LIT
6506 Major Authors: Welty/O’Connor
Instructor: Dr. Dawn Trouard, University of Central Florida
Fall 1999
Phone: 823-2213; e-mail dtrouard@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
Office: HFA 401 Office Hours: Tuesdays 10:15-11:15 and 2-4; Thursdays 1:00-2:15
and by appt.
REQUIRED TEXTS "You’d read that and the very first thing you’d do, you’d fall off the piano stool.”
O’Connor: Collected
Works (New York: Library of America, 1988) ISBN#0-940450-37-2 (CO’C)
Welty: Stories, Essays & Memoir (New York: Library of America, 1998)
ISBN#1-883011-55-8 (CW)
Welty. The Optimist’s Daughter (New York: Vintage International,
1990)
Reading Packet
Recommended: Welty’s Eye of the Story and all of the relevant volumes
in the UP of Mississippi Conversations series
“Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down,” opined Flannery O’Connor about the dilemma of Southern writers who must emerge from the shadow of William Faulkner. By reading nearly all of the writings of these two formidable practitioners of Southern literature, we will be able to appreciate how they have stamped their own visions on Southern terrain and how each woman’s adaptation of the grotesque has permitted their subversive explorations of regional politics of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS “I was willing; I would do anything to read.”
1. Participation: Serious contributions to the daily discussions are expected. Come prepared to each class having read carefully and thoughtfully the fiction and criticism under consideration. There may be inspirational and spontaneous requests for you to react to queries about the day's assignment. Short story readings are identified by pages and a key word from the collection’s title. The reading load for this course is taxing and you are encouraged to be in a chronic state of preparedness. Though only a few stories may be featured in the class discussion, you must have prepared the reading in its entirety and you will be encouraged to make connections among all of the readings as appropriate.
2. Homework: You will be routinely asked to turn in 4x6 notecards or the word-processing equivalent offering a focused or researched response to a query intended to stimulate class discussion. It may require a bit of Southern research or a quickie investigation of lawn sculpture or funeral practice in Mississippi. Sometimes a focused response to a critical essay will be needed. Your written responses need to be ready at the start of the class meeting a given topic is under discussion though not everyone will be called on to share responses each time. All of us are counting on each class member to bring his or her thoughts and energy to the table.
3. Presentation: Each student will be required to make at least one short “formal” presentation (usually on criticism) and lead part of a novel discussion. Tied to a particular reading, these presentations must be accompanied by a one-page bibliography of relevant criticism and a handout/artifact identifying key issues or sites of curiosity and delight that will direct your presentation. Information clarifying cultural and historical issues will be particularly helpful (malaria, mythology, Southern Protestantism). (10% of the course grade will derive from your efforts on items a, b, and c. They will not be assigned a specific grade—but will be evaluated with checks or minuses and consultations about the effectiveness of the presentations. Failure to submit homework, or to make a thoughtful presentation, or to share a thorough bibliography may result in the lowering of your final grade by as much as 10%.)
4. Three "position" papers (15% @; 750-1000 words); a 4th submission (outline or draft with bibliography for final essay)
5. One critical essay (45%; 3,000-3,500 words)
EXPECTATIONS "She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
Your chief task is to read and then interpret, criticize, and evaluate the literature in the course. You should read carefully, closely, and with as much personal involvement as possible. Take notes as you read, raise questions in class, and try to read in the criticism above and beyond official assignments. Form your own opinions and be prepared to explain and defend them before others.
Reminder: This course is demanding and exhausting, requiring heroic amounts of time and thought to accomplish the reading and writing. If you cannot make a commitment to such a strenuous course, don't. THIS IS NOT A COURSE FOR STUDENTS WHO HAVE HECTIC SCHEDULES OR WHO HATE TO READ.
N.B. Essays must be typed and employ MLA style.
BOTTOM LINES "Saying ‘might-could’ was bad, but saying it in the basement made bad grammar a sin.”
1. Grades: There is no extra credit. Grades are not curved.
There will be no incompletes. All papers are due in the 4th floor English Department (Room 405) by 4pm on the due date. Late papers will be docked 10% for each class meeting beyond that time, unless a compelling and documentable explanation is negotiated prior to the due date.
2. Absences and Make-ups: As stated on university policy, students are responsible for attending classes. MAKE-UPS of assignments are generally not possible. The nature of the make-up work for a medically or university excused absence is at my discretion. If you are absent you must contact a classmate to double check reading or homework assignments. This is not negotiable. Erratic attendance (missing more than two classes for anything other than medically documented or university authorized excuses) will result in the lowering of the final letter grade by 10% for each absence beyond two. (Grades decline progressively: Once you have missed 3 classes, you are bordering on “beyond the pale” and should consider withdrawing.) It is not necessary to call me or the English offices to post me on absences, lateness, or general well being. If you are scheduled to present it is imperative you attend class and have materials ready to distribute.
3. You are responsible for material discussed and/or assigned when you are absent. Be sure you have the phone numbers/e-mail of at least two kinda-reliable classmates.
