|
|
|
|
|
| ||
|
English 171 | |
|
T,Th, 3-4:15 |
Spring, 1999 |
Texts:
About the course:
Both in the visual arts and in literature, the idea of landscape has a long and complex history. The evocation of place through representation of panoramas and vistas that may or may not include human presence but that always incorporate human awareness and attitude, has been around for a long time and is still an active tradition. While we can hardly expect to study it exhaustively in a single semester, we can begin an acquaintance by briefly surveying its meaning in three different cultural traditions: classical Chinese; where the representation of landscape, first in poetry, then in painting, had some of its earliest expressions; European romantic painting and poetry, especially in England, where a new interest in the representation of nature and the values that could imply reached a peak; and finally our own tradition of American art, an outgrowth of the romantic tradition that now also reflects a strong interest in the Asian traditions, coming right up to the present.
Shuttling back and forth between the visual arts and the poetry of these three traditions, we will try to see how the two arts influence each other, how they change, and how the three traditions, despite being shaped in very different cultures and historical periods, share some common ground in their projection of attitudes toward the human/nature relationship.
This is also a course in which you will get a chance to work intensively at the challenge of writing effectively at the college level. To that end, we will often be concerned in class with issues of writing, with looking at each other's efforts, and with bringing papers successfully from their early stages and drafts to their finished state. Writing about the things we're studying will always be an active and ongoing concern.
The art museum has very hospitably made a room, its collection, and its expert staff available to us for our discussion and study of visual arts examples of landscape representation. We'll therefore meet most Tuesdays in the Print Study Room of the Allen Art Museum, and our sessions there, with the museum's curatorial staff, will have the visual arts and landscape as their primary focus. We'll have the privilege of seeing and discussing original works under the supervision of the curators, who will share their extensive knowledge with us. We need to be mindful of their few and simple ground rules for these sessions: 1. Pencils, but no pens. 2. No chewing gum. 3. No complicated jewelry such as dangly earrings or large necklaces, etc.
Our Thursday meetings, in our assigned classroom, will focus on the poets we're reading.
Interdisciplinary work requires flexibility, imagination and commitment. I will expect regular attendance from you, and I will expect you to come to class well-prepared, with ideas and questions about the assigned readings, ready to join the discussion and make the class an ongoing, exciting, and cumulative experience. A class this small is a rare opportunity, especially at the beginning level, and one function of the smallness is a sense of teamwork and shared responsibility. If we all have that, our educational experience will be especially enriching and rewarding.
Class meetings and assignments:
Feb. 9 Tues: Introduction to the course. Thoughts about painting and poetry, thoughts about place and the idea of landscape. Imaging and imagining nature.
Feb. 11: Th: What is landscape? Readings: Jackson, 3-8, 147-57. Bring in an example of a pictorial landscape you've encountered recently. Bring Five T'ang Poets.
Feb. 16: Chinese landscape painting. Meet in the Print Study Room, second floor, Allen Art Museum. We'll be talking with Charles Mason, Curator of East Asian Art. Readings: from Frederick Mote, Michael Sullivan and Simon Leys (handout),
Feb. 18: Chinese poetry. Wang Wei, in Five T'ang Poets, 21-42.
Feb. 23: Chinese landscape painting. Print Study Room, with Charles Mason. Readings: from Lee, pp. 3-36 ; Barnhart, Chapters 1 & 2 (on reserve in the Art Library)
Feb. 25: Chinese poetry: Li Po, FTP, 45-74.
March 2: Chinese landscape painting. Print Study Room, with Charles Mason. Readings: Browse thoughtfully in Cahill, Silbergeld, and Wen Fong (reserve, Art Library)
March 4: Chinese poetry, Tu Fu, FTP, 77-116.
March 9: Chinese poetry, Li Ho, Li Shang-yin, FTP, 119-182.
March 11: Chinese poetry, Yu Xuanji, The Clouds Float North, Introduction and poems on pp. 1, 3, 5-6, 10, 16, 19, 23, 28, 29, 35, 36-7, 40, 41, 50, 54-6.
March 16: Work on papers. Bring your first draft to class.
March 18: Class work on final drafts.
SPRING BREAK
March 30: Romantic landscapes in the visual arts. Print Study Room, with Amy Kurlander, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and/or Stephan Jost, Assistant Curator of Western Art. Read Koerner, Chapters 1-3 (on Reserve, Art Library).
April 1: Romantic landscapes in poetry: Wordsworth in McGann, "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, 178-181. "Resolution and Independence," 259-62. "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge," 262. "Elegiac Stanzas," 267-9.
April 6: Romantic painting: Print Study Room, with Amy Kurlander and/or Stephan Jost. Reserve reading assignment to be announced.
April 8: Romantic landscapes in poetry: Coleridge, "Kubla Khan," 393-5. Shelley, "Mont Blanc," 415-18, "Ode to the West Wind," 559-61.
April 13: Romantic painting: Print Study Room, with Amy Kurlander and/or Stephan Jost. Reserve reading assignment to be announced.
April 15: Romantic landscape poetry. Keats, in McGann, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," 402, "Ode to a Nightingale," 501-03. "To Autumn," 589.
April 20: American landscape painting: the 19th century. Print Study Room, with Stephan Jost. Read Driscoll and Novak (handout) and browe in Novak, Miller and Wilmerding on Reserve.
April 22: American poetry: Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning,"(handout) and Longman Anthology, Stevens, p. 9, Williams, pp.16-17, Bishop, 42-4, Brooks, 57-8, Jarrell, 92-3, Lowell, 99-100 Roethke, 115-17.
April 27: American painting and photography. Print Study Room, with Stephan Jost. Read "Landscape as God" (handout) and Jackson, Chapters 2-5.
April 29: American poetry: Longman, Stafford, 129 (both poems), Bly, 174, Wright, 282-3, Hugo, 231, Justice, 236, Snyder, 466 (both), Kinnell, 263-5, Levertov, 281, Rich, 340-41..
May 4: American environmental art. Print Study Room, with Stephan Jost. Read the rest of Jackson and browse in Corner and Beardsley, on reserve.
May 6: American poetry: Longman, Merwin, 213, Edson, 400 (all three), Plath, 427-8, Simic, 454 (both), 460 (both), Wright, 516-17 (four poems), Tate, 599-600.
May 11: Class work on final projects
May 13: Class presentations of final projects.
Reserve Reading (Art Library)
Koerner, Joseph Leo, Kaspar David Friedrich and the Idea of Landscape
|
|
|
|
|
| ||
