Students can take a minimum of three courses and a maximum of four, not including language acquisition courses. (Language classes do not count toward the 9 credit.) Every effort should be made to acquire language proficiency as early as possible. Please bear in mind, the language exams will be rigorous and must be satisfied by the end of the third semester of residence.

Students are required to consult with the Program Director/and or Director of Graduate Studies prior to enrolling in any course. Students should select their courses from the listings described in this booklet. However, in special circumstances and with prior authorization from the Program's Director and/or Director of Graduate Studies, graduate level courses not listed here can be taken for credit.

Students are reminded of the Program's requirements in Core, Primary and Related Fields. With the advice of the Director/ Director of Graduate Studies, and/or advisors in their field students, will, at the appropriate time, be expected to demonstrate what constitutes Primary and Related fields of study.

LITERARY THEORY:  (Required Course for all first year students)
LIT 73902    
Philology And Weltliteratur
Buttigieg
T 6:30 – 9:30 PM
The Literature Programs course on Literary Theory deals with theories of different time and places with emphasis on the critical problems that arise when what we call "Literature" is investigated in a multicultural context. Issues that may be expected to arise include the following the problems of translation, the meaning of metaphor, hermeneutics complexity, the meaning of the word "style" the relation between oral and written literatures.

Eric Auerbach's essay, from which this course derives its title, serves as a point of departure for exploring the possibility of developing an approach to literary history and literary interpretation that: (a) attends to the historical, cultural and aesthetic specificity of the individual literary work and (b) at the same time, brings into relief the complex ways in which cultures interact, overlap, and modify one another. The course will focus primarily on the pertinent works of Vico, Herder, and the German Romantics, Auerbach (and other historicists), Arnold, C. L. R. James, Raymond Williams, and Edward W. Said, as well as selections from the writings of Fanon, Ngugi, Lamming, Cesaire, and others.

ENGLISH
LIT 73920
Canterbury Tales
Dolores Frese
TR 12.30-1.45
Description will be posted on website when available.

LIT 73921
The Vercilli Book
Thomas Hall
TR 5.00-6.15
The Vercelli Book is a tenth-century collection of Old English poetry and homilies which stands alongside the Beowulf manuscript, the Exeter Book, and the Junius manuscript as one of the great treasures of Old English literature. This is the manuscript that contains The Dream of the Rood, Andreas, and Cynewulf’s Elene and Fates of the Apostles, as well as twenty-three prose homilies on topics as divergent as the miracles that occurred at Christ’s birth, the life of St Guthlac, the lassitude of women, the signs presaging Doomsday, and the colorful transformation of the soul at the moment of death. We’ll read most of the poetry and about half of the homilies, and we’ll explore in some detail the connections between the homilies and the Latin sermon literature of the period. Requirements include weekly response papers, an oral report, an annotated bibliography, and a seminar paper.

Textbooks: The Vercelli Book, ed. G. P. Krapp, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2 (1932); The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, ed. D. G. Scragg, EETS o.s. 300 (1992).

LIT 73922
Renaissance Literature
tba
M 6.30-9.00
Description will be posted on website when available.

LIT 73923
Pope & Swift
John Sitter
M 3.00-5.30
Focus: Careful reading of most of the major works of the eighteenth century’s greatest poet and England’s greatest satirist. The seminar will also consider some of Jonathan Swift’s and Alexander Pope’s collaborations, some works written in response to theirs (poems by Anne Finch and Mary Leapor, e.g.), and some works they heavily influenced (e.g., John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera). In addition to the expected primary and secondary texts, readings will include some recent theoretical works on satire, irony, and literary voice.

Requirements: Informed participation in the seminar’s conversation, one or two oral reports, some short response papers, and a major term paper.

LIT 73924
Victorian Public Sphere
David Thomas
R 2.00-4.30
A remarkable variety of Victorian enterprises bear reading in terms of their public character – from the novel, poetry and theater to speeches, demonstrations, periodical debates, universal exhibitions, and the rise of museums. As recent scholarship on the public sphere shows, however, it is hardly plain how best to read such "publicity."

