SUNY Fredonia
College of Arts and Humanities
ENGL 209: Novels and Tales
Powers of Narrative
Spring 2010
Sections 11 and 12: TTh 2-3:20, Fenton 166
Office: Fenton 265; MF 9-11, 3-5, TTh 9:30-12, and by appointment; 673-3856
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu, brucesimon18@yahoo.com
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
ANGEL Space: https://fredonia.sln.suny.edu/default.asp

About the Course Web Pages

This web site is designed to help you get as much out of this course as possible--you can use it to find out what assignments are due and when, how your work will be assessed, how to use the course ANGEL space, and how to use the world-wide web for research, among other things. Please get in the habit of checking back to these pages to keep track of changes to the syllabus and advice on assignments, as well as to surf the ever-expanding list of links to interesting web pages related to the course. And please contact me anytime (see above for my coordinates) if you have ideas about how to improve these pages or the course as a whole.

I. Course Description

Readings in world literature from ancient to contemporary. The course teaches analysis of varying narrative styles and approaches and the relationship of narrative to culture. These sections of ENGL 209 focus on the powers of narrative. Attending to the meanings, purposes, and effects of the act--and art--of storytelling, we will consider how narratives both represent and affect our understandings of and responses to social reality, the self and others, and ethico-political issues. In the "The Cinderella Scenario," we will examine stories that interact with fairy tales and fables in order to reflect on the meaning and significance of storytelling. In the "The Scheherazade Situation," we will examine stories that engage loss, trauma, disaster, and death in order to explore the powers and limits of storytelling. These units are framed by "How Narratives Matter," which introduces key issues in the course, and "How Narrative Matters," which focuses on a specific test case that brings the course together.

ENGL 209 is a core course for students in the English and English Adolescence Education majors; it also satisfies Part V of the College Core Curriculum (CCC).

II. Rationale

In ENGL 209, as in most courses offered by the English Department, students from a range of majors, minors, and concentrations interact, and the goals of the professional programs are integrated with specific course goals. Achieving these goals (described in Section IV, below) will require us to foster academic skills and intellectual habits of reading closely and attentively, thinking critically and creatively, listening actively and carefully, speaking thoughtfully and concisely, and writing clearly and analytically--skills and habits of importance to everyone, including English Adolescence Education majors and other future teachers.

III. Textbooks. There are seven books in the campus bookstore for you to purchase:

• The Arabian Nights, trans. Husain Haddawy (2nd ed.)
• Ann Charters, ed., The Story and Its Writer (7th ed.) [SW]
• Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano, Sandman: The Dream Hunters
• Patricia Grace, Potiki
• Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Sheri Tepper, Beauty
• Maria Tatar, ed., The Classic Fairy Tales [CFT]

IV. Course Objectives and Outcomes

Courses in Part V of the CCC are designed to present general ideas and ethical principles basic to the humanities and to foster critical thinking and critical literacy. These sections of ENGL 209 set out to reach these goals by helping students (1) to appreciate and understand a variety of narratives and narrative strategies in world literature, (2) to appreciate and understand a variety of modes of analysis of narrative, and (3) to appreciate and understand the act and art of storytelling in different cultures and time periods. To achieve these goals, students will:

• read, think about, and generate questions about the assigned readings (SLO #1: "English majors will read attentively, closely, and critically");
• exchange and discuss their questions on their course ANGEL site and in the classroom (SLO #1 and #2: "English majors will write thoughtfully, coherently, and persuasively");
• write at least one response essay and at least one critical essay to hone their expressive, analytic, and persuasive skills (SLO #1 and #2);
• research and write a final project that integrates what they have learned in the course (SLO #1, #2, and #3: "English majors will develop and challenge their own thinking through scholarly research").

V. Instructional Methods and Activities

The methods used in the classroom will include lecture, in-class writing, guided discovery, open discussion, cooperative group work, and other learning-centered and critical thinking-oriented activities.

VI. Evaluation and Grade Assignment

Attendance/Preparation/Participation (15%). Regular attendance to and thoughtful participation in class are crucial to your enjoyment of and success in this course. If there is absolutely no way for you to avoid missing a class, you must contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by email. Even more important than showing up on time, of course, is coming to class prepared and focused. I expect you to read what has been assigned for a given date at least once (and some texts preferably more than that!) by the time we begin to discuss it in class. This is a discussion rather than a lecture course, after all; although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in small- or large-group discussions and activities. Since it's difficult to make good contributions to discussions about a text if you haven't read it carefully or thought about it extensively, how well you budget your time outside of class will to a large degree determine how well you do in this class in general and how well you do on this portion of your course grade in particular.

Your grade for this segment of the course will be based on a combination of your attendance, the quality of your participation in class and on the course ANGEL space (described below), and your preparation, effort, and improvement over the course of the semester. As there is no final exam in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation as a different but equally important method of assessing your overall performance in the course. Due to the importance of attendance and participation, more than two unexcused absences will hurt your preparation/participation grade and each non-emergency absence after the fourth will lower your final course grade by a full grade (e.g., with five absences a B+ will become a C+; with seven, it will become an F). Please see Section VIIIB, below, for definitions of excused and emergency absences.

