Course title: Shakespeare
Instructor: Asst. Prof. Tomislav Brlek
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: Semester 4 to 6
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English Lit/Introduction to English Lit 1 and 2

The course is designed as an analysis of William Shakespeare’s works in the light of the fact that they were written for theatre performance. The focus will be on close reading and interpretation of six plays, as well as on the discussion of select critical works relevant to this particular aspect. The main goal of the course is to point out the central poetical characteristics of Shakespeare’s playwriting, which has a special place in the history of English literature, as the basis for reading his work.
(http://theta.ffzg.hr/ECTS/Predmet/Index/5619)
Syllabus: SHAKESPEARE

1. Introduction
   • Eliot, “Introduction”
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
   • Frye, On Shakespeare, 34-50
   • Girard, Theater of Envy, 29-79; 167-173; 234-242
3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
   • Kott, “Titania and the Ass’s Head,” ShOC, 171-190
   • Kott, “The Bottom Translation,” BT, 29-68
4. The Tempest
   • Frye, On Shakespeare, 171-186
   • Kott, “Prospero’s Staff,” ShOC, 237-278
5. The Tempest
   • Kott, “The Tempest, or Repetition,” BT, 69-106
   • McGuire, “Shakespeare’s Tempest: Rhetoric and Poetics”
6. Measure for Measure
   • Frye, On Shakespeare, 140-153
   • Stevenson, “Design and Structure in Measure for Measure”
7. Measure for Measure
   • Kott, “Head for Maidenhead, Maidenhead for Head: The Structure of Exchange in Measure for Measure”
   • Schanzer, “Measure for Measure”
8. Macbeth
   • Kott, “Macbeth or Death-Infected,” ShOC, 68-78
   • Byles, “Macbeth: Imagery of Destruction”
   • Nevo, “Macbeth,” TF, 214-257
9. Macbeth
   • Knight, “Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil,” WF, 140-159
   • Knight, “The Milk of Concord,” IT, 125-153
   • Garber, “Macbeth: the Male Medusa,” GW, 116-165
10. Richard III
    • Kott, “The Kings,” ShOC, 3-46
    • Campbell, “The Tragical Doings of King Richard III”
11. Richard III
    • Rossiter, “Angel with Horns: the Unity of Richard III,” AwH, 1-22
    • Brooke, “Richard III (1593?)”
    • Garber, “Descanting on Deformity: Richard III and the Shape of History,” GW, 39-68
12. Coriolanus
    • Knight, “The Royal Occupation,” IT, 154-198
    • Nevo, “Coriolanus,” TF, 356-404
13. Coriolanus
    • Kott, “Coriolanus or Shakespearean Contradictions,” ShOC, 141-167
    • Rossiter, “Coriolanus,” AwH, 235-252
    • Brlek, “Ill Seen, Well Said”

READING LIST

Northrop Frye, On Shakespeare, ed. Robert Sandler (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)

Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality (London: Routledge, 1987; 2010) = GW

René Girard, A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)

1. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy with three new essays (London: Methuen, 1930; 1962) = WF
2. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme: Further Interpretations of Shakespeare’s Tragedies including the Roman Plays (London: Methuen, 1931; 1965) = IT

Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary [1964], tr. Boleslaw Taborski (London: Routledge, 1991) =ShOC

Jan Kott, The Bottom Translation : Marlowe and Shakespeare and the Carnival tradition, tr. Daniela Miedzyrzecka and Lillian Vallee (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1987) = BT

Ruth Nevo, Tragic Form in Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972) = TF

A.P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns and Other Shakespeare Lectures, ed. Graham Storey (London: Longmans, 1962), = AwH

_______________________

Tomislav Brlek, “Ill Seen, Well Said (On the Uses of Rhetoric in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus),” Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia 43 (1998): 161-171

Nicholas Brooke, “Richard III (1593?),” Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies (London: Methuen, 1968), 48-79

Joan M. Byles, “Macbeth: Imagery of Destruction,” American Imago 39(1982)2: 149-164

Lily B. Campbell, “The Tragical Doings of King Richard III,” Shakespeare’s ‘Histories’: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (London: Methuen, 1947; 1964), 306-334

T.S. Eliot, “Introduction” in Knight, WF, xiii-xx

Jan Kott, “Head for Maidenhead, Maidenhead for Head: The Structure of Exchange in Measure for Measure,” Theater Quarterly 8.31 (1978): 18-24

Jerry D. McGuire, “Shakespeare’s Tempest: Rhetoric and Poetics,” American Imago 39 (1982)3: 219-37

Ernest Schanzer, “Measure for Measure,” The Problem Plays of Shakespeare (Routledge, 1963), 71-131

L. Stevenson, “Design and Structure in Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare: Measure for Measure: A Casebook, ed. C.K. Stead (London; Macmillan, 1971), 213-232

 

 

Course title: African American Literature: 1800-Present
Instructor: Prof. Mark Metzler Sawin, PhD (visiting scholar)
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: Semester 4, 6 summer – CONDENSED COURSE, March-April 2017
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English Lit/Introduction to English Lit 1 and 2

____________________________________________________________________________________

download syllabus (.PDF)

COURSE DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES:
In the first chapter of his monumental work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) W.E.B. Du Bois wrote: …the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

This course is a study of African American literature and culture through the 19th and 20th centuries and up to today, however, if it succeeds, it will go far deeper than this, becoming an insightful investigation of the “double consciousness” that Du Bois alluded to over 110 years ago. Themes for this course will include the Construction of Race, Slavery, Emancipation, Jim Crow, Lynching, Jazz, Urbanization, the Harlem Renaissance, Desegregation, Civil Rights, R&B & Rock n’ Roll, the Sports and Entertainment Industries, Victimization, White-guilt, Political Correctness, Affirmative Action, and Hip-Hop Culture.

Because of its combined literary and cultural foci, the methodology of this course will be somewhat unconventional, using not only literary texts and documents, but also many cultural creations (film, music, etc.) to examine the story of Black America. This is necessary because this subject is complex and culturally loaded—the construction, enforcement, reconstruction, and slow transformation of “Black” and “White” America is at the center of the dynamic tension that has driven much of American history, from the ravages of Slavery and the Civil War to the creation of the amazing and distinctive African American culture that heavily impacts the global culture of the 21st century. Each week will include a lecture on the context & culture of Black America for the given era, and then a discussion of the assigned text. Learning to examine, explain, and understand the vibrant literary and cultural creations of Black America is the goal of this course.

EVALUATION: Reading Responses: During this class you will be responsible for seven Reading Responses — one for each of the 7 weeks we meet. These should be at least 1000 words and I will expect an insightful analysis of the work written in clean, crisp, concise prose. I will drop the lowest scoring response. Class Participation: You will all be expected to attend each lecture, to read each assigned text well, and to actively participate in class discussions.

