Download Dickens and Dosteovsky COML 185a

Dickens and Dostoevsky
COML 185a
Robin Feuer Miller
Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday 1:00-2:00, Monday 5-6:00
Shiffman 215
781-736-3192
[email protected]
Dickens and Dostoevsky
This course will consider such issues as narrative technique, literary
realism, character development, broad social and cultural issues, and
the manipulation of the grotesque and the sublime in representative
works of Dickens and Dostoevsky. Because Dostoevsky was an avid
reader of Dickens, we shall also, from time to time, address the question
of literary influence, particularly with regard to their shared thematic
interests: e.g., the rise of the modern city, the mind of the criminal, and
the depiction of childhood.
Reading List
David Copperfield (1850)
Dickens
Crime and Punishment (1866)
Dostoevsky
Our Mutual Friend (1865)
Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Dostoevsky
Course Requirements
Students will prepare discussion questions and come to class
ready to read closely passages that seem important to the novel as a
whole or to larger cultural or theoretical problems. Students will also
write two short papers (two to three pages, to be turned in at the
beginning of class), one on Our Mutual Friend (due on March 29) and
one on The Brothers Karamazov (due on May 3). Because of the
unusually heavy weekly reading assignments, I have decided to assign
these short papers rather than longer ones, but they should each be
examples of your best writing. You should also be prepared to share
them with the class. Writing a strong thesis paragraph and supporting
your argument with textual evidence will be important. There will also
be an in-class midterm examination on March 8 on David Copperfield
and Crime and Punishment. On April 19 we will have an in-class panel
discussion about Books V and VI of The Brothers Karamazov. More
about this and about our final class later. Your consistent participation
throughout the semester is important.
Your final grade for the course will be arrived at by assessing both
your written work (the midterm, the two short papers) and the quality
and quantity of your class participation through formulating questions
for classroom discussion, the in-class debate, and the end of semester
panel presentations. I expect you to come to class having read the
assignment, although during any given meeting we may not manage to
cover all the assigned reading. The reading load for a course on Dickens
and Dostoevsky is necessarily a heavy one, but I think you will also find
it extremely enjoyable and even exciting, so I do not expect that the
readings will be burdensome.
I regret to have to include a brief warning on plagiarism and
cheating. All work which you submit must be your own, and any
thought or words from the work of others should be acknowledged in the
appropriate way, through quotations, footnotes, etc. Cheating and
plagiarism are serious offenses, and any suspected instances of either
will be investigated according to University procedures. Having said this,
let me also say that I do not expect cheating or plagiarism to occur in our
class! Late written work will be accepted only with an excuse from your
Academic Dean.
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at
Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made
for you in this class, please let me know immediately.
Grading
Grading in a literature course is always somewhat subjective, and I strive
to be as fair as possible. For this course the breakdown of the grading is
as follows:
Midterm examination, 25%
Paper One, 20%
Paper Two, 20%
General Participation 15%
Debate on Books V and VI of The Brothers Karamazov 10%
Panel Presentations on May 3 10%
Learning Goals and Outcomes
The goals of this course, as with each of the courses I offer, are
both tangible and intangible. I emphasize the acquisition of the skills for
close reading and analysis of literary texts. Close reading, clarity of
speaking, the willingness and the ability to enter into searching
conversation and dialogue, and finally, the ongoing work of writing
compellingly and clearly are the most practical and portable goals of my
courses. The achievement of these goals—their outcome—is, of course,
up to you.
Students will also acquire a sense of the development of the novel
through reading major works of Dickens and Dostoevsky. We will engage
with various aesthetic and moral questions as we work our way through
these complex narrative fictions. Are there particular themes that
emerge from our readings that seem especially relevant to you?
The intangible goals of our course are the most valuable. Often the
surrender of oneself to a work of art—whether it be drama, painting,
sculpture, dance, music, poetry or fiction—can profoundly and indelibly
alter one’s sense of the world and of oneself. Moreover, one returns to
particular favorite works of art throughout one’s life. Having an arsenal
of treasured works of art prepares one for life as surely and firmly as
does a grounding in math, science or the social sciences.
Reading literature is, emphatically, an art, not a science, and in
successful close reading one gives oneself over to the exploration of the
workings of another’s mind in the act of creation. The meanings one
derives from close reading are replete with ambiguities and uncertainties,
but that does not equate to imprecision or sloppiness. The kind of
knowledge one acquires through reading literature is both lasting and
ever-changing, for it evolves along with one’s own developing aesthetic
sensibility and one’s own ever-deepening experience of being alive.
