Undergraduate Courses Spring 2007

CL 201: Introduction to Pre-Modern Literatures/Impact on the Modern World: Close Encounters in the Mediterranean World
MW @ 12:05 / 113 Psychology
Instructor: Valerie Reed

How do you live a good life? How do you die a good death? What have love or sex or betrayal or honor or revenge got to do with it? How can stories and songs from the ancient Mediterranean address these questions for the ancient world? For our own? These are some of the concerns that will guide our reading and discussion this semester, as we read and respond to some of the abundant literature of the ancient Mediterranean – a world encompassing, at its broadest, much of Western Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa.

Course readings may include:

Inanna (selections)
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Genesis, Ruth, Matthew, Acts of the Apostles
The Shipwrecked Sailor
Homer, The Iliad
selected Greek and Egyptian love poems
The Tale of the Two Brothers
Sophocles: Antigone
Euripides: Medea
Aristophanes: Lysistrata
Vergil: Aeneid
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Apuleius: The Golden Ass

203: Introduction to Cross-Cultural Literature - Scary Monsters
MW @ 1:20 - 5206 Social Science
Professor Chris Livanos -
950 Van Hise - 263-3851

Note: Students can enroll in either CL203 or CL357 but not both in Spring of 2007.

We will examine how and why the human imagination creates non-human monsters. The monster helps humanity define what we are by showing clearly what we are not. Sometimes we disown our own undesirable traits by projecting them onto monstrous others and having an imaginary hero destroy them.

We will begin by studying the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh’s portrayal of humanity rising to civilization from an earlier beast-like existence. After reading how monsters act as obstacles and markers on the journeys of two heroes finding their way home after the Trojan War in Homer’s Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid, we will then turn to Dante’s use of various monsters as symbols of different human vices. Beowulf and The Saga of the Volsungs will provide us with a sound sense of Tolkien’s background in Medieval Literature as we read the The Hobbit . In addition to preparing us to read Tolkien, The Saga of The Volsungs will show us examples of transgressors whose crimes cause them to forfeit their humanity and become monsters or animals. Here we will discuss how portrayal of the animal differs from portrayal of the monster, and how humanity relates to each.

Mary Shelley and John Gardner provide a modern twist on the monster story by sympathizing with the monster as a well-meaning but misunderstood social outcast. We will finally examine H.P. Lovecraft’s construction of extraterrestrial, malign, and superhuman monsters as the embodiment of the modern fear that man is not the center of the universe, the measure of all things, or really very significant at all.

Tentative Reading List:
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Homer: selections from the Odyssey
Vergil: selections from the Aeneid
Dante: The Inferno
Beowulf
The Saga of the Volsungs
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
John Gardner: Grendel
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
H.P. Lovecraft: At The Mountains of Madness

There will also be a course reader with selected short stories.

CL 289: Introduction to Literary Forms for Honors - Comedy
MW @ 2:30-3:45 / 579 Van Hise
Professor Max Statkiewicz
Ph: (608) 262-7862 - 958 Van Hise

The second book of Aristotle's Poetics, dealing with comedy, was apparently lost, and Umberto Eco was able to tell an exciting story about the event of its burning in the Middle Ages in The Name of the Rose. The novel suggests a challenge of laughter to an established power structure as the reason for burning Aristotle's book. But do not laughter and comedy often exercise the contrary function of confirming established patterns of behavior, as Bergson maintains in his famous essay On Laughter? It is likely that Aristotle's book on comedy promoted this ideological function just as his extant book does for tragedy. In this case, its loss would not be such a bad thing. Perhaps the relatively modest amount of theoretical work on comedy allows a more genuine reception of plays from different historical periods and social contexts. In this course, we shall attempt such a reading, which will lead to the questioning of the very notion of comedy as unified literary genre. After surve
ying Greek, Roman, Shakespearian, neoclassical, and modern bourgeois comedy, we shall consider such contemporary plays as Waiting for Godot or Tango, which more than ever challenge the traditional separation of genres.

