World Literature Agenda, Fall 1997

Click or browse to view the following agenda items:

1. Prelude: Truth, Knowledge, and Time
2. Homer, The Odyssey
3. Sophocles, Antigone
4. Medieval I: Shorter Works
5. Medieval II: Dante, The Divine Comedy
6. Shakespeare, Hamlet

Prelude: Truth, Knowledge, and Time—Why Stories Matter

Readings

Genesis 1-4: Essential Questions

• Basic questions
  1. What kind of God?
  2. What kind of World?
  3. What kind of People?
  4. How are the elements in this “universe” related?
• Function of chapters 3 & 4? “Theological” vs. “mythical” stories

The Song of the Seeress

• Difficulties
• Place of “divine” and “human” element

The Kalevala, poem 1

• Self-conscious answer to certain questions: (1) What are stories for? (2) Where do stories come from? (3) How do stories relate to what is already here?
• This story: What is it? What does it do?

Postman, “Learning by Story”

Truth, Knowledge, and Time

Some Conclusions about People and Stories and Truth

• People & Stories, Stories & Truth
• A Definition of Myth
• The Mythic Urge and the Quest for Truth

Homer, The Odyssey

Note: A number by itself—e.g., 208—refers to a page in our anthology; a number like this—1.1-17—refers to book and line numbers in The Odyssey.

Backgrounds and Foregrounds

Backgrounds (1): Legendary Context

• Paris and his “Judgment”
• Helen
• Troy and the Trojan War

Backgrounds (2): Geographical Context

• The Mediterranean world
• Greece and Asia Minor

Foregrounds: Epic Poetry

• Description
• List of characteristics: hero, setting, style, other

Foregrounds: The Muse’s Roles

• Description
• Roles: See esp. 1.1-17 (208; the Invocation); s.a. 8.66-69 and 78 (297), 8.518-19 (308), and 22.345 (511): (1) inspiration, (2) connection: divine and human

Basic Elements of The Odyssey

Organization and Plot

• Outline: Three main divisions
• The two plots (and their subplots): Homer’s “emphasis”
• Unity?

Points of Entrance, “Pre-Meaning”

• Sounds (See 266, 297, . . . 437, 454, 479.)
• Words
• Simple images (See 224, 255; 385; 247; s.a. 278, 281-82; 284/519-20.)
• Simple events (Consider 220, 241-42, 402.)

Building Blocks of Meaning

Complex Images

• Kalypso’s island, Ogýgia (5.62b-80 [267-68])
• Alkinoös’ palace and orchard on Skhería (7.89-141 [289-90])
• Observations about Civilization and Anti-Civilization (Consider also Ithaka in contrast to the land of the Kyklopês.)

Characters

• Itemizing characteristics
• Tracing character development
• Character structure

The Layered Universe: An Approach to Plot

• Plot: sequence of events vs. archetypal structure
• A point of reference: the Judeo-Christian universe: Heaven, Eden, Earth, Hell
• An Odyssean universe: Olympos, Ithaka, “the homes of Death and pale Perséphonê”
• Observations: how stories plot themselves on a culture’s universe; life/plot as movement among the levels
• Metaphorical meanings

An Archetypal Plot: Themes of Descent and Ascent

• The themes
• Some other specific plots participating in the generic one
• Descent: Odyssean events
• Ascent: Odyssean events

Conclusions

• Character structure again: adjustments in light of the generic plot
• Two modes and six points of view: What is The Odyssey about?

