WELCOME TO TEXTUALITY

This is a writing course. It is not a creative writing course, nor is it a standard academic writing course. The idea, here, is for students to engage in a series of writing projects designed to increase their awareness of those resources of the language that are usually thought of as "literary." "Awareness," however, is not enough. You--and your instructor--should be disappointed if you do not finish the course actually writing better than when you started it. And "better," in this case means both more effectively and with more pleasure. While "writing" means every kind of writing you may do, whether formal or informal, creative or critical.

We can't offer you your money back, if this goal is not achieved, nor would we if we could, for you yourself, and the quality of effort you put forth in all these writing projects, will determine the extent to which you grow as a writer during this semester. A lot of effort, however, has gone into the design of these projects, and a lot more will go into giving you useful feedback on the work that you do. We will do our best, and we ask those who take this course to give us theirs.

The work for the course will be based on a single book, of which one of the instructors is one of the authors. The two sections are each limited to a maximum of twenty students. Section 1 (Scholes) meets at C hour. Section 2 (Halpern) meets at F hour. Friday meetings for both sections will be replaced by online conferencing. There are no restrictions on enrollment; students in every semester from first to eighth can take this course. There are, however, limits on the size of sections. If more than twenty students want to register for one of these two sections, we will admit people based on the following priorities:

• For both sections, students who have already declared one of the MC concentrations (including Art/Semiotics) will have priority.
• For section 01, among concentrators, seniors will have first priority. After all MC concentrators, seniors in other concentrations who have taken any two MC courses will have next priority.
• For section 02, first and second-year students who have not declared concentrations but have already taken MC 11, 33, 55, or 66 will have second priority after concentrators.

For s schedule of assignments and other course information for section 1, check out the following documents, which will be distributed on the first day of class:

• Section 1 Information.
• Section 1 Questions/Contract.
• Section 1 Schedule.

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To give you a general idea of the sort of reading and writing you will be doing if you take this course, here is a version of the book's table of contents. ( Below that, you will find our email addresses. Please feel free to send us questions.)

1. TEXTS AND PEOPLE

• STORY AND STORYTELLER
  • Mary Louise Pratt, "Natural Narrative"
  
  
• FOUR "LITERARY" ANECDOTES
  • 1. Walter Benjamin, "Ordnance"
  • 2. Patricia J. Williams, "Polar Bears"
  • 3. Storm Jameson, "Departures"
  • 4. Richard Huelsenbeck, "I"
  
  
  
• TWO STORIES
  • William Carlos Williams, "The Use of Force"
  • Kate Chopin, "The Kiss"
  
  
• CHARACTER AND CONFRONTATION
  • Frank Wedekind, "Spring Awakening" (a scene from the play)
  • Kate Chopin, "The Kiss" (dialogue from the story)
  • August Strindberg, "The Stronger"
  • Martin Esslin "Aristotle and the Advertisers: The Television Commercial as Drama" (passages from the essay)

2. TEXTS, THOUGHTS, AND THINGS

• THE LINGUISTIC BASIS OF METAPHOR
  • Roger Brown, "What Words Are: Reference and Categories"
  • Roger Brown, "What Words Are: Metaphor"
  • Robert Herrick, "Delight in Disorder"
  
  
• METAPHOR IN THREE POEMS
  • W. S. Merwin, "Separation"
  • W. H. Auden, "Let us honor . . ."
  • Sylvia Plath, "Metaphors"
    
  
  
• METAPHOR AND DREAM
  • Sigmund Freud, from "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis"
  
  
• SURREALIST METAPHOR
  • André Breton, "Broken Line"
  • Wallace Stevens, "Domination of Black"
  