Readings:
Aristophanes: Lysistrata
Menander: The Grouch
Plautus: Braggart Soldier
Terence: Brothers or Eunuch
Molière: The Misanthrope
[Gl’Intronati: The Deceived]
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice or The Taming of the Shrew
Beaumarchais: The Marriage of Figaro
Lessing: Minna von Barnhelm
Büchner: Leonce and Lena
Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
Shaw: Major Barbara
Gogol: Revisor or Dead Souls
Brecht: Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti
Dürrenmatt: Meteor or The Visit
Beckett: Waiting for Godot
Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Les Acrobats
Mrozek: Tango

CL357 Fantasy and Science Fiction
MWF 11:00 / 6112 Soc. Science
Professor Chris Livanos -
950 Van Hise - 263-3851

Note: Students can enroll in either CL203 or CL357 but not both in Spring of 2007.

After studying the origins of the genres of science fiction and fantasy in the works of satirists such as the ancient Greek author Lucian and Jonathan Swift, we will study key modern texts. The use of science fiction as a way to destabilize social constructs by envisioning a reality different from our own will be a key topic is our discussions of the various texts we read. Another focus of the class will be the use of science fiction as a forum to test the ethical implications of technological advances, such as genetic research, before they are actually developed.

Texts (tentative list):
Lucian of Samosata: True History
Thomas More: Utopia
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Hope Mirrlees: Lud-in-the-Mist
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
H.P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness
C.S. Lewis: The Space Trilogy
Ray Bradbury: Selected Short Stories
Harlan Ellison: Deathbird Stories
Jorge Luis Borges: Fictions
Alan Moore: Watchmen

CL377 Literary Periods: Enlightenment, Lumieres & Aufklarung
Lect. TR / 11:00- 12:15 - 590 Van Hise
Professor Hans Adler - E-mail:
Ph. (608) 262-9863/262-2045

Comparing concepts of Enlightenment from different cultures and tracing them from the past to the present is enlightening. In this course we will compare British, French, American, and German concepts of Enlightenment as an era and enlightenment as a procedure of understanding. The goal of this course is threefold: 1. Provide the participants with an overview over 17th/18th-century currents and representatives of Enlightenment. 2) Compare ideas of Enlightenment of the 17th/18th centuries with respect to their different origins. 3) Trace those ideas from the 17th/18th centuries through the 19th century up to our present. The fundament of the American Constitution is a product of the Enlightenment. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” is a product of the Enlightenment. Modern feminism would have been impossible without the Enlightenment. Even Horkheimer/Adorno’s critique of the Enlightenment in their Dialectic of Enlightenment is a product of Enlightenment. In short: There is no modern or postmodern current of ideas that is not tinged or even solidly imbued with Enlightenment ideas. Let’s have a closer look at that powerful discourse that still provides a dense root system or fragments of to our present culture. Be prepared to encounter concepts of Enlightenment that do not match the ‘common-sense’ understanding of the term: Enlightenment is ‘différand.’ Among the authors we will discuss are Descartes, Bayle, Fontenelle, Locke, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Diderot, Wolff, Herder, Hamann, Kant, Marx, Feuerbach, Adorno, Habermas. Every participant will give a short presentation on a limited topic and write a final paper.
For information about the instructor, please visit: http://german.lss.wisc.edu/homes/hadler

CL 475 Drama: Pirandello & Modern European Theater
Lect. MW 1:00-2:15 / 23 Ingraham
Disc. W - 2:25 - 115 Van Hise
Professor Ernesto Livorni - E-mail:
Ph (608) 262-4068 - 752 Van Hise

The course aims at discussing some of the major plays by Luigi Pirandello next to a number of plays by his contemporary European playwrights in order to see the status of theater at the beginning of the Twentieth century and how Pirandello contributed to change it. Among the playwrights we will read are: Chekhv, Ibsen, Strindberg, Jarry, Artaud, Brecht.