AMERICAN GOTHIC FICTION: THE TERRORS OF WILDERNESS AND SETTLEMENT ENGL 285.013, Spring 2012, TR 11-12:15, Gambrell 124 Instructor: Justine Wells, wellsjb@email.sc.edu Office: Humanities Office Building, Rm 321 Office hrs: TR after class and by appt. The American writer inhabits a country at once the dream of Europe and a fact of history; he lives on the last horizon of an endlessly retreating vision of innocence—on the ‘frontier,’ which is to say, the margin where the theory of original goodness and the fact of original sin come face to face. —Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie A. Fiedler REQUIRED TEXTS 1. Regular readings to be posted to Blackboard; print and bring to class. 2. Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions), 0486466582 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions), 0486270602 4. Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, and Reviews (Penguin Classics), 0141439815 5. Herman Melville, Bartleby and Benito Cereno (Dover Thrift Editions), 0486264734 6. William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses (Vintage), 0679732179 7. Flannery O’Connor, Complete Stories (Farrar Straus and Giroux), 0374515360 8. Toni Morrison, Sula (Vintage), 1400033438 9. Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition: (Faber & Faber), 057123609X or (Harper), 0060732601 10. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (Vintage), 0679728759 COURSE OVERVIEW Nearing the coast of what is now North Carolina, sixteenth century English captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe encountered “so sweet and so strong a smell as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous flowers.” In sharp contrast, William Bradford recalls the Puritans’ 1620 Plymouth landing as a reckoning with “a hideous and desperate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” From the first contact on, explorers and settlers met the New World with vastly conflicting sentiments. For many, the new land was conceived as a Garden of Eden, rich with abundance and opportunity—a blank slate where society might be reborn, newly equipped with Enlightenment insight, political and religious freedom, and industrial savvy. But contradiction lurked within the Romantic vision of the new land, and troubling its optimism were the dark realities of settlement—including the extermination of Native Americans, the widespread flourishing of plantation slavery, and the steady plundering of natural resources for economic ends. In short, from the beginnings of the nation, settlers’ relationships to nature, region, community, and government were haunted by what seemed to be an already-present snake in the garden. It is out of a strange mix of hope and guilt, happiness and horror, triumph and terror, that American writers increasingly turned a Gothic style of writing—and in such a widespread, rich, and enduring manner that the Gothic may well be the American literary form par excellence. This course will be concerned with unpacking some of the political, psychological, and philosophical energies at work in American Gothic fiction, with a particular emphasis on how these forces feed into regional and national environmental ethics. We will first dip into some of the early American Gothic texts, considering how writers such as Charles Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville took up European Gothic conventions and made them their own. We will then turn to 20th century articulations of the Gothic that deal with social and environmental concerns in the North, South, West, and Midwest. Throughout, we will ask how anxieties of legitimacy and spirituality, sentiments of social and historical guilt, and critiques of both Enlightenment and Romantic ideals are at work in the depiction of American landscape and developing American communities. 1 LEARNING OUTCOMES Upon completion of this course, students should be able to do the following: 1) Understand and identify literary themes and hallmarks of the Gothic and American Gothic style; 2) Identify, define, and trace how issues of national and regional identity and ethics are interrogated across the development of American Gothic literature; 3) Engage in analytical discussions with peers and the instructor in a scholarly manner; 4) Successfully perform literary research; and 5) Write thesis-driven essays that converse with literary critics and incorporate close readings of literature. COURSE REQUIREMENTS Weekly Reading As a literature course, the reading load is heavy. You will be required to read 100-200 pages per week, and all reading must be completed before the Tuesday meeting (ideally you will have completed all the reading before your discussion post on Monday night). Literature cannot be skimmed very successfully (or enjoyably). To help make this class rewarding, it is crucial that you set aside the necessary block of reading time in your weekly schedule. Weekly Discussion Questions (10% of grade) Each Monday night by 10 p.m., you must post two questions or issues for general discussion in class that week. These should regard the assigned reading and shouldn’t be very long – perhaps 150 words max for each. The idea here is to raise complicated (reasonably focused) issues without feeling compelled to resolve them. I encourage you to use quotes from the text to help make your questions specific and provocative, and to engage class lectures and readings we have done previously. These will be evaluated based on clarity, thoughtfulness, success engaging lecture material, and overall variety. If we have more than one work to read that week, your questions should concern 2 different works. There