas: University of Texas
Press, 2003), pp. 516-36
Recommended Reading for Week 11
Martin, Richard, The Architecture of David Lynch (London: Bloomsbury,
2014). Especially pp.49-62
Further Reading for Film Noir
Copjec, Joan (ed.) Shades of Noir: A Reader (London: Verso, 1993) [see
Copjec’s Introduction and Elizabeth Cowie’s ‘Film Noir and Women’, pp. 121-166]
Dimendberg, Edward, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16:3 (Autumn
1975), 6-18
Naremore, James, More Than Night: Film Noir and its Contexts (Berkeley:
University of California Press) [see, pp. 9-39]
Week 12: There will be no lecture and seminar in this week. Seminar
leaders will instead run extended office hours.