EH 366

INFERNAL JOURNEYS

FALL 2020

 

Texts and Additional Materials:

          Selections from The Odyssey and The Aeneid- On-Line text available via Moodle site

Aristophanes The Frogs

Dante Inferno

Selections from Medieval Texts: Posted on Moodle

Marlowe Doctor Faustus

Milton Paradise Lost

Selections from Romantic Poets; Posted on Moodle

Conrad Heart of Darkness

Hammett Red Harvest

Kinnell The Book of Nightmares

Selections from Modern and Post Modern works: Posted on Moodle

Selections will be available or linked on Moodle; either print them out and bring the printed copy to the appropriate class meetings- or bring an electronic copy that you can access freely and fully and on which you can add notes.

I will also require substantial critical reading.

We will look at reproductions of some key works of visual art and architecture and antecedent and descendent forms.

 

COURSE STRUCTURE:  I want to work in a number of formats for this term. Sometimes the class will be conducted as "guided" lecture/discussion. Sometimes we will work as a "participatory" seminar. At other times, individual students will lead discussions or make presentations.

In Addition, I want to have a number of conferences as the semester goes on. We will probably meet in groups of three to five to talk about paper or report topics. We might simply engage in discussion of key issues or works.

If we had all the time in the world, we would spend two or three "LAB" hours each week examining individual poems and critical practices in exquisite detail. We will try to balance our sense of thematics, structures, and continuities with a close examination of individual works in their individuality. A significant fraction of our attention will be devoted to grounding our texts in their interaction with earlier texts, especially those of Classical Greece and Rome and Late Roman and Medieval and Renaissance and Early-Modern Europe. We will also consider the way ideas and texts are revivified in later literatures, especially those of the modern age. Students will have ample choices to pursue specific modern connections.

 

ATTENDANCE:  I want to be able to regard students more as colleagues than convicts. So I don't want to set up mechanisms to force attendance. I DO EXPECT STUDENTS TO ATTEND EVERY CLASS AND TO PARTICIPATE.  STUDENTS WHO DO NOT ATTEND OR WHO DO NOT PARTICIPATE WITH AT LEAST ACTIVE LISTENING WILL NOT PASS. Papers and written work are central to evaluation, but they are only part of the course. A substantial fraction of our work will take place in class every meeting and there is no substitute for your presence and participation.

 

Written Work and Oral Presentations: I hope to be able to get you to do a number of analytical studies of individual works and themes and ideas during the course of the semester. These would be short papers focusing on specific issues. Students should write a Substantial critical paper

 OR students may do an innovative project that engages them with the thinking, art, or culture of the diverse notions of infernal journeys. I hope we can fit in a midterm exam. We will have an innovative and comprehensive final exam.

 

GOVERNING PRINCIPLES AND HIGH-MINDED GENERALITIES: One of the things I want to explore in this class is the whole concept of historical period and historical style and related issues. Why do we require English majors to study different literature? How do we read it? How do we understand its place and consequences? How do we see its wholeness and its individuality? What does the Distant do for us here and now? What happens when we like literature but don't necessarily like or accept its values? What do we have to know to READ? What do we have to forget to READ? How do we make of this literature something that is best for us? How can literature call on us to explore and consider? What did earlier readers think of texts we read from our modern or postmodern perspective? How does the close reading of a text quickly become the reading of multiple texts and textures? In what sense if the underworld of previous existence a kind of metaphor for our study? How do prior texts vitalize, enrich, and inform later texts?

Ultimately, I want to enjoy the works and to enjoy the mind and culture that created them.

 

 

PRINCIPLES EVEN MORE HIGH-MINDED:

I also want to spend some real time on larger issues of art, poetry, culture, and the world in general. These will appear in a multi-page outline that will help focus our concerns. In addition, I hope such topics will prompt all of us to think about many of those issues that we tend to accept automatically. We should also learn to be critically distrustful of universalist theories that substitute for real thinking and understanding.

 

Learning Outcomes:

Improved skill in close reading of a wide range of texts and reading strategies

Practice in connecting diverse texts to complex underlying cultural questions and issues.

Substantial practice in writing and revising sophisticated intellectual prose

Substantial practice in reading texts and perspectives and offering a coherent understanding in oral presentation.

Substantial practice in creating and offering a coherent perspective on a wide range of readings and arguments.

 

Meeting One: General Introduction- Worlds with worlds- Life, Death and Spirits. The Cave at Shanidar; Paleolithic Art; the mysteries of Gobekli-Tepe. The journey as metaphor- the question of “Home.” Initial thoughts about representation and language. Burial and concepts of after/ spirit life. The journeys in Gilgamesh. Some dimensions of the “other” world[s].

