Fall  2004                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Prof. Elizabeth M. Mills

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               3286 Chambers, Ext. 2288

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Office Hours:   M, W 1:30-3:30

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                W 10:00-11:00

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                and by appointment

ENGLISH 281

Southern Literature: Place, Stories, and Personal Identity

Catalog Description: Regional survey from literary beginnings to the present, with particular attention to literature from the New and the Contemporary South.

Course Goals:  The primary goal of the course is to read literature from the southeastern United States but to read that material critically and in the context of the cultural ethos from which it comes.  The critical perspectives that inform the syllabus are primarily historical and cultural.  Our reading and interpretation of texts will often involve an interdisciplinary combination of methodologies such as deconstruction, Marxist analysis, gender criticism, race theory, and psychology.  During the semester students will examine selected texts from the three major periods of Southern literature, will orally discuss those texts individually and in relation to each other, will keep a journal of responses and interpretations to those works, will research and write a report    on some aspect of Southern culture, and will write a critical paper and an essay examination in which they explicate, analyze, and argue about literature, using outside research where appropriate.

                The interrogative mode will predominate as the spirit of the course.  We will question basic assumptions and definitions as we explore (or explode) what identifies the literature of the American South.  Is it purely an accident of place--warm weather, clean water, fertile soil; or is it the consequence of military defeat, as Walker Percy suggests when he muses, "Why has the South produced so many good writers?  Because we got beat"?  Was it defeat, occupation, and reconstruction that forced the South into what historian C. Vann Woodward has called "quite un-American poverty" and "an equally un-American lesson of submission"?  And did that circumstance leave, as Robert Penn Warren has quipped, "storytelling and copulation [as] the two chief forms of amusement in the South"?  Was it the war of 1914-1918, as Allen Tate has asserted, that caused the South to re-enter "the world--but g[i]ve a backward glance as it stepped over the border"?   Does "the Southern temper," as Robert B. Heilman defines it: a "temper . . . marked by the coincidence of a sense of the concrete, a sense of the elemental, a sense of the ornamental, a sense of the representative, and a sense of totality," exist?  Or is Jefferson Humphries correct when he declares in "The Discourse of Southerness": "The South, what we mean when we talk about the South, is not a geographical place and is only related to geographical place by pure arbitrary contingency.  The South is instead nothing in the world but an idea in narrative form, a discourse or rhetoric of narrative tropes, a story made out of sub-stories, a lie, a fiction to which we have lent reality by believing in it"?  Our investigations will range widely as we encounter and attempt to understand some of the literature of the region. 

                The class structure will include both lecture and discussion.

Requirements:

                Students are expected to attend every class on time. With only two class meetings per week, any absence carves deeply into the course's development.  I will allow two unexcused absences; unexcused absences will be recorded on the class roll.  You will lose 2 points from your final grade for every unexcused absence.

                Students are expected to read each assignment before class begins and to be prepared to discuss the readings with the class.  In the evenings throughout the semester, I will show films complementing our readings.  Attendance at films will be optional.

                There will be one researched report, one short analytical paper (3 to 5 pages), a midterm examination, a journal, and a comprehensive final examination; these products as well as attendance and class participation will determine the student’s final grade.  The report and short paper count 25%; the midterm and journal count 15% each; the comprehensive final examination counts 25%; class participation, which includes attendance and engaged , thoughtful and informed discussion, constitutes the final 20%.

                                A=95   A-=92   B+=88  B=85  B-=82  C+=78  C=75  C-=72  D+=68  D=65       

                The Journal--10 entries required--should involve responses to direct assignments (e.g. entry #1 asks you to describe your hometown), reactions to texts, and interpretations of works that you read or reactions to topics that come up in class.  I urge you to argue and disagree as well as appreciate and affirm and to question texts at all levels. 