Sophocles, Antigone

Backgrounds and Foregrounds

Backgrounds: Oedipus and Thebes: Sophocles’ Theban Cycle

• Oedipus the King
• Oedipus at Colonus
• Antigone

Foregrounds: Concepts and Definitions

• Drama: A communal art, distinct from narrative in prose and poetry (note the presence of the chorus in Greek tragedy, esp., as increasing a sense of community ritual)
• Drama: Two major structures (as in other genres): (a) Comedy (integration and marriage), (b) tragedy (disintegration and death)
• A conventional definition of tragedy: events, person, ending, treatment

Meaning and Structure

“Moral Fiber” and Reinterpretations

• Jean Anouilh (1944, in Nazi-occupied Paris)
• Bertolt Brecht (1948, set in Berlin, staged in Switzerland)

The Divisions of Dramatic Action and the Structure of Antigone

• The divisions and their descriptions
• The Greek terms and the significant metaphors involved in the terms
• Freytag’s Pyramid and Antigone
• Role of the Chorus in the structure of the play

Creon, Antigone, and the Fate Worse than Death

Shorter Medieval Works

Introductory Considerations: A Medieval Monolith? No.

• The Term Middle Ages
• Time: roughly 5th c.-15th c. CE
• Place: Europe
• Cultures and Religions
• Literature: Genre and Audience

Four Short Works

“The Story of Deirdre”: The Celtic Heroic Age

• A Celtic Weltanschauung?
• Love in Celtic story
• Character and incident
• Formal considerations

A French Romance: Eliduc

Generic Expectations and Authorial Subversion

• Genre: (medieval) romance, Breton lai/lay
• Social contexts and fictive assumptions
• Role of the narrator
• In the story itself
  1. Introductory paragraphs (1218)
  2. Three conflicting loyalties (passim; see esp. 1224): (a) king of Brittany vs. king of Exeter, (b) wife vs. mistress, (c) Church/religion/law vs. love
  3. Conventional description of falling in love (1221) and the results of being accepted (1223)
  4. The three marvels (1228–29): (a) “the miraculous corpse,” (b) the revival of weasel and girl (magical flower), (c) the generous wife

Questions

• Is this a typical romance?
• Can we detect any consequences resulting from its author’s being a woman?
• What is the point of “the strange adventure of these three” (1230)?
  1. The strangeness of the adventure itself
  2. An assertion with a twist: Amor omnia vincit ‘love conquers all’
  3. Paradox: a celebration of and a satire on courtly/romantic love
  4. A satire on men
  5. An exploration of private (or individual or subjective) experience vs. public (or collective or social) structures: how can the two be reconciled?

Old English Poems: Backgrounds

Generic Considerations: A Literary Context

• Definition of elegy and elegiac
• Some examples of the elegiac: (1) Sophocles, Antigone, the “Devastation Ode”; Oedipus the King, Ode IV; (2) the Beowulf-poet, “Lay of the Last Survivor”; (3) W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”

Historical Considerations: The Context of Time and Place

• Significant dates and geographical considerations
• The sparrow and the hall: experience and metaphor

Old English Poems: Foregrounds

The Wanderer

• Structure/organization
• The poem: universalizing experience
• Commentary

The Seafarer

• Structure/organization
• The poem: embracing the inevitable
• Commentary

The Battle of Maldon

• Structure/organization
• The poem: the price of the heroic code
• Commentary

Dante, selections from The Divine Comedy

Introductory Considerations: A Medieval Monolith? Yes.

• Developing Structure
  1. institutional and intellectual: organization, authority, analysis
  2. doctrinal: councils, creeds, systematic theology
• Hierarchy
  1. cosmic hierarchy: the Great Chain of Being; a human dilemma (reason, will)
  2. the social hierarchy
  3. consequences of a hierarchical point of view: collectivism, emphasis on judgment, the need for mediation
• Finding meaning: the emblematic point of view

Difficulties with Dante

• Size and Busyness of the Divine Comedy
• Highly Structured Verse Form
• Specialized References
• Highly Emblematic Texture
• Varieties of “Truth”: (1) Two Kinds of Statements, Two Kinds of Truth; (2) Story & Truth (again)

Topics

Emblematic Beginnings

• Inf. 1.1–12 (1286: The Dark Wood)
• Inf. 2.7–9 (1290; cf. Purg. 1.7–12 and Par. 1.13–36 [1424, 1448]; see also Par. 33.67–75 [1465–66]: Incremental Invocations)
• Inf. 2: The Problem of Despair; the Mediated Solution (1290 ff.)