are 11 required posting weeks (we skip weeks 1, 6, and 15). I will drop your lowest grade on one of these weeks, meaning you have 10 required posts throughout the semester. I encourage you to use the discussion post deadline as your reading deadline. Please print these and bring them to class. Critical Response Papers (5% each; 15% total) Three critical response papers will be due over the semester. For this assignment, you must do research to find a scholarly article or book chapter that analyzes one of the works we have read. First, in 200 words or less, describe the main argument of the piece (or the argument most central to your interest). Then, defend a thesis that either objects to or extends that argument. Be sure to provide evidence from the text to back up your view. These response papers should be 500-600 words (about 2 full pages), and your thesis should be set in boldface. To find your articles for the response papers, you will need to search in the library databases under the English Literature subheading. MLA, Project Muse, and JSTOR will be the most useful. Look for articles that seem relatively recent or are in major relevant journals (good journals for us include American Literature, Arizona Quarterly, American Quarterly, American Literary History, MELUS, Mississippi Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Literature, PMLA, Poe Studies, Southern Literary Journal, and Western American Literature). Don’t just go with the first article that turns up. Find one that interests you—that deals with themes or concerns that you could imagine writing your term paper on. Likewise, be sure to pick a work that interests you. These critical response papers are meant to give you a chance to explore the works we are reading this semester with an eye to the final paper. Midterm and Final Exams (25% each; 50% total) The Midterm and Final Exams will be a combination of multiple choice, short answer, and short essay format. They will be designed to test your knowledge of the course material as well as the course discussions. 2 Term Paper (25%) The final assignment is a research paper (7-10 pages) defending a thesis about one or two works we have read this semester. An informal proposal is due March 22. The paper is due April 19. I recommend that you start thinking about your paper topic from the very beginning of the course. What authors, works, and elements of the Gothic interest you the most? Which response papers and discussion posts raise the most interesting ideas or questions for you? Early on, be sure to consider whether you would like to make Blood Meridian your paper topic. This work could make a very rewarding topic, but it occurs late in the semester, so you would need to read it earlier if you wanted to write your final paper on it. The same holds for the film Fight Club. Annotated Bibliography (required to pass the research paper) The annotated bibliography is a survey of the critical literature that you plan to use in your term paper—that is, the articles, books chapters, and books in which literary critics analyze the stories, novel, poems, or film on which your paper is focused. Your annotated bibliography should list 6-8 sources in MLA format. Each annotation should, in 75-150 words, summarize the source and explain how you plan to use that source in your paper. Your term paper itself must use 4-6 of these sources. The annotated bibliography is due April 5. As with the response papers, MLA, Project Muse, and JSTOR will be key databases to visit as you do your research. Depending on your topic, books in the library may be of great value as well. My advice in putting your bibliography together is to start early, accumulate a pile of articles, book chapters, and books, and begin reading. Give particular attention to footnotes and bibliographies to find more sources relevant for your paper. You should keep reading until your ideas about and knowledge of the work are fairly stable (i.e., aren’t radically revised with each new essay). The next step is to start summarizing the articles that you think you will use in your paper. You may put the sources in any order, perhaps listing them in order of importance for your paper topic and/or categorizing them by topic with subheadings. Participation As a literature course, your responses to the readings are crucial and valuable for the class environment. I encourage you to participate in class. While there is no participation grade per se, if your final grade is on the borderline, your classroom participation can move it up or down. Good participation certainly includes talking in class, but it also includes thoughtful listening, maintaining a positive attitude, anything at all that strengthens the class environment and lets me know you are out there and paying attention. Texting in class and other activities/attitudes that negatively affect the classroom environment can lower your final grade. COURSE POLICIES 1. Grading scale: Your final grade will be determined as follows: A (93-100); B+ (88-92); B (83-87); C+ (78-82); C (73-77); D+ (68-72); D (60-67); F (59 or lower). 2. Attendance: Your final grade will be lowered one step (e.g. from a B+ to a B) for each absence after three. Seven or more absences will result in failing the course. 3. Lateness: Three times late (more than five minutes after the beginning of class) equals one time absent. 4. Cell phones and other electronic devices: Keep them off for the duration of the course—if I see them, it will greatly affect your participation record. You are welcome to step outside to send/receive emergency messages. 5. Books, Discussion Posts, and Blackboard readings: Please bring them to every class. 