 

READINGS FOR Our Next Meeting: Read Book Eleven of The Odyssey. It will introduce us to the high-minded generalities of travels together this term. We will identify issues and topics to which we will often return over the course of the semester. Not only is Homer’s text foundational, it is also a work you need to read in a way that also attends to its visionary qualities- its effort to make real the transcendental. You should also be aware of the sense of implicit dialogue that underlies the totality of the work. But most of all, trace the elegiac tone so typical of the encounter with the realm of the dead. Check Moodle for an on-line link to the Homeric text.

 

Meetings Two and Three:  Visiting the Dead. Book Eleven of The Odyssey and early Greek thought on visits to (and from the dead. Definitions, theories and perspectives. Critical texts posted on Moodle. We will look at Greek Vases and myths of journeys to the underworld: Persephone, Heracles, Theseus and others. Chthonic Space and the Psychopompus: Hermes and Thoth. Judges and Judgments: Minos and Rhadamanthus. Dwelling in Darkness: the sere, the yellow leaf, the desiccated remains of the departed day. Painting the body/ self: red and yellow ochre. Locating the underworld and its access points. Menelaus and Proteus- Shape shifting and multiple notions of selfhood. Mimetics and micro-details: the fictional creation of “reality”.

 

Meeting Four:  The Realm of Shadows: Vergil’s Aeneid, Book Six. Topics for consideration: The politics of the underworld- transforming the past to shape the present; cultural self-fashioning; Models and archetypes; The power of Rome- the nature of Rome. The street of tombs. Selections from D. H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places. Establishing the geography of the underworld. Adapting to darkness: Stoicism and Eudemonia. Find on Moodle a link to an on-line text of the Virgilian reading. The descent into the past to foresee the future.

 

Meetings Five and Six:  Comic Perspectives: Aristophanes’ The Frogs. As always, Aristophanes has much of interest to add to the classical vision. We will also give some attention to the rhetoric of death and afterlife. How does the literary help shape cultural perceptions? If we have time, we will give some attention to Plato’s Tale of Er and the ethical concerns of Metempsychosis. Platonist caves and visions; the measurements of Eratosthenes- Where are the other realms?

 

Meeting Seven:  Review and Synthesis of central issues of The Classical world

We will finish our Moodle readings and look more at visual representations of the infernal world with some attention to the nascent Christian perspective and its Hebraic antecedents. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell. Jan Bremmer, Maidens, Magic, and Martyrs in Early Christianity. Bonus reading: Somnium Scipionis.

 

Meeting Eight:  Dante-Inferno. We will walk together quickly and carefully along the path through the dark woods. We expect to descend for something like four Cantos. Moodle options for other medieval journeys to Hell as class reports/ brief papers. Orthodoxy and the babies: Augustine Pelagius. Elaborating the geography of the underworld: Oceans, rivers, and swamps- the downward flow. Someone will consult W. Tynes Cowan about swamps in American Literature- More river journeys await us. Bonus Reading: John Freccero: “Dante’s Firm Foot and the Journey without a Guide,” Harvard Theological Review, 52 (LII) (1959) 245-281. This is a monumental “step” in Dante Scholarship.

 

Meeting Nine: On Dante- Spiraling Downward.  Another four cantos, another flock of sinners damned. The order of sin and literature as a means of philosophical exploration. Perseus and Medusa- the power of the classical as metaphor and (possibly) spiritual reality- can Medusa turn Dante to stone? The inner/ inward journey- The autobiography of the infernal.

 

Meeting Ten: On Dante- Spiraling Downward.  Another four cantos, another flock of sinners damned. We are more than halfway to the very bottom. The order of sin and literature as a means of philosophical exploration. Epicureanism and doubts about the soul. Lucretius: De Rerum Natura.

 

Meeting Eleven: On Dante- Spiraling Downward.  Another four cantos, another flock of sinners damned. Questions about truth and poetry and imagination and memory and dream and vision. The order of sin and literature as a means of philosophical exploration. The Platonic soul: Plato’s Phaedrus. The Medieval Manichee by Stephen Runciman

 

Meeting Twelve: On Dante- Spiraling Downward.  Another four cantos, another flock of sinners damned. The life and denizens of Hell. What do the classical creatures offer? Let’s make sense of Ulysses and the debt to Poetic Guides [intertextuality]. The order of sin and literature as a means of philosophical exploration. Representing the underworld in Orvieto- the façade sculptures and the San Brizio Chapel.