ASSIGNMENTS & SCORING
Reading Responses (6 x 15%) = 90% Class Participation = 10%
Grades will be based on a ten-point scale: 5 = 100-90% 4 = 89-80% 3 = 79-70% 2 = 69-60% 1 = 59-0%
Assignments turned in late will be penalized 10%
TEXTS: (the course will consider the following texts—students will address one selection from each section)

Week 1. Slavery & the American Civil War
– Folktales & Spirituals (early 1800s)
– Martin Delany. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration & Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (selections) (1852)
– Frederick Douglass. My Bondage and My Freedom (selections) (1855)
– Harriet Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (selections) (1861)
– Sojourner Truth. “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” (1864)
Week 2. Reconstruction & the Rise & Fall of Black Rights
– Charles Chesnutt. “The Wife of His Youth” (1898)
– Booker T. Washington. “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895)
– W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk (selections) (1903)
Week 3. Segregated America
– James Weldon Johnson. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
Week 4. The Harlem Renaissance
– Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s)
– Langston Hughes. The Big Sea (selections)
– King Vidor film. Hallelujah! (1929)
Week 5. The Civil Rights Era
– Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (selections) (1952)
– Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, & Stokely Carmichael (selections) (1960s)
– Poetry of the Black Arts Era (1960-70s)
Week 6. All Funked Up: Hip Hop America
– Blaxploitation film. Shaft (1971)
– Early Hip Hop film. Wild Style (1983)
– Spike Lee film. Do the Right Thing (1989)
– John Singleton film. Boyz n the Hood (1991)
– Spike Lee film. Bamboozled (2000)
Week 7. Black Lives Matter?!: Race in America Today
– Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the World & Me (2015)

 

Professor Russell Reising
Office B-008
Office hours: from March 3, Thursday 14:00-15:00, Friday 12:00-13:00
Email: russreising@gmail.com
Phone: 99 7952930 (Not after 10 PM or before 9 AM!)
All poems indicated are easily available online. Use links I have provided when possible.

March 3-4
Introduction and business

TEACHING STRATEGIES AND COURSE POLICIES/COURSE EXPECTATIONS:
I approach my literature course with two primary goals: to teach certain works of literature (subject matter) and to help students improve their reading, writing, and analytical skills. In my opinion, the second of these goals is the real function of my presentations and our class discussions. Students who are not dedicated to improving these skills rarely do well in my classes. Students who are passionate about their studies will find that I am willing to go to extraordinary lengths to help, focus, provoke, challenge, and inspire you. Students who do not do the work will find that I have little patience or respect for those who squander their educational opportunities. Even if the particular subject matter we are studying does not greatly interest you, use the course to improve your communication and analytical skills.
I expect students to have finished all readings by the first class for which they are assigned, and I expect students to have given some thought to these works’ primary themes, mysteries, styles, etc. before coming to class. Students who have done these two things do much better in my classes than do students who don’t. I do not regard it as my responsibility to explain our works to students who haven’t done the reading. I do not accept late papers!
I assume you all know the plot, and, unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you have a comfortable understanding of the work on the literal level. It is completely up to students to ask questions about works and/or issues that trouble or elude them. I would love it if each class could be spent with me responding to students’ questions, problems, provocations, etc. I believe that students who struggle with the meanings of works of literature and try out their own interpretive ideas learn much more than do students who sit back and simply expect to have the materials explained. That might do in some courses or in some disciplines; I can’t imagine it being responsible pedagogy or student behavior in upper-division literature courses.
I will very rarely spend time discussing the biographical and/or historical contexts of the works we study unless they bear directly on the discussions we are having or on the analytical points I want to make. Nor should students spend time in their formal essays simply rehearsing the biography of the author or some irrelevant historical data. My courses stress issues much more than they do historical or biographical factoids. Given the richness of many internet sources for such information, I regard it as irresponsible to waste your time with insignificant details that anyone can easily find with a well-focused google search! This is not to say that students aren’t encouraged to probe the biographical or historical contexts of our materials, only that I won’t dwell inordinately on them unless they are truly germane to our approach.
I tend not to use highly organized class notes for our discussions, as I try to make each class responsive to students’ needs. This results in class discussions that some students find less organized than those they are used to or prefer. All students, therefore, are strongly encouraged to ask questions as they arise and also to take good notes.
I do not assign topics for your formal essays, but I will help you in any way necessary as you formulate and refine your topics and approaches. I believe that struggling with the material, coming up with a topic, refining that topic, and then writing and revising a paper are all crucial elements in how/what students learn when they approach a writing assignment. Professors who assign specific topics are simply giving so many take home essay exam assignments. I believe that people all learn in many different ways, reading the assigned works of literature, consulting secondary sources, participating in class discussions, and in all facets of composing a formal essay. Some students like to join in class discussions and/or ask questions; others prefer quietly processing what goes on in class. I try to make room for all learning styles, but I do, as I say above, expect students to work hard and to complete all the assignments on time.

Russ’s World Weary Guidelines for Writers of Academic Papers
(These guidelines constitute the basis of what I expect in your written work!)
1. Unless instructed otherwise, you should assume that your audience knows the work you are writing about at the literal level, but that they can be enlightened about important themes, characters, interconnections, and other significant stylistic elements in the work. As a writer, you reveal something not obvious about the work(s) you write about. Plot summary is almost never good, and almost the only times you should be discussing the plot of the work is to provide evidence for the analytical point you are making.
2. A good, analytical essay will begin with a thesis section in which you articulate what you are writing about and provide some sense of what is significant about the position you will be advancing. A good thesis is argumentative, i.e., it advances a position that is debatable and not merely obvious to any one who has experienced the same work of art. A good thesis teaches your reader what to expect and pay attention to, and it helps guide and discipline your own writing. Think of it as a contract between you and your reader, committing you to perform a specific analytical task.
3. A good conclusion should never merely repeat the “main points” of your paper. Repetition and redundancy rarely characterize a good conclusion. Read almost any substantial article in almost any quality periodical; their conclusions NEVER merely repeat, summarize, or restate their main points. A good conclusion should sound conclusive, not repetitious! Good conclusions can do many things; experiment with different ways of “concluding” your paper on a strong note, not with a throw-away paragraph that merely repeats what you have already done.
4. An analytical essay should represent the highest level of sophistication and specificity you have reached in your consideration of a work. In other words, it should report your conclusions, not your “thinking in progress.” You should never include passages that merely rehearse your encounters with the poem, as in:

“When I first read this poem, I thought it meant X, but, after deeper reading and more careful consideration, I now believe it means Y.”

This might be an accurate history of your experience with the poem/novel/story/ play/film/song/etc., and it might well be an important consideration as you plan your paper, but it has no place in a finished, formal essay. Similarly, almost all references to “I think,” “I feel,” “In my opinion,” etc. should be strictly avoided. They are useless.
5. I will evaluate your formal essays with attention to all possible elements of the written language, from the content to syntactic, grammatical, mechanical, organizational and other rhetorical elements of your work. Please note: error free writing is not necessarily good writing! Good writing will engage the reader with solid content, logical analysis, coherent organization at the paragraph and essay level, and with lively, varied sentences that don’t lull the reader with monotonous, repetitious words, sentence structures, sentence lengths, or ideas.
6. Most importantly, your essay should communicate your ideas about a work. Your thesis (not the “plot” of the work) will be the driving force of your paragraphs and of your entire essay. Most of your paragraphs should begin by indicating how this particular paragraph furthers the analytical thesis you advanced in your thesis/introductory section. Papers and paragraphs that begin with plot summary rarely do more than merely summarize.
7. I will fail any student who plagiarizes any work in this course, and I will pursue their expulsion from the university. If you have any doubt at all about what constitutes academic dishonesty, please contact me before turning in any work.

