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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.