Requirements. This is a discussion course about literature and violence. Its method is simple: read a book a week, sometimes two; come to class prepared to talk about them. Or, in schematic form:1. Attend class
2. Come Prepared
3. Take Part
Apart from this, a final paper taking up some of the themes and works discussed in the class will be due on December 8. A short paragraph setting out the theme or subject of the final paper will be due on November 24.
Course Grading. Grades awarded for the course will be based on attendance, class participation and the quality of the written work.
Required Reading and Editions. Please use the editions specified in the list below. I would strongly urge you to purchase the required texts, from the Bard Bookstore or elsewhere; but in any event do make sure you read the required texts in the particular editions indicated.
September 8 Introduction to the course. Discussion of poems: Carolyn Forché, “The Colonel” [1978], Wislawa Szymborska, “Tortures”. Recommended films: Battle of Algiers, Burn, Seven Days in May.
September 15 Richard Lourie, The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin: A Novel (Da Capo, 2000 [1999]). Leon Trotsky, “Their Morals and Ours.” John Dewey, “On ‘Their Moral and Ours.'” Discussion mostly based on The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin: A Novel. Discussion of poems by Chris Albani, “Kalakuta Republic”, specifically the first poem, “Casual Banter”. Recommended further reading: Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, Robert C. Tucker’s biography of Joseph Stalin, Arthur Kessler’s Darkness at Noon. Recommended film: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky (with Richard Burton).
September 22 Homer, The Illiad, translated by Stanley Lombardo (Hackett, 1997 [800 BC]); Simone Weil, “The Illiad, or the Poem of Force” (1940), in Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff, War and the Illiad (New York Review Books, 2005). Discussion based mainly on The Illiad and Simone Weil’s work. Two handouts for further reading/understanding/contextualizing: ‘The Books’ and ‘Basic Chronology of the Homeric Epics’. Recommended to look at other translations of The Illiad. Recommended further reading: War Music, part of an adaptation The Illiad, and Logue, All Day Permanent Red: An Account of the First Battle Scenes of Homer’s Illiad (Farrar Straus, 2003).
September 29 Aeschylus, The Oresteia, translated by Alan J. Shapiro (Oxford, 2004 [459 BC]). Recommended further reading: The Fagel translation of The Oresteia, which has a very good introduction.
October 6 William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar” in Julius Caesar: The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford, 2009 [1599]); Hannah Arendt, “On Violence,” [1970] in Crises of the Republic (Harvest, 1972).
October 20 Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma, translated by Margaret Mauldon (Oxford, 1999 [1839]).
October 27 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage, 1999 [1872]). André Glucksmann, Dostoyevsky in Manhattan (excerpts).
November 3 G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (Annotated Edition: Ignatius Press, 2004 [1908]).
November 10 Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (Penguin, 2007 [1904]).
November 17 Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt (New York Review Books, 2005 [1944]).
November 24 William Golding, Lord of the Flies (Casebook Edition: Perigree, 1987 [1954]).
December 1 Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridien (Picador, 1994).
December 8 V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (Vintage, 1989).
December 15 James Ellroy, American Tabloid (Vintage, 2001).
December 22 Don DeLillo, Mao II (Penguin, 1992).
René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Johns Hopkins, 1979)
Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel (John Dee, 2002 [])
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor (Vintage, 1989)
Edward Luttwak, Coup D’Etat: A Practical Handbook (Harvard, 1979)
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Picador, 2003)
Related Content:
Wars, Coups and Revolutions: Political Violence and How to Write About It
“Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War” Mark Danner on Democracy Now!
Now that We’ve Tortured: Violence, Morality and Politics after Bush
The Politics of Terror: Confronting Violent Political Change
On the Two Ways of Late Century Fiction: Nabokov and Naipaul
Dreaming Utopia: The Theory and Practice of Ideal Worlds