Russ’s Absolute Guidelines for Reading Poetry

1. For the purpose of this class, I am offering the following definition of poetry: Poetry is a kind of literary language that maximizes the meaning-creating potential of every single element of the text. This includes obvious things like the poem’s title, multiple word definitions, and grammar to line and stanza breaks, poetic techniques, rhymed words, etc. The shorter the poem, the more potentially volatile becomes every element within the poem.
2. “ Sometimes a bird is just bird!” Always begin by understanding the poem in the most literal and linear way possible. Make sure you can find some necessity, invitation, or some other plausible reason for moving from a literal understanding to any figurative or metaphorical interpretation of a poem. For example, if a poem mentions the word “big” and you believe that the god you believe in is “big,” that doesn’t mean that the word “big” can automatically be read as a reference to your god.
3. Always read the poem out loud to yourself and pay attention to how it allows itself to be read. For example, lots of punctuation or some alliterative chains of words require us to slow down, sometimes almost to a halt, while reading the poem. This will strongly alter our experience and interpretation of the poem. Also, try to formulate a good paraphrase of the “narrative” of the poem. Make sure you can follow its logic and story (if there is one).
4. Use your dictionaries, and pay close attention to the meaning(s) of every single word in the poem!!! You really need to understand every word of a poem to understand the poem. In the case of older poems, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is an indispensable tool. Learn how to access and use it in the library or over the internet through the Carlson Library webpage.
5. If you have trouble reading poetry, pretend it isn’t a poem. Read it as though it were prose. Many students are surprised to learn that almost all poems follow the general syntactic rules of the English language. Start with a sentence-beginning capital letter and then find the final punctuation for that sentence. Granted, poems maximize the meaning-creating potential of those rules, but you can get a very clear sense of the poem’s literal/linear level by reading it as though it were prose. Forget about lines; forget about stanzas; forget about poetic techniques: just understand the poem in terms of its sentences. THEN move on to study and appreciate it more fully, i.e., more poetically.
6. Always try to understand the context of the poem. How is the historical context important? What kind of speaker might be uttering this poem, and under what kinds of circumstances? Don’t automatically assume that the “I” of the poem is identical with the poet, and don’t automatically assume that a woman poet writes from a woman’s point of view (ditto for male poets). Very few things restrict our analytical energies with poetry; however, what a poem “can” mean is limited by what words and phrases meant at the time the poem was written. For example, if Shakespeare uses the word “groovy,” he couldn’t possibly mean “cool” or “out of sight,” as he might have meant had he written in the 1960s.

March 10-11
Reading week

March 17-18
Puritan poetry and poetics
http://www.calvinistcorner.com/tulip.htm
From Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative:

Before I knew what affliction meant, I was ready to sometimes wish for it. When I lived in prosperity […] I should be sometimes jealous least I should have my portion in this life, and the Scripture would come to my mind, Heb, 12.6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth. But now I see the Lord had his time to scourge and chasten me. The portion of some is to have their afflictions by drops, now one drop then another; but the dregs of the Cup, the Wine of astonishment: like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare for my portion. Affliction I wanted, and affliction I had, full measure (I thought) pressed down and running over; yet I see, when God calls a Person to any thing, and through never so many difficulties, yet he is fully able to carry them through and make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby. And I hope I can say in some measure, as David did, It is good for me that I have been afflicted. (112)

From Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World:

Hence tis, that the Happiness of NewEngland, has been, but for a Time, as it was foretold, and not for a Long Time, as ha’s been desir’d for us. A Variety of Calamity ha’s long follow’d this Plantation; and we have all the Reason imaginable to ascribe it unto the Rebuke of Heaven upon us for our manifold Apostasies; we make no Right use of our Disasters, if we do not, Remember whence we are fallen, and Repent, and Do the first works. But yet our Afflictions may come under a further Consideration with us: there is a further cause of our Afflictions, whose Due must be Given him.

Poems by Anne Bradstreet:
“To My Dear and Loving Husband”
“The Author to Her Book”
“Upon the Burning our Our House”

Three Elegies:
In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being A Year and a Half Old

Farewell dear babe, my heart’s too much content,
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta’en away unto eternity.
Blest babe, why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate,
Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state.

By nature trees do rot they are grown,
And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall,
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown to have so short a date,
Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet, Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and Seven Months Old

With troubled heart and trembling hand I write,
The heavens have changed to sorrow my delight.
How oft with disapoinment have I met,
When I on fading things my hopes have set.
Experience might ‘fore this have made me wise,
To value things according to their price.
Was ever stable joy yet found below?
Or perfect bliss without mixture of woe?
I knew she was but as a withering flower,
That’s here today, perhaps gone in an hour;
Like as a bubble, or the brittle glass,
Or like a shadow turning as it was.
More fool then I to look on that was lent
As if mine own, when thus impermanent.
Farewell dear child, thou ne’er shall come to me,
But yet a while, and I shall go to thee;
Meantime my throbbing heart’s cheered up with this;
Thou with thy Savior art in endless bliss.

On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet, Who Died on 16 November, 1669, Being But a Month, and One Day Old

No sooner came, but gone, and fall’n asleep.
Acquaintance short, yet parting caused us weep;
Three flowers, two scarcely blown, the last i’ th’ bud,
Cropped by th’ Almighty’s hand; yet is He good.
With dreadful awe before Him let’s be mute,
Such was His will, but why, let’s not dispute,
With humble hearts and mouths put in the dust,
Let’s say He’s merciful as well as just.
He will return and make up all our losses,
And smile again after our bitter crosses.
Go pretty babe, go rest with sisters twain;
Among the blest in endless joys remain.

March 24-25
Puritan poetry and poetics, cont.d
Edward Taylor Poems:
“Upon a Wasp Chilled With Cold”
“Upon a Spider Catching a Fly”
“The Ebb and the Flow”
“Upon Wedlock and the Death of Children”
“Huswifery”

March 31/ April 1
Poems By Phillis Wheatley
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/wheatley/wheatley.html
This download has all her poems and a nice memoir about her. The poems we will focus on include:
“On Being Brought from Africa to America”
“On Imagination”
“An Hymn to the Morning”
“An Hymn to the Evening”
“On Recollection”
“On Virtue”

April 7-8
Wheatley, cont’d
Freneau
Philip Freneau, “To An Author”
To an Author
by Philip Freneau
Your leaves bound up compact and fair,
In neat array at length prepare,
To pass their hour on learning’s stage,
To meet the surly critic’s rage;
The statesman’s slight, the smatterer’s sneer–
Were these, indeed, your only fear,
You might be tranquil and resigned:
What most should touch your fluttering mind;
Is that, few critics will be found
To sift your works, and deal the wound.