The foundational account of this topic is Jürgen Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), which tells that a modern bourgeois public sphere arose especially in the eighteenth century when coffee shops, magazines, newspapers and other forums enabled citizens collectively to debate their social and political views. Habermas contended that this public sphere, while specifically bourgeois, also embodied commitments to rational criticism and consensus that carried a broader emancipatory potential, itself identified with the project of political modernity. Especially since the 1989 English translation of Habermas's study, many historians and literary scholars have embraced Habermas's terminology (e.g., debate, consensus, public, private, reason). But they generally emphasize as well the bourgeois public sphere's manifold exclusions, based in property, gender, race, religion, and more. Debates center on whether and how to employ a unitary category of the public sphere, and whether one can find heuristic benefits in alternative conceptions, such as a pluralized vision of multiple publics or counter-publics.

Student term-projects may explore any aspect of the Victorian public sphere that seems interesting and feasible, including research into cultural contexts (the "New Woman"; the serial novel; the public intellectual) and also neglected authors. The primary texts on our syllabus, however, will be largely canonical: novels by the likes of Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope; poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Rudyard Kipling; and criticism by Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde.

The course will provide extensive theoretical and critical coverage, both in Habermas's works and in current scholarship on the public sphere. As it happens, much of that scholarship comes out of history, Americanist work, and literary scholarship in the long eighteenth century, where scholars have debated theories of the public sphere more extensively than have Victorianists. We will also draw upon Victorianist scholarship that has begun to emerge more recently, as in work by Pam Morris, John Plotz, and Amanda Anderson.

The centerpiece assignment is a term paper. We will also develop a hypothetical conference on our course topic, a process that will involve assignments such as submitting a paper proposal and presenting a conference paper (itself probably a preliminary articulation of your term-paper). Others assignments include composing a book review (1000-1500 words) and developing an annotated bibliography.


LIT 73925
J.M. Synge & The Ireland of His Time
P. J. Mathews
TR 9.30-10.45
This course will offer students an opportunity to investigate a broad range of seminal work by one of Ireland's most important writers of the twentieth century--John Millington Synge. Best known for his controversial drama, Playboy of the Western World, Synge was one of the most innovative artists of the Irish Revival whose influence on the development of modern Irish theatre is undisputed. We will read a wide variety of Synge's work-plays, poems, travel writing and criticism and will pay particular attention to his contribution to cultural and political debate in the revolutionary years of the early twentieth century. Themes and issues to be considered will include: Synge's contribution to Irish modernism; drama and national controversy; points of contact with the work of W. B Yeats, Lady Gregory, and James Joyce; and the continuing influence of Synge's work on contemporary Iris

LIT 73926
Fictions of the Public Sphere
Glenn Hendler
R 6.30-9.00
Using and critiquing concepts of the public sphere from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as from recent critical theory and cultural studies scholarship, this course will explore the history of the gendered and racialized distinctions between public and private, domesticity and the market, reason and sentimentality in U.S. literature and culture before 1900. Several historical problems will structure our theoretical, critical, and literary readings, including: the development of domestic ideology; the rise of social movements such as temperance, feminism, and abolition; and the role of popular literary forms in the development and critique of both working-class politics and imperialist ideology. Central issues in many of our readings will be the politics of represented emotion, especially the key sentimental concept of sympathy, and the varying ways in which the reading and writing of literature were meant to prepare potential citizens – especially boys and men – for participation in politics, economic exchange, and civil society. Grades will be based on a final essay as well as some shorter written assignments and in-class presentations. Readings may include Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick; Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette; Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall; Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Henry James, The Bostonians; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics; Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate; and poetry by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

LIT 73927
Media in 20th Cent American Poetry
Stephen Fredman
T 2.00-4.30
If the twentieth century is the Age of Media, then what difference has this made to the poetry? How do media signify in Modern American Poetry? The twentieth century begins in the nineteenth century with the recognition by poets like Mallarmé that language has to be considered a “medium” of poetry and investigated as such. What is the relationship of subsequent poetry to media such as print technologies, the poster, the manifesto, the book, radio, cinema, the typewriter, audiotape, video, the poetry reading, performance art, chance operations, the computer, hypermedia? To what extent do media function like genres in modern poetry? Does the collage form of prominent modern poems represent the interpenetration of several media?

