L369 7258 STUDIES IN BRITISH AND AMERICAN AUTHORS
Stephen Watt

1:25p-2:15p MWF (30 students) 3 cr. A&H.

TOPIC: “Joyce and Re: Joyce”

This section of English L369 will focus on the writings of James Joyce, particularly his short story collection Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and his monumental modernist novel, Ulysses. It should be observed that, at first glance, Ulysses would seem a formidable novel—and a second glance will confirm that it is! But this course will spend nearly half a semester reading it in a careful, thoughtful way with the aim of providing students with the confidence to tackle a book of this length and complexity. To do so and in addition to some twenty class periods devoted to the book, we will make use of such supplemental texts as Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses and Don Gifford’s Ulysses Annotated. Short paper assignments will focus on specific episodes of the novel.

The last quarter of the course—the “Re: Joyce” section--will discuss writers influenced in one way or the other by Joyce, including Samuel Beckett (More Pricks Than Kicks), Tom Stoppard (Travesties), and Paul Muldoon (selected poems and To Ireland, I). The course will have several exams on the reading and 2-3 essays.