Thus, when one fleeting year is past
On some bye-shelf your book is cast–
Another comes, with something new,
And drives you fairly out of view:
With some to praise, but more to blame,
The mind returns to–whence it came;
And some alive, who scarce could read
Will publish satires on the dead.

Thrice happy Dryden, who could meet
Some rival bard in every street!
When all were bent on writing well
It was some credit to excel:–

Thrice happy Dryden, who could find
A Milbourne for his sport designed–
And Pope, who saw the harmless rage
Of Dennis bursting o’er his page
Might justly spurn the critic’s aim,
Who only helped to swell his fame.

On these bleak climes by Fortune thrown,
Where rigid Reason reigns alone,
Where lovely Fancy has no sway,
Nor magic forms about us play–
Nor nature takes her summer hue
Tell me, what has the muse to do?–

An age employed in edging steel
Can no poetic raptures feel;
No solitude’s attracting power,
No leisure of the noon day hour,
No shaded stream, no quiet grove
Can this fantastic century move;

The muse of love in no request–
Go–try your fortune with the rest,
One of the nine you should engage,
To meet the follies of the age:–

On one, we fear, your choice must fall–
The least engaging of them all–
Her visage stern–an angry style–
A clouded brow–malicious smile–
A mind on murdered victims placed–
She, only she, can please the taste!

http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/author-2
“The Wild Honey-suckle”
“The Indian Burying Ground”

April 14-15
Bryant
William Cullen Bryant
“Thanatopsis”
“A Forest Hymn”
“Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood”
“To a Waterfowl”

April 21-22
Emerson
Essay: “The Poet”
Poems:
“Each and All”
“The Snow-Storm”
“Concord Hymn”
Whitman
http://www.poemhunter.com/walt-whitman/
“When I First Heard the Learned Astronomer”

April 28-29
Emily Dickinson
“’Faith’ is a fine invention”
“These are the days when birds come back”
“I know that He exists”
“This World is not Conclusion”
“I heard a fly buzz when I died”
“Those dying then”
“The bible is an antique volume”
“If you were coming in the fall”

May 5-6
Dickinson, cont’d
TBA

May 12-13
Dickinson, cont’d
TBA

May 19-20
Holiday, no classes

May 26-27
Stephen Crane
Frances Harper
Edgar Lee Masters
All TBA

June 2-3
Robert Frost
“Design”
“Desert Places”
“Mending Wall”
“Birches”
“Two Look at Tao”
“After Apple-Picking”
“Directive”

June 9-10
Frost, cont’d

 

Course title: The Victorian Novel. Poetics and Politics
(Former title of the course: Victorian novel – poetics and cultural politics)
Instructor: Professor Tatjana Jukić
ECTS  credits: 6
Language: English
Semester: 3 or 5
Enrollment requirements: Introduction to the Study of English Literature 1 and 2

Course description: The course attempts to describe and analyze the poetics and the politics of the Victorian novel. It explores how the novel engages and reciprocates the complexity of the Victorian natural sciences, the Victorian visual arts and the Victorian social and political theory. We will focus on the selected novels by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Students are encouraged to read at least one extra novel, by Anthony Trollope and/or Thomas Hardy.

Course requirements: The grade is based on a written essay at the end of term (30% of the final grade), and two tests (30% of the final grade each), as well as on active participation in the class (10% of the final grade).

WEEK 1 Victorian culture and the Victorian novel.
WEEK 2 The Victorian novel and the natural sciences. Lyell and Darwin.
WEEK 3 The social and political prerogatives of the Victorian novel (1). Victorian women writers.
WEEK 4 The social and political prerogatives of the Victorian novel (2). Bentham and utilitarianism.
WEEK 5 The Victorian novel and the visual arts (1). Panopticism. Narration and focalization.
WEEK 6 The Victorian novel and the visual arts (2). The Pre-Raphaelites.
WEEK 7 Midterm.
WEEK 8 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1).
WEEK 9 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (2).
WEEK 10 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1).
WEEK 11 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (2).
WEEK 12 George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (1).
WEEK 13 George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (2).
WEEK 14 Final discussion.
WEEK 15 Final test. Evaluation.

Required reading:
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861.
George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866.

Optional reading:
George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 1969.
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874.
Antohony Trollope, Doctor Thorne, 1858.
Nancy Armstrong, Fiction in the Age of Photography: The Legacy of British Realism. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard UP. 2000. 75-124.
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1983. 236-258.
Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot. Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard UP. 1992. 113-142.
Tatjana Jukić, Zazor, Nadzor, sviđanje. Dodiri književnog i vizualnog u britanskom 19. stoljeću. Zagreb: Zavod za znanost o književnosti Filozofskog fakulteta u Zagrebu. 2002. 157-208, 291-320.
J. Hillis Miller, Victorian Subjects. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. 229-235, 289-302.
Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference. Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. New York i London: Routledge. 1988. 91-114.
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP. 1977. 37-72.
Herbert F. Tucker (ed.). Victorian Literature and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. 1999. 307-404.425-437.

 

Instructor: Hrvoje Tutek
Subject: American Literature
Course title: American Modernism
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 1 semester, 4th or 6th
Status: elective in undergraduate programme
Form of Instruction: 
Prerequisites: enrolled in fourth or sixth semester
Examination: Regular attendance, active participation , one written paper (5-6) pages and written final exam.

READINGS:
F.S. Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, “The Crack-Up”
Sherwood Anderson: 3 short stories from Winesburg, Ohio
Ernest Hemingway: 5  short stories from In Our Time , The Sun Also Rises
William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (selections)
Richard Wright: Native Son, “The Blueprint for Negro Writing”
John Dos Passos: selections from USA Trilogy
John Steinbeck: In Dubious Battle (selection)
SECONDARY READINGS:
Baym, Nina et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. New York, London: WW Norton, 1994. (selection)
Bradbury, Malcolm and James McFarlane, eds. Modernism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976.
Elliott, Emory, gen. ed. Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. (selection)
McQuade, Donald et al., eds. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1994. (selection)

Course Title: Early English Literature
Nastavnik: Vladimir Brljak
ECTS bodovi: 6 bodova
Jezik: engleski
Status: izborni kolegij
Trajanje: 1 semestar (2. ili 4. semestar)
Oblik nastave: 1 sat predavanja i 2 sata seminara tjedno
Uvjeti za upis kolegija: položen Uvod u studij engleske književnosti
Opis kolegija: Kolegij daje pregled engleske književnosti od sedmog do sedamnaestog stoljeća, s posebnim naglaskom na sadržaje koji nisu zastupljeni u drugim kolegijima iz odsječke ponude.
Sadržaj po tjednima:

1. Uvod
2. Beowulf; pjesme iz rukopisa Exeter Book
3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
4. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
5. The Castle of Perseverance (1)
6. The Castle of Perseverance (2)
7. More, Utopia
8. Wyatt; Surrey
9. Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis; soneti
10. Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1)
11. Spenser, The Faerie Queene (2)
12. Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1)
13. Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (2)
14. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1)
15. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (2)

Osnovna literatura:
1. “A Reader in English Literature, 700-1700”, ur. V. Brljak (izbor iz primarne i sekundarne literature)

Dodatna literatura:

1. Medieval English Literature, ur. J. B. Trapp (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973)
2. The Literature of Renaissance England, ur. J. Hollander i F. Kermode (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973)
3. The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ur. M. Godden and M. Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991)
4. A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, ur. P. Brown (Malden: Blackwell, 2009)
5. A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ur. M. Hattaway (Malden: Blackwell, 2003)
6. I. Rivers, Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Student Guide (New York: Routledge, 1992)

Ishodi učenja:

1. Temeljno poznavanje starije engleske književnosti (rani srednji vijek, kasni srednji vijek, renesansa
   ili rani novi vijek), uključujući niz iznimno važnih djela i autora iz navedenih perioda (npr. Beowulf, Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare), te vezanih književnopovijesnih i filoloških sadržaja.