Success in this four credit course is based on the expectation that
students will spend a minimum of nine hours of study time per week
in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion, preparation for
exams, etc.).
Selected Bibliography (Recommended Secondary Materials)
Dickens:
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens, 1990.
Andrews, Malcolm. Dickens and the Grown-up Child, 1994.
Chesterton, G.K.. Charles Dickens, 1901.
Collins, Philip Arthur William. Dickens and Crime, 1994.
Fielding, K.J.. Charles Dickens: A Critical Introduction, 1965.
Hardy, Barbara. The Moral Art of Charles Dickens, 1970.
Higbie, Robert. Dickens and Imagination, 1998.
Houston, Gail Turley. Consuming Fictions: Gender, Class, and Hunger
in Dickens’s Novels, 1994.
Johnson, Edgar. Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vols.,
1952.
Johnson, Wendell Stacy, ed. Charles Dickens: New Perspectives, 1982.
Leavis, F.R. and Q.D.. Dickens the Novelist, 1979.
Marcus, Steven. Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey, 1965.
Miller, J. Hilles. Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels, 1958.
Sadrin, Anny. Parentage and Inheritance in the Novels of Charles
Dickens, 1994.
Slater, Michael. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Dickens, 1999.
Smiley, Jane. Dickens, 2002.
Vlock, Deborah. Dickens, Novel Reading and the Victorian Popular
Theater, 1998.
Smith, Grahame. Charles Dickens: A Literary Life, 1996.
Stone, Harry. The Night Side of Dickens: Cannibalism, Passion and
Necessity, 1994.
Wall, Stephen, ed. Charles Dickens, 1970.
Dostoevsky:
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. Caryl
Emerson, 1984.
Belknap, Robert L., The Structure of the Brothers Karamazov, 1967.
-----, The Genesis of The Brothers Karamazov, 1990.
Catteau, Jacques. Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation,
1989.
Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849, 1976.
-----,Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal 1850-1860, 1983.
-----, Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation 1860-1865, 1986.
-----, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years 1865-1871, 1995.
-----,Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet 1871-1881, 2002.
Jackson, Robert Louis. The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes,
1981.
-----, Dialogues with Dostoevsky, 1993
-----, ed. Dostoevsky, New Perspectives, 1984.
-----, ed. Crime and Punishment: A Collection of Critical Essays,
1974.
Jones, Malcolm V. Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin: Readings in
Dostoyevsky’s Fantastic Realism, 1990.
Jones, John. Dostoevsky, 1983.
Knapp, Liza. The Annihilation of Inertia: Dostoevsky and Metaphysics,
1996.
Martinsen, Deborah. Surprised by Shame: Dostoevsky’s Liars and
Narrative Exposure, 2003.
Meerson, Olga. Dostoevsky’s Taboos, 1998.
Miller, Robin Feuer. Dostoevsky and The Idiot: Author, Narrator, and
Reader, 1981.
-----, ed., Critical Essays on Dostoevsky, 1986.
-----, Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Journey, 2007.
-----, The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of the Novel, 1992, second
edition, Yale University Press, 2008.
Mochulsky, Konstantin. Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans. Michael
A. Minihan, 1967.
Morson, Gary Saul. The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky’s Diary of a
Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopias, 1981.
-----, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time, 1994.
Peace, Richard. Dostoyevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels,
1992.
Rice, James L. Dostoevsky and the Healing Art: An Essay in Literary
and Medical History, 1985.
Straus, Nina Pelikan. Dostoevsky and the Woman Question: Re-readings
at the End of a Century, 1994.
Terras, Victor. A Karamazov Companion, 1981.
-----, Reading Dostoevsky, 1998.
Thompson, Diane E.O. The Brothers Karamazov and the Poetics of
Memory, 1991.
Ward, Bruce K. Dostoyevsky’s Critique of the West: The Quest for the
Earthly Paradise, 1986.
Wellek, Rene. Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1962.
Dostoevsky and Dickens:
Fanger, Donald. Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism, 1965.
Lary, N.M. Dostoevsky and Dickens: A Study of Literary Influence, 1973.
MacPike, Loralee. Dostoevsky’s Dickens: A Study of Literary Influence,
1981.