In this course we will look at and listen to a wide variety of poetry, poetics, music, and performance art, and explore a range of critical texts relating poetry to media. Some of the figures we will consider include: Stephane Mallarmé, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff, Langston Hughes, Harry Smith, Charles Olson, John Cage, Robert Duncan, Jerome Rothenberg, Laurie Anderson, Susan Howe, and Nathaniel Mackey. Critics we will draw upon include: Hugh Kenner, Jerome McGann, Adalaide Morris, Charles Bernstein, Johanna Drucker, Michael Davidson, Gerald Bruns, Sherman Paul, Marjorie Perloff, Lorenzo Thomas, Robert Cantwell, Greil Marcus, Peter Middleton, Peter Nicholls, Alan Golding, and Peter O’Leary.

ENGL 90118 crn 17838
Intro to ME Manuscript Studies
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton
W 3.00-5.30
This course will examine the culture of the book in late medieval English, including the important literary writers who made it a national literary language, the scribes who transmitted and often transformed their works, and the wide range of readers they reached. Among the writers to be studied will be Julian of Norwich, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, the Gawain Poet, Thomas Hoccleve, Margery Kempe and James I of Scotland; among the topics to be discussed: literacy, book illustration, marginalia, social conditions of authorship, the rise of heresy, women and book production, nun’s libraries, patronage, household books, religious and political trends, and attempts at official censorship. Students will also learn both editorial theory and practice, and have a chance to transcribe and edit for publication in a forthcoming anthology of Middle English writings restored to the their manuscript context.

Note: this course is open to those with no experience in Manuscript Studies, as well as more advanced students (assignments are adaptable to individual levels of experience); all interested students will be able to contribute to the anthology.

Texts to be used regularly:

Optional Texts

5. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Maidie Hilmo, eds., The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe and Gower (U. of Victoria: ELS).
Assignments:
Transcription Take-Home Test 10%
Transcription and Editing Assignment (Individual or Group) 20%
Transcription, Commentary and Kinds of Medieval Reading Take-Home Test 20%
The goal is to prepare brief transcriptions (about 20- 30 lines in length) and analyses of annotations or images in situ which illuminate medieval reading habits.
One Review of a Book or Article, one page, to be presented in class 10%
Final Essay Project 40%

ENGL 90906
Deconstruction and Exegesis
Stephen Gersh
TR 2:00-3:15
The aim of this course will be to compare and contrast what one might loosely term ancient (medieval, early modern) and post-modern approaches to the reading of texts, following the twin approaches of theoretical exposition and practical application neither of which can be sustained without the intervention of the other. It will be necessary to rely on concrete examples of the ancient and contemporary methods. The examples in the first half of the semester will be Augustine's On Christian Teaching and Literal Interpretation of Genesis and Derrida's Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Dissemination. This double reading will put us in a position to take as our examples Augustine's Confessions and Derrida's Circonfession in the second half of the semester. Certain questions – which can sometimes but not always be answered in the conventional sense – will persist during our readings. These will include: What is philosophy? What is literature? What is the relation between philosophy and exegesis? What is the relation between literature and exegesis? What is the relation between philosophy and literature? Language requirement: Latin and/or French desirable but not necessary. Written requirement: one final essay (20 pp.) either a. on one of the texts or authors studied in the course, or b. applying the methodologies discussed to another philosophical or literary text of your choice.

FRENCH
LIT 73661
Lyric & Narrative Medieval French Literature
Maureen Boulton
W 3:30 – 6:15
A study of narrative transformations of the themes of the courtly lyric in the 13th and 14th centuries.

 LIT 73712        
Imitation and Intertextuality in the Renaissance
Joann DellaNeva
M 3:30 – 6:00
This course will survey a variety of texts (originally written in Latin, Italian or French) on the question of imitation in the Renaissance.  Additionally, we will read a number of modern critics who have discussed Renaissance imitative practices as well as modern theorists who have touched on the notions of intertextuality and influence in fields beyond the Renaissance.  Students will be encouraged to develop their own personal project own imitative theory and practice in the literature of the language they study.  Taught in English.