2. Sveobuhvatnije poimanje engleske književne i intelektualne povijesti te uvid u srednjovjekovne i renesansne izvore kasnijih književnih i intelektualnih tradicija.
3. Temeljni uvid u filološke specifičnosti rada na starijoj engleskoj književnosti, npr. ranije varijante engleskog jezika (staroengleski i srednjoengleski, uz pomoć modernih prijevoda), aspekti rada s rukopisima i ranim tiskom (uz pomoć digitalnih reprodukcija).

4. Sposobnost daljnjeg samostalnog rada na sadržajima iz istog perioda te kompetentne upotrebe relevantnih tiskanih i elektroničkih izvora.

Metode nastave:
Predavanja i seminari. Pisanje seminarskog rada uz konzultacije s nastavnikom.

Metode ocjenjivanja:
Kontinuirana evaluacija: dva kolokvija, seminarski rad, participacija i pohađanje nastave.

Course title: American Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Instructor: Asst. Prof. Sven Cvek, Hrvoje Tutek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 2^nd or 3^rd year of undergraduate studies
Enrollment requirements: student must be registered in the 3^rd semester
Course description: This course centers on some crucial aspects of US postmodernism, such as a transforming relationship between “popular” and “high” culture, inquiries into the exchanges between historiography and fiction, and questions of availability of critical positions in the “late-capitalist” society. The course will focus on selected US postmodern novels, their interpretations, and their interactions with various forms of popular culture (textual, visual, musical), commonly understood either as sites of authentic expression of “the people,” or as fundamentally inauthentic products of an alienating culture industry. The discussion will include issues of: the distinction between mass and popular culture, consumerism, culture industry and cultural amnesia, simulacra, culture as a question of identity, globalization and Americanization, utopia.
Objectives: students will learn about the important cultural, social and political aspects of American postmodernism and their relation to the literary production of the period. The course also aims at preparing the students for a critical, contextually and theoretically informed reading of the novels, with a special emphasis on approaches informed by cultural studies.
Course requirements: regular attendance, written test, essay paper.

Week by week schedule: TBA

Reading: four or five of the following titles:
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
Willam Gibson, Neuromancer
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Art Spiegelman, Maus
Douglas Coupland, Generation X
Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Colson Whitehead, Zone One
Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation

Students will also be required to read the course reader (about 200 pages) that provides the historical context and theoretical background for the course.

---

Course title: British Romanticism: prose
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th semester
Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Prerequisites: Introduction to English Literature
Course description: This module aims to engage students at a high level of scholarly rigour with the key themes, ideas and concerns of British Romanticism and with the wider historical, cultural and political contexts out of which they emerged. We will depart from the socio-historical contexts (Scottish Enlightenment, French Revolution, women rights) and a selection of texts which were central for the lively public debates of the period. We will then continue with the representative prose texts covering the gothic novel, the Scottish historical novel and Romantic life-writing. Primary readings will be balanced with critical essays.

Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation).

Weekly schedule:

1. week: socio-historical context, from the Scottish Enlightenment to English Romanticism, excerpts from Edmund Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution, Thomas Paine: Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
2. week: gothic novel – genre development (Horace Walpole (1764)The Castle of Otranto)
3. week: Ann Radcliffe (1794) The Mysteries of Udolpho
4. week: Marry Shelley (1818) Frankenstein

5. week: Frankenstein, cont.; chosen scenes from the movie Frankenstein (2004) dir. Kenneth Branagh
6. week: historical novel, Scottish national identity
7. week: Sir Walter Scott (1814) Waverley
8. week: Mid-term exam, academic writing skills, topics for seminar papers
9. week: autobiography, Romantic confessional narratives (from St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
10. week: Thomas de Quincey (1821) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
11.  week: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, cont.
12.  week: James Hogg (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
13.  week: Dorothy Wordsworth (1800) The Grasmere Journal
14.  week: final remarks
15. week: End-term exam

Reading list:
Primary literature:

Horace Walpole (1764), The Castle of Otranto
Ann Radcliffe (1794) The Mysteries of Udolpho
Marry Shelley (1818) Frankenstein
Sir Walter Scott (1814) Waverley
Thomas de Quincey (1821) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
James Hogg (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Dorothy Wordsworth (1800) The Grasmere Journal

+

Reader with selected critical essays

 Secondary literature:

– Anderson, Linda. Autobiography. New York & London: Routlege, 2001
– Broadie, Alexander. The Scottish Enlightenment: The Historical Age of the Historical Nation. Birlinn, 2001.
– Clery, E. J. Women’s Gothic: from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Tavistock, 2004
– Crawford, Robert (ed.). The Scottish Invention of English Literature. Cambridge UP, 1998
– De Groot, Jerome. The historical novel. London, New York: Routledge, 2010
– Duncan, Ian. Scott’s Shadow: the novel in Romantic Edinburgh. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007
– Eakin, Paul John. How are lives become stories: making selves. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1999
– Olney, James. Memory and Narrative: the weave of life-writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000
– Punter, David (ed.) A Companion to the Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2008
– Smith, Joanna M. (ed.) Frankenstein: complete authoritative text with biographical and historical contexts, critical history and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives. Boston: Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1992
– Smith, Sidonie, Julia Watson (eds.) Women, Autobiography, Theory: a Reader. Madison: Unversity of Wisconsin Press, 1998
– Townshend, Dale. The Orders of Gothic: Foucault, Lacan and the subject of Gothic writing, 1764 – 1820. New York: AMS Press, 2007

 

Course title: Contemporary Canadian Literature in English
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Vanja Polić
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th semester
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English literature, enrolment in the 4th or 6th semester
Course description: The starting point for the course is the genre of the cowboy western and the myth of the Wild West. The course proceeds to analyse the ways in which they are reinscribed and transformed in contemporary Canadian literature with the aim of bringing to the surface the hitherto suppressed accounts in the dominant discourse of history. These are cultural-historical aspects of Canadian society such as white settlement and colonial history of western Canada; marginal or silenced voices in the Wild West myth such as women’s voices, First Nations voices and immigrants from visible minorities; realities of the life in the West vs. their portrayal in the Wild West myth.  From a literary-theoretical perspective, the course will observe postmodernism in CanLit through the metamorphosis of the “traditional” cowboy western genre as trivial literature into serious literature such as historiographic metafiction and historical novel.
Objectives: Acquainting the students with contemporary Canadian culture and history through relevant works from Canadian literature.
Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance, preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. The paper is worth 35%, midterm and endterm exams are worth 50% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 15% of the final grade. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.

