English 354a

Remembrance and Mourning: Literature of the Great War

Fall Term 2001

Professor Stephen Finley (sfinley@haverford.edu)

Office: Woodside Cottage 202 Phone: 610-896-1154

Home Phone: 610-789-0129 (Call anytime and leave a message)

There may be some changes to the reading schedule of the course, as we get further along, because our course this term will attempt to connect our readings more vigorously to a theory of traumatic memory, or rather better, to allow our readings to establish for us freshly the emergence in the Great War of a whole complex of issues associated with the damage of war to human personality, mind, and memory. A number of key texts are out of print and not currently available. We will be forced to improvise (Vaughn, Manning, Ford) and to rely on xerox packets for access to important critical and theoretical essays. I hope that this version/experience of the seminar will be enriched by multimedia applications and fresh resources from the web. We will be able to use the new web and visual resources that were added this summer to the Meditation Room of Woodside Cottage.

On several evenings, as noted below, there will be a showing of a film or video clips. We will begin these at about 9:30 (or somewhat earlier) and run beyond 10:00 at times (with the Remarque substantially later). I ask you to plan to stay for these viewings if at all possible. I have only noted a few of the video clips I will be showing (we will TRY to sketch something of a history of cinematic responses to the Great War).

This syllabus also gives very little indication of the kinds of extended materials available on the course’s website.

Class and reading schedule:

4 September Opening class, introduction, with a discussion

of poems by Hardy, John McCrae, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger

and others. Opening remarks on catastrophe, history, memory,

and on language and visual media.

11 September Hardy--selected poems (xerox); Keegan:

Face of Battle, pp. 15-78. Fussell:

Great War and Modern Memory, pp. 3-74.

18 September Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth (1933),

Parts I and II, pp. 1-463. Begin 9:30:

Showing of clips from Peter Weir’s

Gallipoli (with the young Mel Gibson)

25 September Testament of Youth, III, 465-end; Fussell:

Great War and Modern Memory, pp. 75-190.

2 October From Penquin anthology: Silkin:

Introduction to Penquin Book of First

World War Poetry, pp. 23-39; poems by

Graves, Sassoon, Blunden, Jones, Rosenberg;

Great War and Modern Memory, pp. 191-335,

esp. chapters 7 and 9, "Arcadian Resources"

and "Persistence and Memory."

**** Ist brief writing exercise due:

One and a half pages (max) on one of these poems.

9 October Graves, Goodbye to All That (1929)

16 October Fall Break

23 October Frederic Manning, from The Middle Parts of

Fortune, Somme and Ancre, 1916 (1930), by xerox;

Keegan, Face of Battle,

"The Somme, July 1, 1916," pp. 204-284;

Selections (xerox) of Edwin Campion Vaughan's

Some Desperate Glory (Third Ypres, or

Passchendaele, 1917) [and see Blunden].

30 October The Poetry of Wilfrid Owen:

list of selected titles will be handed out, with some notes;

also Blunden's "Memoir (1931)",

pp. 147-80; xerox of Owen's letters.

Sassoon, from Siegfried's Journey, xerox.

****2nd brief writing exercise due, in response to Owen.

6 November Ford, from Parade’s End: A Man Could Stand Up (1926);

Brief excerpts (xerox) from Guy Chapman’s

A Passionate Prodigality (1933).

Here, if not sooner—Criticism packet: theory of traumatic

memory; essays by Ruth Leys, Cathy Caruth, and others.

****Due date for one-page prospectus and

bibliograpy of long seminar paper, or website

project.

13 November Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front (1928);

Toller, from Eine Jugend in Deutschland (1933), xerox;

and the poems of Trakl (see Silkin anthology) and xeroxes,

including German packet and notes on expressionism.

Begin 9:30 (appx. 11:15 close), showing of film,

All Quiet on the Western Front.

20 November Concluding discussion of Remarque and Trakl;

Poetry packet from Lori Crawford's research

in Imperial War Museum, London, and other

British sources--an archeology of women's

voices (xerox packet).

****3rd brief writing exercise due.

27 November Open class. This date will be filled as

to be announced, or this class will allow us

to catch up, if we have fallen behind

schedule (very likely!).

4 December Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930)

11 December Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991).

Begin 9:30, showing of last installment

of Blackadder.

****Term project due by last day of examination period.