Course title: A Historical Survey of the Fantastic in British Literature
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Iva Polak
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 1 and 3
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in Semester 1 and/or 3
Course description: The course offers a historical survey of OE, ME and ModE texts till the late 19th century that appropriate fantasy or the supernatural for various reasons. Each text is discussed in the framework of its socio-historical context to reflect, albeit tentatively, the implied listener/reader. Some literary works are analyzed alongside their cinematic adaptations. Theoretical underpinnings of the fantastic include discussing mimesis, the rhetoric of the real and unreal, terminological muddy waters (fantasy/the fantastic/Fantasy), and the notion of impulse, mode and genre.
Objectives: Awakening students’ awareness of the existence of fantasy from the very beginnings of English literature; detecting the shifts in the function of the fantastic in literature and culture; clearer understanding of theoretical underpinnings of the fantastic.
Course requirements:The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance (max. 4 unattended classes), preparation for and participation in discussions, and writing and timely submission of seven short written assignments. Each assignment comes with guidelines, prescribed length (c. 800-1500 words) and deadline. Students must receive a minimum passing grade for reach written assignment to successfully pass the course. Plagiarizing detected in a single written assignment will lead to failing of the course.
Week by week schedule
WEEK 1
Introduction to key problems: the notion of reality in different time periods; mimesis-mimetic; fantasy-fantastic
WEEK 2
What is fantastic in fantasy; historical positioning of the fantastic; fantasy as a mode and/or a genre; introduction into the theory of the genre (Todorov, Brooke-Rose,Chanady, Hume, etc.)
– Christine Brooke-Rose (Ch. 2); Kathryn Hume (Ch. 2 & 5)
Assignment 1
WEEK 3
The problem of locating the fantastic in Anglo-Saxon (OE) literature
Beowulf , c. 8th c. (excerpts) – historical context, Anglo-Saxon listener and encoded reader; the problem of the real and the unreal; heroic or fantastic epic
WEEK 4
Beowulf (cont.) – relevance of epic for the development of fantastic literature
WEEK 5
Beowulf and Tolkien’s high fantasy; Tolkien. “The Monster and the Critic”
Assignment 2
WEEK 6
Fantasy and the Middle-Ages
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”) (1387-; Caxton 1st ed. 1476) – historical context, medieval forms, fable, fantasy of the so-called “simple forms” (Einfache Formen)
Assignment 3
WEEK 7
Sir Thomas Malory. Le Morte Darthur (1485): medieval intertext; from epic to romance; Arthuriana as myth and historiography; characters and narrative strands; Monthy Python and the Holy Grail (1975) dir. Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones
WEEK 8
No classes. Reading week.
WEEK 9
Fantasy and the Early Modern Period
William Shakespeare. The Tempest (1623) – Elizabethan worldview; Prospero’s magic and how to present it on stage and screen; application of Todorov
Assignment 4
WEEK 10
Cinematic adaptations of The Tempest: discussion of clips from Silent Shakespeare (1899-1901), Prospero’s Books (1991) dir. Peter Greenaway, The Tempest (2010) dir. Julie Taymor; analysis of Forbidden Planet (1956) dir. Fred M. Wilcox
Assignment 5
WEEK 11
Fantasy in the Neoclassical Period
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels (4th voyage) (1726, 1735)– utopian literature (Plato, Thomas More), Menippean satire, fantasy and allegory, location and problems of the 4th voyage;
Assignment 6
WEEK 12
Fantasy and the Victorian Period
Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) –Victorian children literature; nonsense verse (Jabberwocky); source of the supernatural
WEEK 13
Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – application of Todorov
Assignment 7
WEEK 14
Towards SF
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine (1895) – ‘impure’ SF, novum (Suvin)
Reading list:
Beowulf (excerpts)
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales (“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”)
Sir Thomas Malory. Le Morte Darthur (excerpts)
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels, IV voyage
Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
H. G. Wells. The Time Machine; “The Grey Man”
Critical editions:
– Brooke-Rose, Christine. A Rhetoric of the Unreal. Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic, CUP, 1981. (Ch. 2)
– Chanady, Amaryll Beatrice. Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved Versus Unresolved Antinomy, Garland Publishing Inc, 1985. (excerpts)
– Čapek, Karel. In Praise of Newspapers and Other Essays on the Margin of Literature, Allen&Uwin, 1951. Essays: “Towards a Theory of Fairy Tales”; “A Few Fairy-Tale Motifs”.
– Hume, Kathryn. Fantasy and Mimesis. Responses to Reality in Western Literature. Methuen. 1984. (Ch. 2 & 5)
– Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy. The Literature of Subversion, Routledge, 1981. (excerpts)
– Polak, Iva. Futuristic Worlds in Australian Aboriginal Fiction. Oxford:Peter Lang, 2017: Ch.1 & 2
– Suvin, Darko. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”. College English. Vol. 34. No. 3, 1972: 372-382.
– Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Cornell UP, 1975.
– Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monster and the Critics and Other Essays, HarperCollins, 2006. Essays: “The Monster and the Critics”; “On Fairy Stories”.
All texts shall be made available in electronic format.