Dante Redefines the Archetypal Journey

• Assumption: The “Layered Universe”
• The Plot of Descent-Ascent: Dante vs. Homer

Subversion of Expectation/Inversion of Good

• Inf. 3.1–9 (1294: Hell-Gate)
• Inf. 3.97–117 (1297: Self-Rejection; Similes: Subverting Expectations)
• Inf. 24 and 25: The Thieves (1380–81, 1383–85: Hell as Flux)
• Inf. 34.28–57: Description of Satan (1420–21: Hell as Monstrosity)

Toward Harmony

• Inf. 1.1–12 (1286: The Dark Wood)
• Purg. 27.127–43: Virgil’s Farewell (1438–39: Personal Harmony)
• Par. 3.70–90: Piccardaís discourse on will (1453–54: The Divine Context)
• Par. 33.[67–75,] 124–46 (14[65–]67: Pure Invocation, the Beatific Vision, the Geometrical God, Dante in Balance/Dante Whole)

Shakespeare, Hamlet

Introduction

Renaissance Concerns: Terms and Ideas

• Renaissance
• Humanism
• Reformation
• Critical Consciousness
• Individualism
• The “Humanist Shift”

The Renaissance as the Age of Expansion: Some Representative Figures

• Intellectual Expansion: Erasmus (1466?–1536), Machiavelli (1469–1527), Castiglione (1478–1529), [Descartes (1596–1650)]
• Artistic Expansion: Donatello (1386–1466), Leonardo (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), Raphael (1483–1520)
• Scientific/Geographic Expansion: Columbus (1451–1506), Copernicus (1473–1534), Galileo (1564–1642), [Harvey (1578–1657)]
• Religious Expansion (the Protestant Reformation and the Counter Reformation): Luther (1483–1546), Calvin (1509–1564), Zwingli (1484–1531), Loyola (1491–1556)

Readings from Hamlet

Group 1

• An inventory of 1.1: Confusion and Ignorance: The Ghost; Preparations for war; Theories about the meaning of both
• Appearance and Reality: “that within which passeth show” (1.2.76–86 [2021]); Seeing is believing? (1.1.56–58 [2016]); “One may smile, and smile . . .” (1.5.108 [2034]); “to put an antic disposition on” (1.5.170 [2036]); Fiction vs. life (2.2.500–59 [2052–53])
• Hamlet’s Circles of Decay: Marcellus: “Something is rotten . . .” (1.4.90 [2031]); Horatio: “some strange eruption” (1.1.69 [2016]); Hamlet: “The time is out of joint” (1.5.188 [2036])

Group 2

• The Importance of the Play: The Mouse Trap—Not the Only Play within the Play (3.2): Hamlet’s advice to the players (2058–59); Horatio: cannot be played on (2060); The King’s conscience played on (2064); The Playing pun—Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern (2066)
• “That within which passeth show”: “the witching time of night” (3.2.350–61 [2067]); Reference point: Macbeth and the invocation of night (Macb. 1.5.38 ff. [Lady Macbeth] and 3.2.46 ff [Macbeth])
• Appearance and Reality Again: The Confession Scene (3.3.37–99 [2068–70]): Repentence; Revenge; Irony

Group 3

• Three famous soliloquies; progressions in the play: (1) 1.2.129–59 (2022–23: “O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt . . .”); (2) 3.1.56–88a (2055–56: ”To be, or not to be: that is the question . . .”); 4.4.32–66 (2080–81: “How all occasions do inform against me . . .”)
• Indicted by Life: Fortinbras and Hamlet: A Contrast; Devotion to Obsession; A reference point: Macbeth 3.4.135–39
• When Myth Is Dead: Claudius and Laertes (4.5.117–22 [2084]): Dramatic irony; Manipulating myths
• Symbolism of Character in Hamlet: Central: Hamlet and Claudius; Possible solutions: Horatio, Laertes; Polonius, Ophelia

Top

Disclaimer | Glenn’s Page | E-mail

Jonathan A. Glenn, University of Central Arkansas
Updated 07/19/97