 LIT 73820
Proust: the World Lost and Regained
Catherine Perry
Thursday 3:30 – 6:15
Considered by many to be the greatest French novelist of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust remains vastly influential to this day. Not only did he recover a world through his creative exploration of memory, but he also established a new type of novel in which poetic prose alternates with the criticism of art, history, society, politics, and psychology. The semester will be dedicated to reading four volumes from Proust's monumental work, A la recherche du temps perdu, along with some of the most important critical texts written on Proust and la Recherche. Assiduous preparation for class and active participation in discussions are essential to the success of this course. Students will give two oral presentations: 1) a textual interpretation; 2) a report on a critical work. Students will also write a 15–20 page analytical paper—while the final product will be due at the end of the semester, evidence of research and planning will be expected by mid-semester, following October break. Classes conducted in French.

 

GERMAN
LIT 73770
The Classical Period of German Literature (1750 to 1830)
Robert Norton
MWF 12:50 – 1:40
Modern German literature comes into being at the middle of the eighteenth century. This period of German culture, often referred to as its ¿Classical Age,¿ is represented by such figures as Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Hölderlin, and Kleist. In this class we will read and discuss some of the great works written by these authors and analyze them in relation to the intellectual and cultural currents of the time.

LIT 73771
Medieval German Literature
Albert Wimmer
MW 3:00 – 4:14
This course constitutes a survey of German literature from its beginnings during Germanic times until the 16th century. Ideas, issues, and topics are discussed in such a way that their continuity can be seen throughout the centuries. Lectures and discussions are in German, but individual students' language abilities are taken into consideration. Readings include modern German selections from major medieval authors and works such as Hildebrandslied, Rolandslied, Nibelungenlied, Iwein, Parzival, Tristan, courtly lyric poetry, the German mystics, secular and religious medieval drama, Der Ackermann Aus Buhmen, and the beast epic Reineke Fuchs. Class discussions and brief presentations in German by students on the selections are intended as an opportunity for stimulating exchange and formal use of German.

 

GREEK
LIT  73673
Homer
TBA
TR 9:30 – 10:45
This third-year course builds on CLGR 20003 and CLGR 20004, and offers close reading of passages from the Iliad and Odyssey.   Homer's epic poems stand at the head of the tradition of European literature; their themes and poetic style have substantially influenced the works of Dante, Milton and many other European writers.  The poems are discussed in their cultural context, and features of poetic oral composition are examined.  The course prepares students for advanced offerings in Greek literature, especially CLGR 40021 and CLGR 40031.  Offered in fall semester, alternate years.

LIT  73674
Greek Epic Poetry
TBA
TR 9:30 – 10:45
This advanced course includes readings form the epic poems of Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Hesiod (Theogony and Works and Days), and Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica). It introduces students to the genre of Greek epic poetry, narratives composed in hexameters that tell if the mighty deeds of gods, heroes, and men.  This course concentrate on explaining shy epic was regarded in antiquity as the greatest Greek literary forms.

 

IRISH
LIT73917
Modern Irish Poetry     NicDhiarmada, Briona
TR 5:00-6:15    1 slot
An introduction to modern Irish literature and the Irish poetic tradition, this course is a magnificent opportunity to study modern Irish poetry with the foremost Irish-language critic.   Visiting Notre Dame for this academic year, Professor Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, as the Fulbright Professor-in-Residence, will teach a course on modern and contemporary Irish poetry in the Department of Irish Language and Literature.  This course focuses on key canonical texts by Irish-language poets and students will
conduct close textual readings, examine the social and political context, consider various theoretical applications and deconstruct the mechanics of individual poems.  Among the texts to be studies are: Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Biddy Jenkinson, Michael Hartnett, Máire Mhac an
tSaoi, Michael Davitt, Gabriel Rosenstock, Liam Ó Muirlithe, Pearse Hutchinson, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Direáin and Áine Ní Ghlinn. Particular attention will be paid to the poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and the politics of translation.

All texts will be available in English.  No prior knowledge of Irish required.


LIT 73918
Wild Men Wailing Women 
O'Buachalla, Breandan
W 6:00-9:00  
The Irish caoineadh (keen) comprises a distinct literary genre in Irish:  a lament in verse for the dead composed by women.  This course will examine the genre, its socio-cultural background, and the contemporary critical commentary it has generated.