6. Assignment formatting: All work must be titled, typed, and double-spaced with one-inch margins all around (Times New Roman 12-point font). 7. Late assignments: One full letter grade will be deducted for every day that an assignment is late. If you turn in the annotated bibliography late, the deduction will apply to the term paper itself. Discussion posts will not be accepted if they come in after Monday night. 8. Plagiarism and cheating: Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. All work that is taken from another source (incl. the internet) must be cited according to MLA Guidelines. If you have any questions about plagiarism please ask me. Students who plagiarize or cheat on an exam or paper will fail the course and be reported to the Academic Judiciary Committee. 3 9. Email: Unless I have explicitly approved it, I do not accept coursework over email. While I make every effort to respond to emails promptly, there are times when I am unable to respond and will, instead, speak to you in class. Disability Status Any student who because of a disability may need special arrangements or accommodations to meet the requirements of this course should consult with the instructor as soon as possible. The office of Disability Services provides an array of services to meet the needs of students with disabilities, according to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. See information and guidelines provided in the College’s student handbook and The Carolina Community: Student Handbook and Policy Guide. The Writing Center I encourage you to visit the Writing Center for all writing assignments. It offers free consultations to USC students, faculty and staff. The main office is located in Byrnes 703, open from 10am-4pm with evening hours at ACE from 4-7. Visit http://www.cas.sc.edu/write or call 777-2078 to make an appointment. Make your appointment early for the final paper, because the WC will be booked solid at the end of the semester. TENTATIVE SCHEDULE What follows is a tentative schedule. The readings for each week must be completed by the Tuesday of class meeting, and preferably by Monday night, when your discussion post is due. Remember, all Blackboard items and discussion posts must be printed and brought to class the week we discuss them. Week 1 (1/10, 1/12) Intro; J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813): Letters III, IX, X, XII from Letters From An American Farmer (Blackboard; print, read, and bring to class) Week 2 (1/17, 1/19) Washington Irving (1783-1859): “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810): “Somnambulism” (Blackboard) Week 3 (1/24, 1/26) Diane Long Hoeveler: “Inventing the Gothic Subject” (Blackboard) Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): “The Imp of the Perverse” (Blackboard), “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “William Wilson,” “The Black Cat,” “The Man of the Crowd,” “Berenice,” “Sonnet—To Science,” “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “Eldorado” Week 4 (1/31, 2/2) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): “The Birth-Mark,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “Young Goodman Brown” ***2/2: RESPONSE PAPER #1 DUE: Summary of and response to a critical article on one of the stories we have read by Crevecouer, Brockden Brown, Irving, Hawthorne, or Poe Week 5 (2/7, 2/9) Herman Melville (1819-1891): “Bartleby,” Benito Cereno Week 6 (2/14, 2/16) ***2/14: MIDTERM EXAM 2/16: Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935): “The Yellow Wallpaper” (Blackboard) Week 7 (2/21, 2/23) William Faulkner (1897-1962): Go Down, Moses, pgs. 157-348 (“The Old People,” “The Bear,” “Delta Autumn”) 4 Week 8 (2/28, 3/1) Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964): “A View of the Woods,” “The River,” “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” ***3/1: RESPONSE PAPER #2 DUE: Summary of and response to a critical article on one of the stories we have read by Melville, Gilman, Faulkner, or O’Connor Week 9: SPRING BREAK Week 10 (3/13, 3/15) Toni Morrison (1931- ): Sula. Tues: Part I (pgs. 1-85); Thurs: Part II (pgs. 89-174) Week 11 (3/20, 3/22) Sylvia Plath (1932-1963): Ariel; poems to be posted to Blackboard (Blackboard) Gina Wisker, “Viciousness in the Kitchen: Sylvia Plath's Gothic” (Blackboard) ***3/22: RESPONSE PAPER #3 DUE: Summary of and response to a critical article on Sula, Ariel (or other poems by Plath), Blood Meridian, or Fight Club. Week 12 (3/27, 3/29) Cormac McCarthy (1933- ): Blood Meridian. Tues: pgs. 1-99; Thurs: pgs. 100-150 ***3/29: PAPER PROPOSAL DUE: A brief and informal description of your paper topic and tentative thesis. ***Thinking of taking a draft of your final paper to the Writing Center? Make your appointment this week to ensure that they won’t be booked. http://www.cas.sc.edu/write! Week 13 (4/3, 4/5) Cormac McCarthy (1933- ): Blood Meridian. Tues: pgs. 150-185, 204-222; Thurs: pgs. 305-337 ***4/5: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE Week 14 (4/10, 4/12) Fight Club, dir. David Fincher (1962-); based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk (1962- ) Copies are on reserve in the library; can also be rented on Amazon instant video for $2.99. As with the books, please watch before class and post your discussion Qs by Monday night. ***4/12: TERM PAPER PEER REVIEW. Bring a draft of your paper to class (two hard copies). We will discuss the writing process and your works in progress in groups. Week 15 (4/17, 4/19) Peer review; wrap-up ***4/19: TERM PAPER DUE Monday, April 30, 9 am, in the regular classroom ***FINAL EXAM*** (syllabus reflects updates made 3/1/12) 5