Oakland University Course Information English 300 – Irish Literature
Winter 2007
6:30 – 9:50 PM, Th, 176 SFH
Department of English
Instructor: Brian Connery
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Office phone: 248-370-2254
Office hours: T/Th 11-12, Th 5:15-5:45, & by appointment
“There is no great literature without nationality, no great nationality without literature.”
W. B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose 1.104
Course description: This course will survey Irish imaginative writing -- primarily verse, drama, and fiction -- from the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuialnge to the contemporary verse of Eavan Boland. As we read and talk, we'll be investigating all of the questions implicit in the course title: What is "literature"? What is "Irish"? To what extent is “Ireland” imaginary, and whose imagination should be granted license to create it? What should and should not be included in a canon of a national literature, and who decides? As a group of writings written largely in a non-native language during a period of prolonged colonial subjugation or, in many instances, by natives of mixed ancestry many of whom did most of their writing while living in other countries, "Irish literature" is a complex and contested category of writing. Readings will include works by Friel, Edgeworth, Synge, O'Casey, Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, McDonagh, and Boland. Students will keep a reading journal and commonplace book, make one presentation, complete a term paper or project, and write two tests. Classwork will be primarily discussion. An optional trip to Dublin and the west of Ireland during winter break will provide opportunities for student research and cultural enrichment.
Prerequisite: RHT160
TEXTS: McDonagh, The Cripple of Inishmaan (Vintage); The Táin (trans. Thomas Kinsella); Harrington, ed. Modern Irish Drama (Norton Critical Edition); Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (Oxford World's Classics); Friel, Plays 2 (inc. Dancing at Lughnasa & Making History; Faber & Faber Contemporary Classics); Joyce, Ulysses; Boland, Outside History.
Policies: Faithful attendance and regular participation in class are expected.
Students with special needs are welcome to discuss them with me. Some services for students with special needs are available through the Office of Disability Support Services, 157 NFH, x3266.
No alternative test dates will be available.
The grade of Incomplete is available only to students who have demonstrated regular and steady progress in the course but for whom unforeseeable and uncontrollable circumstances make impossible the timely completion of the course.
Students suspected of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean of Students for consideration of the Academic Conduct Committee of the University Senate. Cheating on any course assignment may result in failure for the course and suspension or expulsion from the University. Representing anybody else’s work as your own is a form of academic dishonesty. For further information, please see the section on "Academic Conduct" in the undergraduate catalogue.
Classroom Decorum: Everyone in the class is responsible for ensuring that the classroom supports learning: Please arrive on time; try not to distract others; turn off your cell phone; address your comments to the class at large. You are encouraged to participate vigorously, even passionately, in class discussion and on the email discussion list, but always respectfully to your classmates and your instructor. Please plan to remain for the entire class meeting.
Major Assignments:
The following simple formula will determine your final
grade for the course:
Journal
average 10%
Commonplace
book average 10%
Presentation 10%
Test
1 20%
Paper/Project 20%
Test
2 20%
Participation 10%
100% Final grade
Useful and/or interesting web links:
Schedule: Unless we get very weary very fast, we’ll adhere to the schedule below. In case of university closings or other occasions of class cancellation, please continue reading according to schedule.
January
Th 4 Orientation, background, and overview. Screening of excerpts from Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty, 1934) and How the Myth Was Made (Stoney, 1977).
Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe's stone age race.
– from “Ireland with Emily,” John Betjeman
Th 11 The Tain, Introduction and pp. 114
Friel, Making History in Plays 2
You'll find some help with the historical context of Making History in the BBC article, "Turning Ireland English"; the Notable Names DataBase (NNDB) has a decent short article on Hugh O'Neill; the Ulster Plantation, a sort of living history museum in Northern Ireland, has a good article on The Flight of the Earls; a more contentious account of the Flight of the Earls, considering the various interpretations to which the event is subject, can be found on Sean Murphy's website.