 

ITALIAN
LIT 73671
Dante: The Intellectual
TBA
T 3:30 – 6:00 PM
A close analysis of the works of Dante.

LIT 73834
Modern Italian Poetry
John Welle
W 3:30 -6:00

Addressed to graduate and advanced undergraduates, this course focuses on Italian poetry in the twentieth century. Major Italian poets and poet/translators to be studied include D'Annunzio, Gozzano, Marinetti, Ungaretti, Saba, Montale, Pavese, Quasimodo, Fortini, Pasolini, Sanguineti, Zanzotto, Rosselli, Giudici, Magrelli, Valduga and D'Elia. The role of translation in the evolution, transmission and diffusion of modern Italian poetry will also be considered.

 

LATIN
LIT 73675
Virgil
MWF 1:55P – 2:45 P
This course offers close reading of passages from the Aeneid.  Virgil's inspired adaptation of Homer's epic poems traces the story of the flight of Aeneas from Troy to Italy, where Rome, a new Troy, will be founded.  The place of Virgil's epic in the emperor Augustus' cultural program, various critical approaches to the poem, and its compositional techniques provide subjects for discussion.  Offered in fall semester, alternate years.

LIT 73676
Seneca's Philosophical Works
Catherine Schlegel
TR 12:30 – 1:45
This advanced course provides an introduction to Seneca's philosophical letters and treatises.  Seneca was a Stoic, subscribing to a philosophy that emphasized such virtues as self-control and self-sufficiency, for which many upperclass Romans had high regard.  Readings from the Moral Epistles and essays such as On Anger show how Seneca understood the workings of the soul, and how he developed practical strategies for psychological self-management.  The role of Stoicism in Roman cultural life is an important theme for discussion in the course.

LIT 73677
Introduction to Christian Latin Texts
TBA
MW 11:45 – 1:00
This course has two goals:  to improve the student's all-around facility in dealing with Latin texts and to introduce the student to the varieties of Christian Latin texts and basic resources that aid in their study.  Exposure to texts will be provided through common readings which will advance in the course of the semester from the less to the more demanding and will include Latin versions of Scripture, exegesis, homilectic, texts dealing with religious life, formal theological texts, and Christian Latin poetry.  Philological study of these texts will be supplemented by regular exercises in Latin composition.  Medieval Latin Survey will follow this course in the spring term.

 

MEDIEVAL
LIT 73658
Deconstruction and Exegesis
Stephen Gersh
TR 2-3:15  Hesburgh Library 715J
            The aim of this course will be to compare and contrast what one might loosely term ancient (medieval, early modern) and post-modern approaches to the reading of texts, following the twin approaches of theoretical exposition and practical application neither of which can be sustained without the intervention of the other.  It will be necessary to rely on concrete examples of the ancient and contemporary methods.  The examples in the first half of the semester will be Augustine's On Christian Teaching and Literal Interpretation of Genesis and Derrida's Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Dissemination.  This double reading will put us in a position to take as our examples Augustine's Confessions and Derrida's Circonfession in the second half of the semester. Certain questions - which can sometimes but not always be answered in the conventional sense - will persist during our readings.  These will include: What is philosophy?  What is literature? What is the relation between philosophy and exegesis? What is the relation between literature and exegesis? What is the relation between philosophy and literature? Language requirement: Latin and/or French desirable but not necessary.  Written requirement: one final essay (20 pp.) either a. on one of the texts or authors studied in the course, or b. applying the methodologies discussed to another philosophical or literary text of your choice.

 

SPANISH
LIT 73912
Sam Amago
W 3:30 – 6:00

A study of the development of the novel as an artistic genre in the 20th-century Spain, from the Spanish-American war of 1898 to modern Spain examined within the context of the social, political, aesthetic. And intellectual crisis of the times on which they were written.

 

LIT 73821
Kristine Ibsen
Tuesday 3:30 – 6:00
Spanish American Novel
Studies, through representative works, the modern aesthetic, cultural and historical tendencies that characterize the 120th-century Spanish-American Novel.