Your journal should be an on-going, reaction/interpretation response to something that provokes your interest from each week's assignment, and you should be prepared to read some or all of one of your journal entries in class if called upon.  The purpose of the journal is to give you a specific arena for expressing yourself in writing, with the one caveat that you must include both reaction and interpretation entries.  I seek approaches that are original, creative, and personally engaging.  I anticipate entries with specific and detailed evidence and explanatory material to support general claims and assertions, even emotional reactions or revisionary interpretations that contradict what has been said in class.  In other words, the journal gives you an opportunity to relate your own ideas to your reading and discussion every week.  (N.B.: There are 15 weeks in the semester, but only 10 entries are required.)

                Late Work: Work turned in after the due date and time will be penalized by one letter grade (ten points) for every 24 hours the work is late, including weekends, breaks, and holidays.  For example, a paper due at 5:00 on Tuesday and turned in at 5:30 on Tuesday is already a day late.  Please note that technological malfunction is NOT a valid excuse for late work.  I will grant extensions for serious extenuating circumstances, but you must pursue this option as early as possible. I grant no extensions on or after the due date and time.

All work for English 281 is subject to the Davidson College Honor Code.  Please pledge all written work.  

Texts:

The Literature of the American South. Ed. William Andrews.  New York: Norton, 1998.  Paper (LAS)

Earley, Tony.  Here We Are in Paradise.  Little, 1997.  Paper

Faulkner, William.  Absalom, Absalom!   Vintage, 1986.  Paper

Frazier, Charles.  Cold Mountain.  New York: Vintage, 1998.  Paper

Gaines, Ernest.  A Lesson Before Dying.  New York:  Vintage,  1993. Paper

Hurston, Zora Neale.  Their Eyes Were Watching God.  HarperPerennial. 1990.  Paper.

O’Connor, Flannery.  A Good Man is Hard to Find.  HBJ. 1976.  Paper.

English 281  Reserve List:

                Cash, W. J.  The Mind of the South.  1941.

                Contemporary Poets, Dramatists, Essayists, and Novelists of the South: A Bio-   Bibliographical Sourcebook.  Ed.  Robert Bain and Joseph M. Flora.  1994.

                Degler, Carl N.  The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century.  1974.

                Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.  Ed.  Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris. 1989.

                Faust, Drew Gilpin.  A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South,    1840-1860.  1977.

                Female Tradition in the South, The.  Ed. Carol S. Manning.  1993.         

                Fifty Southern Writers Before 1900.  Ed. Robert Bain and Joseph M. Flora.  1987.

                History of Southern Literature, The.  Ed.  Louis D. Rubin, Jr.  et al.   1985.           

                Hobson, Fred.  The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World.  1991.

                Hubbell, Jay B.  The South in American Literature, 1607-1900.  1954.

                Jackson, Blyden.  A History of Afro-American Literature.  Vol. 1.  The Long Beginning.

                                1989.

                Jones, Ann Goodwyn.  Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-                                1936.  1981.

                MacKethan, Lucinda.   Daughters of Time: Creating Woman's Voice in the Southern Story.  1990.

                ---. The Dream of Arcady: Place and Time in Southern Literature.  1980.

                Simpson, Lewis P.   The Fable of the Southern Writer.  1994.

                Southern Literature and Literary Theory.  Ed. Jefferson Humphries.  1990.         

                Woodward, C. Vann.  Origins of the New South, 1877-1913.  1951.

                Wyatt-Brown, Bertram.  Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South.  1982.

Assignments

LISTENING TO THE VOICE; INVESTIGATING THE TERRITORY

Tu.  Aug.  24         Introduction to the course: definitions, goals, themes, assignments

Th.  Aug.  26     Eudora Welty  "Why I Live at the P. O.";

                                Tony Earley "Preface: Letter from Sister--What We Learned at the P. O." and

                                "Charlotte" in Here We Are in Paradise

BEGINNINGS to 1880

Place, Story, and Identity

Tu.  Aug.  31         LAS  "Beginnings"  1-13; 

                                Smith 15-20; Byrd  27-34; Kennedy 58-66

Th.  Sept. 02         LAS  Hammond 89-97;

                                Edgar Allan Poe 97-125

M.  Sept.  06         *7:00 PM film: Gone With the Wind

Tu.  Sept. 07         Jacobs 125-53; Brown 153-60; Douglass 169-220; Chesnut 220-34      

Th.  Sept. 09         Discussion: Southern Culture(s)

                                Revised Report on Southern Culture Due at 5:00 PM

Tu.  Sept. 14         The War. 