The exact date of the mid-term exam is defined in cooperation with the students. Topics for the main written assignment (student paper) are selected during week 8.

Week by week schedule
WEEK 1: introduction into Canada: history and geography
WEEK 2: the Wild West myth and the Frontier thesis – US vs. Canada
WEEK 3: G. Bowering, Shoot! – introduction to the 19th c. society and the First Nations
WEEK 4: G. Bowering, Shoot! – Canada as a postcolonial country?
WEEK 5: historiographic metafiction (Hutcheon) and shedding light on history
WEEK 6: G. Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy – creation of the national myth
WEEK 7: G. Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy – sequel
WEEK 8: mid-term exam and essay topics
WEEK 9: F. Stenson, Lightning – historical approach to cowboys and the Wild West
WEEK 10: G. Bowering, Caprice – the Wild West as a story
WEEK 11: G. Bowering, Caprice – sequel
WEEK 12: P. deWitt, The Sisters Brothers – ironizing the Wild West
WEEK 13: P. deWitt, The Sisters Brothers – sequel
WEEK 14: final remarks, end-term exam

Reading list:
Novels
Bowering, George. Caprice
Bowering, George. Shoot!
deWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers
Vanderhaeghe, Guy. The Englishman’s Boy
Stenson, Fred. Lightning – selections
Theory
American Review of Canadian Studies, special issue: The West. 33, no. 4 (Winter 2003)
Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction”, The Canadian Postmodern.
Turner, F. J. The Frontier in American History – selected chapters
See. Scott W. The History of Canada
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America – selected chapters
Critical articles on the novels

Course title: Cool Britannia? British drama in the period 1956 – 2008
Instructor: Dr. Tihana Klepač, Assoc. Prof.
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: enrolment in 4th or 6th semester
Course requirements: continuous assessment; regular attendance, work in class, 1 written assignment, mid-term and end-term exam.
Course description: An overview of British drama beginning with the premiere of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and ending with Pinter’s death on the Christmas Eve of 2008, discussed in the light of its contribution to the formulation of the British national identity. Analyzing the works of the authors listed below we shall explore the way in which British dramatists through three generations of the angry young men (the original in the 1950s and 1960s, the second one in the 1990s as expressed in the in-yer-face theatre, and the third one expressed through the Verbatim theatre) relate to the imperial British metanarration, and attempt to point to the fissures in the national identity so created.
Objectives: Recognize the role of British drama in the formulation of the perceived role of Great Britain in the post-imperialist period.
Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance, preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.

Week by week schedule:
WEEK 1
Idea that literature constitutes discourses which have an order-giving and order-finding function in the contemporary world (Marion Halligan, J. Hillis Miller); incredulity toward metanarratives (Lyotard, White, Foucault)
WEEK 2
Power and identity (Hall, Bhabha, Anderson, Duara, Balibar, Spivak); relations of power and the right to representation (Foucault); end of metanarrations and the relativisation of Truth (Baudrillard)
WEEK 3
Historical background of the Angry Young Men, In-Yer-Face and Verbatim theatre: Britain in the latter 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century; influence of Samuel Beckett and the theatre of the absurd 
WEEK 4
Angry Young Men; John Osborne: Look Back in Anger, 1956; Clash of class cultures with the dominant theme of helplessness and anger: discovery that the idealised Britain the war generation sacrificed itself for is fake, and that the national identity so formulated is a betrayal; excerpts from the 1976 TV adaptation of the play, «BBC Play of the Month» program
WEEK 5
Harold Pinter: The Dumb Waiter, 1960; individual vs. collective identity as expressed through the political metaphor, the Big Brother theme; Excerpts from the interview with Michael Billington and Karel Reisz
WEEK 6
Edward Bond: Saved, 1965; cultural poverty and frustration of young people on the dole, censorship
WEEK 7
Tom Stoppard: Rozenkrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, 1966; individual vs. collective identity in a society in which traditional values are overturned, postmodernist play of words, reinscription of the British canon; excerpts from the film Rozenkrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
WEEK 8
Mid-term exam.
Overseas colonisation as treated in British drama (Kidd, Tylor, Kipling)
WEEK 9
Timberlake Wertenbaker: Our Country’s Good
WEEK 10
In-Yer-Face Theatre; Sarah Kane: Blasted, 1995; tragedy of history; comparison of its reception with that of Look Back in Anger and Saved
WEEK 11
Mark Ravenhill: Shopping and Fucking, 1996; consumerism erasing all moral codes; excerpts from the play performed in &TD theatre, Zagreb, 7^th May 2004
WEEK 12
Verbatim theatre: tribunal plays; Richard Norton – Tylor: Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry; Postcolonial Ireland
WEEK 13
Verbatim theatre: politicians on stage; David Hare: Stuff Happens; British foreign policy, power plays, representation and self-representation
WEEK 14
Final discussion.
WEEK 15
End-term exam.

Reading:
Plays
John Osborne: Look Back in Anger
Harold Pinter: The Dumb Waiter
Edward Bond: Saved
Tom Stoppard: Rozenkrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead
Timberlake Wertenbaker: Our Country’s Good
Mark Ravenhill: Shopping and Fucking
Sarah Kane: Blasted
David Hare: Stuff Happens
Richard Norton – Tylor: Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry

– Christopher Innes: Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2002
– Simon Trussler: The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Due to unavailability of reference material, all relevant texts are contained in the Cool Britannia? Reader 2010.

 

 

Course: History of English Drama from Mass to City Play (2P/1S, 6 ECTS)
Status: elective
Teacher: Tamara Petrić, assist.
Semester: Fall term 2012/ 2013
Lecture and seminara
Language: English
The final grade in this course will depend on the following considerations: (1) a short essay/ term paper; (2) regular attendance and active participation; and (3) two exams.
Objectives.: The purpose of this study—unit is to introduce students to the immediate social contexts of English medieval and renaissance drama and enable them to map out England’s political and economic interests at various points in history. Staging conditions of the Easter mass, medieval drama’s liturgical beginnings, provide insight into the role of Benedictine monasteries – the place of origin of liturgical drama — in England’s international wool and cloth trade, while the processional form and mercantile display of the Corpus Christi play helps us follow bouts of inter—class conflict and cooperation within regional market towns of late—medieval East Anglia and Yorkshire. The cultural and imaginative geography of the Levant/ the Eastern Mediterraneani and the Middle East, as well as the Baltic in the miracle or saint’s play betrays the increasing importance of foreign trade to Plantagenet economy, while Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean Mediterranean plays help us map out England’s political and economic interests in an increasingly global world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly England’s stake in the eastern Mediterranean and Atlantic trades and the Ottoman threat to the preeminence of Venice as a key mediator in Mediterranean trade. Morality plays construe an idealized feudal contract in the face of an emerging early modern state and the shift toward market dependency, Tudor comedies are concerned with import—export imbalance in inflation—plagued England, while the Jacobean city comedy censures the increasing social mobility facilitated by an influx of money due to piracy and Atlantic slave trade.
Outcomes: In addition to its function as an advanced introduction to early English drama, this course is designed to help students develop their abilities as readers, researchers, writers, and thinkers. By the end of the semester, students should be able to demonstrate their proficiency with such skills as close reading, library research, use of evidence, and argumentative logic.