Th 18 The Tain, pp. 114-253
Yeats, On Baile's STrand, in MID
Patricius (St. Patrick), St. Patrick's Prayer, aka "The Deer's Cry"
Th 25 Poems by O'Rathaille. See “No Help I’ll Call”
Swift, The Drapier's Letter to the Whole People of Ireland, inc. "Pt. 2"
Swift, A Modest Proposal
Merriman, The Midnight Court
Goldsmith, The Deserted Village
February
“The Irish hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
“I am daunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country. I don’t believe they are our fault. I believe that there are not only many more of them than of old, but that they are happier, better and more comfortably fed and lodged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.”
--Victorian historian Charles Kingsley
T 1 Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent
Journals and commonplace books will be collected.
Th 8 Friel, Translations, in MID
Poems by Thomas Moore, James Clarence Mangan, and Charlotte Brooke. See the Irish Literary Texts site for Moore's "Go Where the Glory Awaits Thee," "Remember the Glories of Brian the Brave," "The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls," "Let Erin Remember the Days of Old," "The Song of Fionnuala," & "Dear Harp of My Country"; and Mangan's "Dark Rosaleen" and "Siberia."
" . . . the Irish bullied their way into the Western canon in the very language that had been used to evict them and brutalize them and cast them into the darkness of history. They made their statement in that language, and they made that language bow down to them." -- Eavan Boland
Th 15 Lady Gregory, John Eglinton, W. B. Yeats, Frank Fay, and Ernest Boyd on Irish Theatre in MID, pp. 377-98.
Lady Augusta Gregory, Spreading the News, in MID
Synge, Playboy of the Western World, in MID
Journals and commonplace books will be collected.
Th 22 Lady Gregory, Cathleen ni Houlihan in MID
O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock in MID
Selected poems by William Butler Yeats (handout)
Joyce, "Ireland, Island of Saints and Sinners" (handout>
February 24 - March 4 : Winter Break
March
Th 8 Test 1 is due.
Paper/project proposal, with bibliography, is due.
Joyce, Ulysses, pp. 1-218.
Helpful guides to Ulysses: The schema which Joyce prepared for his friends Linati and Gilbert help to give us a comprehensive view of how he envisioned the book, and these are available on Wikipedia. Thinkquest provides a very concise chapter-by-chapter summary, including the correspondences between Ulysses and The Odyssey. I have also placed on reserve in Kresge Library Harry Blamires's The Bloomsday Book which offers a page-by-page guide to what's going on in the novel.
Th 15 Shaw, John Bull's Other Island in MID
Th 22 Ulysses, pp. 219-428
Kavanagh, "The Great Hunger"
Check out Ulysses for Dummies, compliments of TS.
Th 29 Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape in MID
Visit the fabulously useful and well-maintained Samuel Beckett On-Line Resources website.
Ulysses, pp. 429-609.
Turn in draft of term paper for feedback.
April
Th 5 McDonough, The Cripple of Inishmaan
Ulysses, 610-783
Journals and commonplace books will be collected.
Th 12 Selected poems by Seamus Heaney (handout)
Boland, Outside History:
"The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me," 19
"The Rooms of Other Poets," 20-21
"The Game," 25
"Bright-Cut Irish Silver," 29
"We Were Neutral in the War," 30-31
All of the "Outside History: A Sequence," 33-50
"Ghost Stories," 66
"Distances," 69-70
"Mise Eire," 78-79
"The Briar Rose," 86
"Fever," 87-88
"Envoi," 97
"An Irish Childhood," 106-107
"The Emigrant Irish," 108
"Fond Memory," 109
"Listen: This is the Noise of Myth," 113-116
Term paper/project is due.
Th 25 Test 2 is due, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Note: The Hilberry Theatre premieres its production of Translations on Friday, April 19 at 8:00 PM. Performances follow on Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 PM, with a matinee on Sunday the 14th at 2:00 PM.