                                Begin reading: Charles Frazier  Cold Mountain

Th.  Sept. 16         Charles Frazier  Cold Mountain     

Tu.  Sept. 21         Charles Frazier  Cold Mountain

THE NEW SOUTH 1880-1940

Place, Story, and Identity

Th.  Sept. 23         LAS 245-53; Chopin 299-309; Page 309-25; Washington 325-35; Chesnutt 337-45         

                                Turn in Journals for Review (submit at least 3 entries)

Tu.  Sept. 28         LAS:    Mencken 368-78; the Southern Agrarians 389-96

Th.  Sept. 30         LAS:  Wright 545-74; Agee 574-82

Tu.  Oct. 05           LAS:  Faulkner 435-67

Th.  Oct. 07           Midterm Examination

Begin reading Absalom, Absalom!

 [Fall Break 10/09-10/12/2004]

Th. Oct.   14          Reading Day:  No Class

                                Faulkner.  Absalom, Absalom!         

Tu.  Oct.  19          Faulkner.  Absalom, Absalom!

Th.  Oct.  21          Faulkner.  Absalom, Absalom!

Tu.  Oct.  26          Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Th.  Oct.  28          Hurston,  Their Eyes Were Watching God

THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTH 1940-PRESENT

Place, Story, and Identity

Tu.   Nov. 02         LAS: "The Contemporary South" 583-93; Welty 616-28

Th.   Nov. 04         LAS: 815-18. 

                                O'Connor  A Good Man is Hard to Find 

                                (read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “The Displaced Person” for today’s class)

Tu.  Nov. 09          O'Connor.  A Good Man is Hard to Find  (read all other stories from

                                A Good Man is Hard to Find)

                                7:30 PM Judy Goldman and Steve Sherrill, two southern writers, read and discuss their work.

                                900 Room of the Union

W.   Nov.10           Optional Writing Workshop for Critical Paper

                                                7:00 PM (Chambers 2234)

Th.  Nov. 11          Williams.  A Streetcar Named Desire  LAS 628-90. 

F.    Nov. 12          Critical ANALYSIS PAPER DUE AT 5:00 PM

M.   Nov. 15          *film. A Streetcar Named Desire   7:00 PM

Tu.  Nov. 16          Williams.  A Streetcar Named Desire  LAS 628-90.     

                                Discussion of play and film 

                                Begin Gaines.  A Lesson Before Dying           

Th.  Nov. 18          LAS: 885-87

                                Gaines. A Lesson Before Dying

M.   Nov. 22          *film. A Lesson Before Dying 7:00 PM

Tu.  Nov. 23          Gaines. A Lesson Before Dying

                                Discussion of novel and film

                                10 Revised Journal Entries Due at 5:00 PM

                                [Thanksgiving Break 11/24-11/28/2004]

Tu.  Nov. 29          LAS: Poems by Dickey 808-15; Ammons 845-51 (handouts);  Komunyakaa 1032-         

                                36; Chappell 944-51 (handouts)                     

Th.  Dec. 02          LAS: Betts 869-85; Smith  1001-11               

Tu.  Dec. 07          Earley.   Here We Are in Paradise

                                Discussion of stories and course evaluation  

**********

   The best American fiction has always been regional.  The ascendancy passed roughly from New England to the Midwest to the South; it has passed to and stayed longest wherever there has been a shared past, a sense of alikeness, and the possibility of reading a small history in a universal light.  In these things the south still has a degree of advantage.  It is a slight degree and getting slighter, but it is a degree of kind as well as of intensity, and it is enough to feed great literature if our people--whether they be newcomers or have roots here--are enough aware of it to foster its growth in themselves.

                                                                Flannery O'Connor.  "The Regional Writer."