 

Meetings Thirteen through Sixteen: On Dante- Spiraling Downward.  Another four cantos, another flock of sinners damned.  We will go on and look at Canto one of Purgatorio. What happens when we get out of Hell? Why must we physically embrace the Satanic Core if we are to arise from the infernal depths? The order of sin and literature as a means of philosophical exploration. Dantean psychology- what he knew and what he sensed obliquely.

s

Meeting Seventeen: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus- Calling It All into Doubt.

A swift read of Marlowe’s play and the rise of the Faust myth/ theme/ legend. We will master the text and ask if Marlowe was, as he was accused, an atheist. How free is the artist/ thinker from the nature of the age?

Infernal Visions in Bosch and Breughel.

 

Meeting Eighteen and Nineteen: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus- Calling It All into Doubt.

We will finish our discussion of Faustus and some fundamental perspectives on tragedy and tragic figures, and the meaning of life itself. The power of Vergil’s Elysium paradigm.

 

Meeting Twenty: Midterm Exam.

 

Meeting Twenty-one:  Milton and Paradise Lost- Epic and Tragic Heroes. The Central Agon of Modern Civilization. We will read with exquisite care Book One Paradise Lost.  Are we “seduced by sin” as we encounter the text? Is Blake correct that Milton was of the devil’s party but knew it not? Let’s also remember the movement of Dante’s Journey.

 

Meeting Twenty-Two: Milton and Paradise Lost- Epic and Tragic Heroes. The Central Agon of Modern Civilization. Books two and four of our Milton text. The psychology of Sin and the natural world and the place of humans in that world. Probing the role of gender with some attention to Eco-Spiritualism. Optional critical readings and short paper topics on Moodle.

A glance at Marvell’s reapers and the transformation of the pastoral. Psychic wholeness and division- Plato’s Symposium.

 

Meeting Twenty-Three: Milton and Paradise Lost- Epic and Tragic Heroes. The Central Agon of Modern Civilization.  Book Nine and the conclusion of Book Twelve. Wrestling with the Miltonic angels. What is our answer- and indeed, what is our underlying question? Cathars, Bogomils, Gnostics, and Dualism- Pneumatics and Catechumens- what about William Blake?

 

Meeting Twenty-Four:  Poets Romantic and Modern. We will focus on a few essential texts: Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Eliot’s “Prufrock’ and The Waste Land. A day of Close reading and probing questions. Lots of Moodle Critical Articles from which to choose.

 

Meeting Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six: Poets Romantic and Modern. We will focus on a few essential texts: Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Eliot’s “Prufrock’ and The Waste Land. I expect we will add an apocalyptic poem or two from Yeats and one or two of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. A day of Close reading and probing questions. Lots of Moodle Critical Articles from which to choose. Wordsworth’s “Intimations” Ode and Plato’s Timaeus

 

Meeting Twenty-Seven: The Heart of Darkness- Confronting the Justification of Civilization. Are we all imperialists- and do we imperialize in ways unthought by Conrad? We also want to question the source and effect of Conrad’s luxuriant prose. Can the creation of the cultural critique escape the culture itself? Lots of Moodle Critical readings from which to select,

 

Meetings Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine: The Heart of Darkness- Confronting the Justification of Civilization. Are we all imperialists- and do we imperialize in ways unthought by Conrad? We might look briefly at “Jekyll and Hyde” and the proto/post Freudian subterranean world

 

Meetings Thirty through Thirty-Two: The Modern City as Infernal Locale- Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. Hammett’s novel will offer us a sense of the modernist critique of the urban landscape and perhaps the whole modernist project. Hammett’s literary journeys are explorations of deeply metaphorical “Underworld”. Lots to explore with this American master. Framing Modernism and Post-Modernism. The Existential Novel and the nature of Pyrrhonism.

 

Meeting Thirty-Three: Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares and Existential Doubt.  This will be our way into contemporary literature. We will read Kinnell’s poems with care and connect them to contemporary writers of our choice. Can we cross the valley of not knowing and find a lastness that endures and is worth enduring? Camus’ Sisyphus

 

Meetings Thirty-Four and Thirty-Five: Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares and Existential Doubt.  This will be our way into contemporary literature. We will read Kinnell’s poems with care and connect them to contemporary writers of our choice. Can we cross the valley of not knowing and find a lastness that endures and is worth enduring? “Diving into the Wreck” with Adrienne Rich.

 

Meetings Thirty-Six and Thirty-Seven: Final Texts Selected by the Class. How has our work opened up new paths for us? In what text(s) do we wish to conclude our communal journey?

 

Final Meetings:  Summary seminar. Prophecy and lament. Nostos and Nostoi- is there a home where we can return? Are we left alone in a world of dark and poisonous despair? We will need some time to sum up and recover and commence new journeys.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Last modified: Friday, 21 August 2020, 2:36 PM