4. Plagiarized work [any work represented in whole or part as one's own] will be given a zero for the assignment and an F in the course. This covers a multitude of sins including bought and/or borrowed papers, or just copying the answer for a question from an adjacent paper.
READING SCHEDULE “I was in love with books at least partly for what they looked like; I loved the printed page.”
Week 1: “A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain don’t have a gift for telling a story.”
AUG. 19 “A Sweet Devouring” (CW 797)
Week 2: “I suppose I was exercising as early as then the turn of mind, the nature of temperament, of a privileged observer; and owing to the way I became so, it turned out that I became the loving kind.”
AUG. 24 One Writer’s Beginnings (CW 831) AUG. 26 from Curtain of Green (CW 5-92) + “Preface to CS” (CW 827) [“Petrified Man” (Ashely)]
Week 3: “In the act and the course of writing stories, these are two of the springs, one bright, one dark, that feed the stream.”
AUG. 31 Curtain (CW 92-184) + (CW 815-26) [“Powerhouse” (Rachel)] SEPT. 2 The Wide Net (CW 185-267) + “Some Notes on River Country” (CW 760) [“First Love” (Alicia)]
Week 4: “Making pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture; and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment when I saw it.”
SEPT. 6 Position Paper 1 due SEPT. 7 Wide Net related activities/criticism (CO’C 268-312) [“At the Landing”] SEPT. 9 Welty essays (CW 773-96)
Week 5: “Exposing yourself to risk is a truth Miss Eckhart and I had in common. What animates and possesses me is what drives Miss Eckhart, the love of her art and the love of giving it, the desire to give it until there is no more left.”
SEPT. 14 The Golden Apples (CW 319-99) [“June Recital” (Karen)] SEPT. 16 The Golden Apples (CW 400-514) [“The Whole World Knows” (Louise)]
Week 6: “I was always my own teacher.”
SEPT. 21 The Golden Apples (CW 515-60) [“The Wanderers” (Jessica)] SEPT. 23 “A Pageant of Birds” (CW 755); “The King of Birds”/ “The Partridge Festival” (CO’C832 & 773); and O’Connor essays (CO’C 843-52)
Week 7: “Southern identity is not really connected with mocking-birds and beaten biscuits and white columns any more than it is with hookworm and bare feet and muddy clay roads.”
SEPT. 27 Position Paper 2 due SEPT. 28 O’Connor Essays (CO’C 797-821; 853-64); selected letters (CO’C 899-1086) SEPT. 30 Wise Blood (CO’C 1-133)
Week 8: “For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not restriction.”
OCT. 5 Wise Blood; letters (CO’C 1087-1220) [The Life You Save May Be Your Own”] OCT. 7 A Good Man Is Hard to Find (CO’C 133-96)
Week 9: “I have just got back from 2 days in NYC. There is one advantage in it because although you see several people you wish you didn’t know, you see thousands you’re glad you don’t know.
OCT. 12 A Good Man Is Hard to Find (CO’C 197-327 ) [“Good Country People” + “The Artificial Nigger” (Katie)] OCT. 14 The Bride of the Innisfallen (CW 561-95) (“No Place for you, My Love” (Daniel)) OCT. 15 Position Paper 3 due/Withdrawl Deadline
Week 10: “Welcome!” I said—the most dangerous word in the world.”
OCT. 19 The Bride of the Innisfallen (CW 596-646) [“The Bride of the Innisfallen”] OCT. 21 The Bride of the Innisfallen (CW 647-722) [“Kin” (David) & “Going to Naples”]
Week 11: “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.”
OCT. 26 The Violent Bear It Away (CO’C 329-91) OCT. 28 The Violent Bear It Away (CO’C 391-479)
Week 12: “The action of grace changes a character.”
NOV. 2 Everything That Rises Must Converge (CO’C 481-594) [“A View of the Woods”] NOV. 4 Everything That Rises Must Converge (CO’C 595-695) [“Revelation” (Noah)]
Week 13: “Henry James said the young woman of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex.”
NOV. 9 Presentations NOV. 11 Holiday
Week 14: “The memory is a living thing—it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives—the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.”
NOV. 16 The Optimist’s Daughter NOV. 18 The Optimist’s Daughter
Week 15: “If this makes fiction sound full of mystery, I think it’s fuller than I know how to say.”
NOV. 23 “The Demonstrators”/ “Must the Novelist Crusade”/ “Where is the Voice Coming From?” (CW 724-50 & 803) NOV. 25 THANKSGIVING
Week 16: “I feel this is the time for me to fulfill myself by stepping in and saving the chicken but I don’t know exactly how since I am not bold. I only know I believe in the complete chicken. You think about the complete chicken for a while.”
NOV. 30 TBA DEC. 2 summing up
Finals Week:
DEC. 7 Exam Period 10:00 a.m. - 12:50 (Tuesday)
THIS COURSE WILL FUNCTION IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE UNIVERSITY’S GUIDELINES AGAINST SEXUAL HARASSMENT, AND IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE UNIVERSITY'S POLICIES FOR EQUAL EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. Any violations, whether perceived or confirmed, should be reported to the University's Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Office.