  
• POETIC USES OF METAPHOR
  • Ono no Komachi, "Doesn't he realize . . ."
  • Stephen Spender, "Word"
  • Robert Francis, "Pitcher"
  • X. J. Kennedy, "Ars Poetica"
  • Louise Gluck, "Cottonmouth Country"
  • George Barker, "Sonnet to My Mother"
  • Margaret Atwood, "You fit into Me"
  • Emily Dickinson, "A narrow Fellow in the Grass"
  • Marge Piercy, "You don't understand me"
  • Adrienne Rich, "Moving in Winter"
  • W. S. Merwin, "Inscription Facing Western Sea"
  • Wallace Stevens, "The Motive for Metaphor"
  
  
• METAPHOR AS A BASIS FOR THOUGHT
  • George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, from "Metaphors We Live By"
  
  
• METAPHORICAL CONCEPTS
  • Robert W. Keidel, "A New Game for Managers to Play"
  • Susan Sontag, from "AIDS and its Metaphors"
  
  
• ARGUING WITH METAPHOR: ANALOGY AND PARABLE
  • Judith Jarvis Thompson, "Abortion and Ethics"
  
  
• METAPHOR AND METONYMY: ADVERTISING
  • "Light My Lucky"
  • "Finally, Life Insurance as Individual as You Are"
  • "Vista"

3. TEXTS AND OTHER TEXTS

• INTERTEXTUALITY
  
  • Text (1) Judges 16: "Samson"
  • Text (2) John Milton, from "Samson Agonistes"
  • Text (3) Nike Advertisement
  
  
• TRANSFORMING TEXTS (1)
  • Raymond Queneau, from "Transformations"
  
  
• TRANSFORMING TEXTS (2)
  • Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, "Hansel and Gretel"
  • Transformation (1) Robert Coover, "The Gingerbread House"
  • Transformation (2) Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, "The Little Brother and Sister"
  
  
• COMPLETING TEXTS: THE READER'S WORK
  • James Joyce, "The Boarding House"
  • Dorothy Parker, "You Were Perfectly Fine"
  
  
• INTERPRETING TEXTS
  • Jack Zipes, "The Politics of Fairy Tales"
  • Bruno Bettelheim, "Hansel and Gretel"
  
  
• IDENTIFYING WITH TEXTS
  • Russell Banks, "Bambi: A Boy's Story"
  • Woody Allen, from "Play It Again, Sam"
  • Robert B. Ray, from "The Culmination of Classic Hollywood: Casablanca "

4. EXPERIMENTS WITH TEXTS: FRAGMENTS AND SIGNATURES

• THE FRAGMENT
  • Roland Barthes, from "A Lover's Discourse"
  
  
• REFERENCES FOR FRAGMENTS OF A STUDENT'S DISCOURSE
  • Maya Angelou, "Graduation"
  • Lionel Trilling, from "Of This Time, of That Place"
  
  
• THE SIGNATURE
  • WHAT'S IN A NAME
    • William Shakespeare, from "Romeo and Juliet"
  • THE HISTORY OF NAMES
    • A. A. Roback, "Names and Professions"
  • THE POWER OF NAMES
    • Ralph Ellison, from "Hidden Name and Complex Fate"
    • Dale Spender, "The Male Line"
    
    
  • WRITING FROM SIGNATURES
    • James Joyce, "Shem the Penman" from Finnegans Wake
  • SIGNING (THE PROPER NAME)
    • Jacques Derrida, from "Glas"
    • James Michael Jarrett, "A Jarrett in Your Text"

5. EXPERIMENTS WITH TEXTS: TEXT AND RESEARCH

• MYSTORY
  • ARCHIVE FOR A MYSTORICAL METHOD
    • Mikchel Leiris, from "The Autobiographer as Torero"
    • Eunice Lipton, "History of an Encounter"
    • Susan Howe, "Incloser"
    • Salvador Dali, from "How to Become Paranoia-Critical"
    • N. Scott Momaday, from "The Way to Rainy Mountain

To send e-mail to Robert Scholes click on the address Robert_Scholes@brown.edu

To send e-mail to Faye Halpern click on the address Faye_Halpern@Brown.edu



Created: April 24, 1997; Updated: October 10, 1997