Traditions of Metamorphosis / Mr. Pierce

ENGLISH 363/COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 275

THE TRADITIONS OF METAMORPHOSIS

Spring 1998

Mr. Pierce and lecturers

Assignments:

Feb. 5 Introduction

Feb. 9 Metamorphoses, Introduction, Books 6-10 Mr. Van Nortwick, 8 p.m.

Feb. 10 Ovid discussion

Feb. 12 Ovid, class reports

Feb. 17 Ovid, class reports

Feb. 19 Ovid, class reports

Feb. 24 Apuleius, The Golden Ass

Feb. 26 Apuleius discussion

Mar. 3 Marie de France and Marcel Ayme Ms Zinser

Mar. 5 Marie de France and Marcel Ayme discussion

Mar. 10 Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream ; topic for paper due

Mar. 12 A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mar. 17 A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mar. 19 A Midsummer Night's Dream; paper and journal due

Mar. 31 Wagner, Das Rheingold and Ring synopsis Mr. Darcy, Bibbins 325

Apr. 2 Wagner discussion

Apr. 7 "The Ornamented Zither" Ms Chen

Apr. 9 "The Ornamented Zither" discussion

Apr. 14, 16, 21, 23 Team reports

Apr. 28 Kafka, Introduction and "The Metamorphosis"

Apr. 30 Kafka discussion

May 5 Psycho

May 7 Psycho; second paper and journal due

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Attendance and participation in class, including group reports 25%

Maintenance of journal 25%

Two papers, 5-7 pages each 50%

THE JOURNAL

Each student should keep a journal with the following components:

For each reading assignment: a couple of paragraphs of comments and questions based on your reactions immediately after completing the reading. You should always include at least one question that you would like to bring up in class.
For each lecture: notes with marginal annotations--your questions and comments.
For each discussion: your notes and comments.

I recommend that you use either a loose-leaf or a bound notebook for your journal. I will ask you to turn it in twice, once at the end of class March 19 and once with your second paper May 7. The journal may be partly or wholly handwritten, but do try to make it as readable as possible, though your notes in class will probably be less so than the rest. What I am asking you to do is to stop and reflect after each course activity, that is, after reading a text, hearing a lecture, and participating in discussion. Then get some of your thoughts down on paper.

THE PAPERS

For each of the papers I would like you to develop and expand on one of the ideas touched on in your journal in relation to one of the texts we study, or you may compare something in two texts. (The two papers should concentrate on different texts from each other.) The primary focus should be critical, though you may bring in scholarly, historical, and other material if it is relevant. For each paper I want you to read at least one piece of criticism (an article, chapter of a book, or whatever) and to include it as a bibliography, whether or not you have occasion to refer to it in your own text. Each paper should be roughly five to seven typed, double-spaced pages in length. You may print front and back.

CLASS PARTICIPATION

The first requirement is of course attendance at both lectures and discussions. If you are ill or have another unavoidable conflict, I do not require a dean's excuse, but please let me know if you are going to be absent for more than one class. Do try to take occasional part in discussion even if that is hard for you. Remember that questions are just as valuable a contribution as statements and that there is nothing wrong with being confused about something and revealing that in class, as long as you have made a genuine effort to understand.

There will be several group reports; I will ask small groups of you to work on a specific topic and then report to the class as a whole. The reports should include some presentation but may also involve asking for response from the rest of the class. Each group is responsible for preparing its presentation in advance, which includes planning to fit into the time available.

The method of advance in nature is perpetual transformation. Be ready to emerge from the chrysalis of today, its thoughts & institutions, as thou hast come out of the chrysalis of yesterday.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals

You should be born again, and born different.

Somewhere in George Eliot

And we and our judgment and all mortal things else do uncessantly roll, turn, and pass away. Thus can nothing be certainly established, nor of the one nor of the other, both the judging and the judged being in continual alteration and motion. We have no communication with being, for every human nature is ever in the middle between being born and dying, giving nothing of itself but an obscure apparance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak opinion. And if, perhaps, you fix your thought to take its being, it would be even as if one should go about to prison the water; for how much the more he shall close and press that which, by its own nature, is ever gliding, so much the more he shall loose what he would hold and fasten. Thus, seeing all things are subject to pass from one change to another, reason, which therein seeketh a real subsistence, finds herself deceived as unable to apprehend anything subsistent and permanent, forsomuch as each thing either cometh to a being and is not yet altogether, or beginneth to die before it be born.

Montaigne, An Apology of Raymond Sebond


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