Female Revisionings of Male Texts
Senior Seminar: English 189, Section 3
Spring 1995
Course Description
Probably all writers, male and female, feel the weight of literary tradition
pressing down on them as they seek, jostling with their predecessors, to
make a place for their own voices and visions. Women writers, inheritors
of narratives, voices, and characters largely crafted by men, have felt
that burden particularly strongly. This seminar will explore the re-visioning
by women authors of well-known and highly influential literary and critical
texts written by men. Putting a "master work" next to a revisionary
text will allow us to see them both in new ways. For the "master work,"
the juxtaposition will illuminate the cultural and literary assumptions
that produced the text and that are in turn produced by it. For the revisionary
work, the juxtaposition will reveal the field of play within which the female
author seeks to make new moves or perhaps even change the nature of the
game. Readings will include Shakespeare's King Lear, followed by
Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, a re-writing of Lear that sets the
action in an Iowa farm and tells the story from Goneril's point of view.
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter will be followed by Kathy Acker's
Blood and Guts in High School, with its searing exploration of Hester's
sexuality, and Bharti Mukherjee's The Holder of the World, in which
a young Hester emigrates to India and takes an Oriental prince as her lover.
Jacques Lacan's Ecrits, a selection of texts from one of the influential
critical and psychoanalytic thinkers of this century, will be followed by
Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which is Not One, with its project of creating
a psychoanalysis that places female rather than male sexuality at the center.
Jean Baudrillard's writings will provide additional theoretical readings
on the question of the relation between an original and a copy.
Course Requirements
As you know, a seminar differs from a normal classroom course in that it
is considered to be an adventure in learning shared jointly by everyone
who is in it. The idea is that we pool our resources and all learn from
one another. Your responsibility to fellow seminarians is consequently greater
than for a lecture course, for example. Each participant will be expected
to prepare carefully for all sessions, come prepared to share ideas, and
participate in the discussion. If it is unavoidable for you to miss a seminar
session during the term, please let me know in advance.
In the spirit of a seminar, each participant will be asked to take responsibility
to lead a discussion on one of our texts. Topics for these oral reports
are listed below. You are encouraged to think about visual aids or handouts
that you might prepare for the seminar that will be useful to participants
when you share your research with them (these might be diagrams, charts,
bibliographies of secondary sources, compilations of pertinent quotations
from the primary texts, etc.).
In addition, each participant will be asked to write a long final paper,
10-20 pages, on a topic of your choice. Abstracts for the papers will be
due May 24.
Grades for the seminar will be calculated as follows: oral report, 25%;
final paper, 50%; class discussion, 25%.
Suggested Topics for Oral Reports
April 12 The Presentation and Characterization of Goneril in Lear. Lear
and the Female Reader.
April 19. Departures from Lear in A Thousand Acres. Ginny's
Characterization in A Thousand Acres.
April 26. Narrative Voice in The Scarlet Letter. Hester's Characterization
in The Scarlet Letter.
May 3. Acker's Narrative Technique in Blood and Guts in High School.
Female Sexuality in Blood and Guts and The Scarlet Letter.
May 10. An Oriental versus a Puritan Aesthetic. Narrative Voice in The
Holder of the World.
May 17. Analysis of "Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign."
Analysis of "Simulacra and Simulations."
May 24. Analysis of "The Mirror Stage." Analysis of "Signification
of the Phallus."
May 31. Analysis of "When Our Lips Speak Together." Analysis of
"The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine."
Texts for the Course
William Shakespeare. King Lear (Signet edition).
Jane Smiley. A Thousand Acres.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter. (Norton Critical Edition).
Kathy Acker. Blood and Guts in High School.
Bharti Mukherjee. The Holder of the World.
Jean Baudrillard. Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster.
Jacques Lacan. Ecrits.
Luce Irigaray. This Sex Which is Not One.
Syllabus
Wed. April 5. Introduction.
Wed., April 12. King Lear.
Wed., April 19. A Thousand Acres.
Wed., April 26. The Scarlet Letter.
Wed., May 3. Blood and Guts in High School.
Wed., May 10. Baudrillard, Selected Writings.
Wed., May 17. Lacan, Ecrits.
Wed., May 31. Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One.
June 7. Conclusion.
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