Dr. Julia M. Wright
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Coursepage for

ENGL5407.03 (Winter 2005-06)

Landscape and Loss: Nineteenth-Century Irish Literature

1:30-3:30 Mondays, McCain 1116

 

 

killarney.LC-USZ62-125899.jpg (118826 bytes)

"A panoramical view of the lakes of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, exhibiting the mountains, the stag hunt on the lake, and its neighbouring scenery, in views taken on the spot by C. K. Farrelly in 1836."  New York:  Endicott, 1842.  Lithograph. LC-USZ62-125899.

Required Texts | Assignments | Class Schedule | Bibliographical Information for Report Articles

Required Texts:

Assignments:

N.B.: All work must be fully and properly documented according to a recent edition of the MLA Handbook.

Students must sign up for their reports and seminars by January 23rd. The report should, like a scholarly book review, critically analyze the specified material, conveying the import of the material to the class as well as your analysis of it. The seminar can be used to address any course-related topic in connection with one, or more, of the works of literature assigned for the week in which it is presented; arguments may be tentative and questions may be raised as well as answered, but the seminar should be helpful to the class and facilitate class discussion. Both the report and the seminar must be submitted in writing one week after they are presented.

The essay may be derived from your seminar, but must be substantially different from it. The participation grade will be based on contributions to class discussion, whether questions, comments, or answers, and the quality of those contributions will be the primary consideration. I am open, as a matter of principle, to any coherent and well-applied critical methodology relevant to the course material and focus.


Class Schedule

Read and consider the assigned material before the week in which it is discussed so that you are prepared to discuss and explore the material with the class. Students are strongly encouraged to read the essays and chapters listed for reports as they will form part of class discussion on that day. An asterisk marks material in the coursepacket.

January 9th: Introduction

Building the Nation: Landscape & National Identity

January 16th: "Of a National Character in Literature"*; Waters, "Topographical Poetry and the Politics of Culture in Ireland, 1772-1820"*; W. Drennan, "Glendalloch"*; Moore, "By that Lake, Whose Gloomy Shore"*; MacCarthy, "A Walk by the Bay of Dublin"*

January 23rd: Lloyd, Introduction to Nationalism and Minor Literature*; Mangan, "The Lovely Land"*; Carleton, Introduction to Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry*; Davis, "Influences of Education"*

January 30th: Owenson, The Wild Irish Girl; Anthony Smith, "Neoclassicist and Romantic Elements in the Emergence of Nationalist Conceptions"*

Fearing the Nation: The Blighted Land

February 6th: Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent; Carleton, "Wildgoose Lodge"*

February 13th: Cancelled.

Reading Week

February 27th:  Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer

March 6th: Maturin (cont.); Boucicault, Arrah-na-Pogue*

March 13th: J.S. Drennan, "A Wail, 1847"*; Wilde, "A Lament for the Potato"*; LeFanu, "The Familiar" and "Carmilla"

Translating Terror: Other Landscapes

March 20th: LeFanu, "Mr Justice Harbottle"; the Banims, "The Church-Yard Watch"*; MacCarthy, "Afghanistan"*

March 27th: Moore, from "The Fire-Worshippers" from Lalla Rookh*; the Banims, "The Chaunt of the Cholera"*

April 3rd: Stoker, Dracula

April 10th (make-up class, McCain 1170) : Stoker (cont.); Mangan, "Leonore"*

For further reading, see http://irish-literature.english.dal.ca (especially the critical bibliography, listed under "Contexts").  In general, however, please be very wary of online sources. Even some reputable library archives are just uploading material without rigorous fact- or text-checking.


Bibliographical Information for Report Articles

(Note:  all items are in the Killam Library; some are available online through the library’s subscription to ProQuest and Taylor's essay is freely available on the web.)

  • Arata, Stephen. "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization." Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 621-45.
  • Backus, Margot Gayle. "'A Very Strange Agony': Parables of Sexual Subject Formation in Melmoth the Wanderer, Carmilla, and Dracula." The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1999.
  • Cullingford, Elizabeth Butler. "National Identities in Performance: The Stage Englishman of Boucicault's Irish Drama." Theatre Journal 49 (1997): 287-300.
  • Ferris, Ina. "Public Address: The National Tale and the Pragmatics of Sympathy." The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 46-73.
  • Glover, Susan. "Glossing the Unvarnished Tale: Contra-Dicting Possession in Castle Rackrent." Studies in Philology 99 (2002): 295-311.
  • Helen Stoddart, "'The Precautions of Nervous People Are Infectious': Sheridan Le Fanu's Symptomatic Gothic."  Modern Language Review 86 (1991): 19-34.
  • McKee, Patricia. "Racialization, Capitalism, and Aesthetics in Stoker’s Dracula." Novel 36 (2002): 42-60.
  • Moynahan, Julian. "The Politics of Anglo-Irish Gothic: Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Lefanu, and the Return of the Repressed." Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995. 109-35.
  • Neill, Michael. "Mantles, Quirks, and Irish Bulls: Ironic Guise and Colonial Subjectivity in Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent." Review of English Studies 52 (2001): 76-90.
  • Taylor, Susan B. "Irish Odalisques and Other Seductive Figures: Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh." The Containment and Redeployment of English India. Ed. Daniel J. O’Quinn. Romantic Circles Praxis Series. Online: http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/containment/taylor/taylor.html