Tentative schedule of readings and assignments.
Weeks 1 & 2. An Easter Resurrection Play from the Regularis Concordia of St Ethelwold (c. 965—975) and a Pantomime for Easter Day performed in the Abbey Church/ Monastical Church at Durham (England)
– “The Crusades and Eastern Europe, ca. 1100—1550”, in Mortimer Chambers, Raymond Grew, David Herlihy et al, The Western Experience (1974), 2 vols, 5th ed, New York, St Louis, San Francisco et al: McGraw—Hill, 1991; 381—415.
– “The Quem Quaeritis Trope”, “A Pantomime for Easter Day”, “An Easter Resurrection Play”, and “The Orleans Sepulcher”, Medieval and Tudor Drama (1963), ed. John Gassner, New York: Bantam Books, 1987; 33—43.
– John M Wasson, “The English Church A Theatrical Space”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 25—37.
– Roger E. Reynolds, “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions”, Revue de Musicologie, Vol. 86, No. 1 (2000); 127—142.
Weeks 3 & 4. The Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play
– Second Shepherds’ Play/ Secunda Pastorum, in ‘Everyman’ and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. A. C. Cawley, London: J. M. Dent, 1956; 81—107.
– Edna Eileen Power, “The English Wool Trade in the Reign of Edward IV”, Cambridge Historical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1926); 17–35.
– Anne Higgins, “Streets and Markets”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 77—92.
Weeks 5 & 6. The Croxton Play of the Sacrament
– The Play of the Sacrament, in Early English Drama (An Anthology), ed. John C. Coldewey, New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1993; 274—305.
– Lisa Lampert, “The Once and Future Jew: The Croxton ‘Play of the Sacrament’, Little Robert of Bury and Historical Memory”, Jewish History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2001), 235—255.
Weeks 7 & 8. The Summoning of Everyman; mid—term exam (in—class).
– The Somonynge of Eueryman/ Summoning of Everyman, in An Anthology of English Drama Before Shakespeare, ed. Robert B. Heilman, New York, Toronto: Rinehart, 1954; 73—104.
– Roger Ladd, “‘My condicion is mannes soule to kill’ — Everyman’s Mercantile Salvation”, Comparative Drama, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2007), 57–78.
– Suzanne Westfall, “’A Commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling trick’: Household Theater”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 39—58.
Weeks 9 & 10. Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
– Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, ed. J. W. Harper. London: Ernest Benn, 1971.
– Jonathan Burton, “Anglo—Ottoman Relations and the Image of the Turk in Tamburlaine”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 30.1 (2000), 125—157.
Weeks 11 & 12. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
– William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002; 293—323.
– Jennifer Rich, “The Merchant Formerly Known as Jew: Redefining the Rhetoric of Merchantry in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.”, Early Modern Literary Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (January, 2008) 2. 01—19.
– Alan Stewart, “‛Come from Turkie’: Mediterranean Trade in Late Elizabethan London”, Remapping the Mediterranean World in Early Modern English Writings, ed. Goran Stanivukovic, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; 157—177.)
– Weeks 13 & 14. Arden of Feversham
– Arden of Feversham, in English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, ed. David Bevington, Lars Engle, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Eric Rasmussen, New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002; 421–482.
– Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, “’Arden Lay Murdered in That Plot of Land’: Surveying, Land and Arden of Faversham”, English Literary History, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 231—252.
Week 15. Elizabethan playhouses; concluding remarks; final exam.
– John Orrell, “The Theaters”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 93—112.

 

Course title: Shakespeare
Instructor: Prof. Janja Ciglar-Žanić.
ECTS credits: 6.
Status: elective.
Semester: 4^th or 6^th semester.
Enrollment requirements: completed 3^rd or 5^th semester.
Course description: The course will be concerned with a selected number of Shakespeare’s plays viewed in the light of new theories of literature and culture. A study of the new strategies of reading, developed in the last few decades (new historicism, cultural materialism, feminism, postcolonialism), will introduce the course. Each of the selected plays will be accompanied by different film productions of the corresponding play and the discussions will centre on the relationship between text and its visual presentations. Special attention will be paid to the reinscriptive practices in both textual criticism and film productions.
Objectives: The main objective of the course is to shed a new light on the traditional understanding and reading of the plays as well as on the plays themselves. An additional objective is to examine how Shakespeare’s texts function in a medium non-existent in Shakespeare’s time and how in both their textual and visual medium they are related to our present concerns.
Course requirements: Continuous evaluation: Class work (regular attendance at lectures and active class participation), a seminar paper (with an oral presentation), and two quiz– and essay—style exams on issues raised by plays covered in class and social and cultural issues as they relate to Shakespeare’s plays.

Week by week schedule:
Week 1: Introduction: Strategies of reading.
Week 2: Strategies of reading (continued).
Week 3: Shakespearean stage.
Week 4: Hamlet: various readings with the emphasis on new historicist, psychoanalytic, and political interpretations. Footage from films directed by G. Kozintsev, L. Olivier, T. Richardson and K. Branagh.
Week 5: Hamlet (continued).
Week 6: Antony and Cleopatra: different readings with the emphasis on feminist interpretation. Film clips: J. Scoffield.
Week 7: Antony and Cleopatra (continued).
Week 8: Mid—term exam.
Week 9: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: various reinscriptive practices in textual criticism and performance. Film clips: A. Noble, M. Hoffman, A. Popovski (Gavella Theatre production).
Week 10: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (continued).
Week 11: The Tempest: different readings with the emphasis on postcolonial interpretation Film clips: (the BBC production), D. Jarman, P. Greenaway (Prospero’s Books).
Week 12: The Tempest (continued).
Week 13: The Tempest (continued).
Week 14: Concluding remarks.
Week 15: End—term exam.

Required reading:
-Orgel, Stephen, i A. R. Braunmuller (ur), The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, New York: Penguin, 2002.
– Barker, Francis, i Peter Hulme, “Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Con–Texts of The Tempest”, u: Drakakis, John (ed), Alternative Shakespeares. London i New York: Routledge, 1985; 191-205.
– Carter, Ronald, «The Renaissance: 1485-1660», u: Carter, Ronald, i John McRae (ur). The Routledge History of Literature in English. London & New York: Routledge, 1997; 57-126.
– Ciglar-Žanić, Janja, “Antikolonijalna Oluja: teorija i praksa suvremenih reinskripcija Shakespearea”, u: Neka veća stalnost: Shakespeare u tekstu i kontekstu, Zagreb: Zavod za znanost o književnosti Filozofskog fakulteta, 2001; 125-151.
– Coddon, Karin S, «‘Suche Strange Desygns’: Madness, Subjectivity, and Treason in Hamlet and Elizabethan Culture», u: Wofford, Susanne L (ur), Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: William Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’. New York: Bedford Books, 1994; 380-402.
– Desmet, Christy, “Character Criticism”, u: Wells, Stanley, i Lena Cowe Orlin (eds), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003; 351-372.
– Fitz, Linda T, “Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism.”, u: Drakakis, John (ur), New Casebooks: Antony and Cleopatra, Houndmills [itd.]: Macmillan, 1994; 182-211.
– French, Marilyn, “Antony and Cleopatra”, u Shakespeare’s Division of Experience, London: Abacus, 1983; 251-265.
– Girard, René, “The Course of True Love”, u A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare; New York & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991; 29-79.
– Greenblatt, Stephen J, “Learning To Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century”, u Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture, New York & London: Routledge, 1992, 16-39.
– Gurr, Andrew, «The Shakespearean Stage», u: Greenblatt, Stephen (ur), The Norton Shakespeare, New York i London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997; 3281-3301.
– Harrison, G. B, “Materials for the Life of Shakespeare”, in Introducing Shakespeare (3. izd), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966; 29-75.
– Holderness, Graham, «Bardolatry: or, The cultural materialist’s guide to Stratford—upon—Avon», u: Holderness, Graham (ur), The Shakespeare Myth, Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998; 02–15.
– Jones, Norman, “Shakespeare’s England”, u: Kastan, David Scott (ur), A Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999; 25-41.
– Kott, Jan, “Titania and the Ass’s Head”, u: Shakespeare Our Contemporary, prev. Boleslaw Taborski, New York: Doubleday, 1966; 213-236.
– Loomba, Ania, “‘Travelling thoughts’: Theatre and the Space of the Other”, u: Drakakis, John (ur), New Casebooks: Antony and Cleopatra, Houndmills [itd]: Macmillan, 1994; 279-307.
– Neill, Michael, “Hamlet: A Modern Perspective”, in Mowat, Barbara A. & Paul Werstine (eds), The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, New York [etc]: The New Folger Library Shakespeare, 1992; 307-326.
– Tatspaugh, Patricia, “Performance history: Shakespeare on the stage 1660-2001”, u: Wells, Stanley, & Lena Cowe Orlin (eds), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003; 525-549.

Recommended reading:
– Barber, C. L, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.
– Bradley, A. C, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, London: Macmillan, 1904.
– Brooker, Peter, i Peter Widdowson (ur), A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory, Harlow [etc.]: Prentice Hall, 1996.
– Bulman, James C (ur), Shakespeare, Theory and Performance, London i New York: Routledge, 1996.
– Ciglar-Žanić, Janja, Domišljato stvoren svijet: Barok u engleskoj književnosti, Zagreb: Slap, 2008.
– Ciglar-Žanić, Janja, Neka veća stalnost: Shakespeare u tekstu i kontekstu, Zagreb: Zavod za znanost o književnosti Filozofskoga fakulteta u Zagrebu, 2001.
– Cox, John D, i David Scott Kastan (ur), A New History of Early English Drama, s uvodnom riječju Stephena J. Greenblattaa, New York: Columbia UP, 1997.
– De Grazia, Margreta, i Stanley Wells (ur), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
– Dollimore, Jonathan; i Alan Sinfield (ur), Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, Manchester i New York: Manchester UP, 1985.
– Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.
– —   A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance, New York i London: Columbia UP, 1965.
– —   Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Toronto [itd]: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
– Greenblatt, Stephen (ur), The Norton Shakespeare, New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997.
– Harrison, G. B, Introducing Shakespeare (3. izd), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966.
– Hattaway, Michael; Boika Sokolova, i Derek Roper (ur), Shakespeare in the New Europe. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.
– Kastan, David Scott (ur), A Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
– Kermode, Frank (ur), Shakespeare: King Lear. 1969.
– Kott, Jan, The Bottom Translation: Marlowe and Shakespeare and the Carnival Tradition. Prev. Daniela Miedzyrzecka i Lillian Vallee. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1987.
– Loomba, Ania, Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama, Bombay [itd]: Oxford UP, 1992.
– Lupić, Ivan, Prijetvorni subject: transtekstualni okviri Shakespeareovih soneta, Zagreb: L biblioteka Zavoda za znanost o književnosti Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 2007.
– McDonald, Russ, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (2. izd), Boston i New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2001.
– Parker, Patricia, i Geoffrey Hartman (ur), Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, London: Methuen, 1985.
– Schoenbaum, Samuel, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life, New York i Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.
– Selden, Raman; Peter Widdowson, i Peter Brooker (ur), A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, London [itd.]: Prentice Hall, 1997.
– Styan, John Louis, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977.
– Swift Lenz, Carolyn Ruth; Gayle Greene; i Carol Thomas Neely (ur), The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980.
– Tillyard, E. M. W, The Elizabethan World Picture, London: Chatto & Windus, 1943.
– Torbarina, Josip, “Predgovor”, in Shakespeare, William, San ivanjske noći. Transl. Milan Bogdanović. Redigirao Josip Torbarina. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1970.
– Vickers, Brian, English Renaissance Literary Criticism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
– Weimann, Robert, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function. Schwartz, Robert (ur). Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.
– Wells, Stanley, i Lena Cowe Orlin (ur), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003; pp. 391-410.

Course title: The American Bildungsroman of the 19th and the 20th Century
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Jelena Šesnić
Spring 2012/13, 2018/19
BA program

Course description:
Bildungsroman as a genre addresses the process of the acquisition of social and cultural identity taking as its representative figure the bourgeois subject in the making. Another significant fault line operating in the genre deals with the issue of different paths of emergence for male and female subjects, respectively, showing interesting parallels and exemplary divergences. These parallel developments will be pursued in a number of representative texts while simultaneously offering a chronological line of development of the genre within US-American literature. Cultural models of the “invention of childhood” (Ph. Ariès ), psychoanalytic models of subject formation and generic criticism will be the dominant methods of approach to the novels that retain their focus on fascinating processes of individual identity formation.

Primary works:
1. Horatio Alger: Ragged Dick (1868)
2. Louisa May Alcott: Little Women (1868, 1869)
3. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
4. Paule Marshall: Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959)
5. Bobbie Ann Mason: In Country (1985)
6. Colson Whithead: Sag Harbour (2009)

Secondary readings:
– Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1962. (selection)
– Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. (selection)
– Moretti, Franco. The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. 1987. New ed. London: Verso, 2000. (selection)

– Reader for the course containing additional secondary sources.

Grade break-down: Grades in the seminar are based on the system of continuous evaluation: tests (midterm and final: 40%); seminar paper (6-7 pp.; 30%); attendance and participation (10%); assignments (20%).