Online Participation (15%). To supplement and prepare for our class discussions and activities, I have created a discussion board on our course ANGEL space. You should use it to develop your writing and critical thinking skills, demonstrate your engagement with the course material, and consider and respond to others' ideas and readings. For instance, you can:

• post a specific question about one of the readings;
• comment on an interesting commonality or contrast in a group of readings;
• pick up and develop a topic of conversation from our in-class discussions;
• share an insight from a small-group discussion or activity that those outside your team didn't have the chance to hear;
• introduce a new topic of conversation that you feel is relevant to the course;
• connect materials you find in print or online to texts and issues in the course;
• respond to someone else's previously-posted question, idea, topic, connection, or reaction.

Response Essay (10%). The assignment sheet and advice for the 1-to-3-page response essay can be found at www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/pn4/re.htm.

Critical Essay (25%). The assignment sheet and advice for the 4-to-6-page critical essay can be found at www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/pn4/ce.htm.

Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the coherence and validity of your paper's arguments, the effectiveness of its structures in conveying your ideas and convincing your audience, and the quality of its prose (including grammar, syntax, and punctuation).

Final Research Project (35%). The topic and format for your 7-to-10-page final project is open. Further information and advice on it can be found on the course web site at www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/pn4/frp.htm.

Your grade for this segment of the course will be based on the coherence and validity of the project's arguments, the effectiveness of its medium, structure, and form in conveying your ideas and convincing your audience, and the quality of its prose (including grammar, syntax, and punctuation) and any other relevant aesthetic or design properties.

B. Grading. All work during the semester will be graded on a letter basis (A=outstanding, B=good, C=average, D=bad, F=awful) and converted into a number for purposes of calculating final grades. I use the following conversion system (the number in parentheses is the "typical" or "normal" conversion, but any number in the range may be assigned to a given letter grade):

A+=97-100 (98); A=93-96.99 (95); A-=90-92.99 (91); B+=87-89.99 (88); B=83-86.99 (85); B-=80-82.99 (81); C+=77-79.99 (78); C=73-76.99 (75); C-=70-72.99 (71); D+=67-69.99 (68); D=63-66.99 (65); D-=60-62.99 (61); F=0-59.99 (55)

Your final grade is determined by converting the weighted numerical average of the above assignments into a letter grade, according to the above scale.

C. Portfolio. English majors should be aware of the English Department's guidelines for ongoing portfolio submissions; it is highly recommended that a paper or other writing from this course be included in your portfolio.

VII. Bibliography.

A. Contemporary References

• Cristina Bacchilega, Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies
• Homi Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration
• Wayne Booth, The Company We Keep
• Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma
• Paul Cobley, Narrative
• Mark Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory
• Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsibility
• Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights
• Jack Zipes, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry

B. Classic References

• Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text
• --, Mythologies
• Walter Benjamin, Illuminations
• Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment
• Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction
• Ruth Bottigheimer, ed., Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm
• Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative
• Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form
• Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse
• Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading
• Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
• Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality
• Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice
• Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
• Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge
• GŽrard Genette, Narrative Discourse
• John Halperin, ed., The Theory of the Novel
• Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading
• Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
• Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending
• Berel Lang, ed., Writing and the Holocaust
• Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition
• Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production
• W.J.T. Mitchell, ed., On Narrative
• Christopher Nash, ed., Narrative in Culture: The Uses of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy, and Literature
• Alicia Ostriker, Stealing the Language
• Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale
• Peter Rabinowitz, Before Reading
• Louise Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem
• Maria Tatar, Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
• Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors
• Hayden White, Metahistory
• W.K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon

C. Key Journals

• College English
• Critical Inquiry
• diacritics
• Narrative
• PMLA
• Studies in Short Fiction

VIII. Course Schedule and Policies

A. Tentative Course Schedule. The following course schedule is subject to revision--please refer here regularly for updates to this schedule, notes on the texts, and suggestions for further reading.

How Narratives Matter

T 1/26 introductions, overview, set-up
Th 1/28 NO CLASS, but read and consider writing RESPONSE ESSAY on Isabel Allende, "And of Clay Are We Created" and Hermann Hesse, "Strange News from Another Planet" [both available in Lessons area on course ANGEL space]

Su 1/31 deadline for submitting RESPONSE ESSAY in the RE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space: 11:30 pm [you may instead choose to submit a different one for the next unit]
T 2/2 discuss Hesse, Allende, and the response essays I posted on my blog Citizen of Somewhere Else
Th 2/4 Ann Charters, "Introduction," "Reading Short Stories," and "A Brief History of the Short Story" (SIW 3-5, 1737-1741, 1758-1768); Maria Tatar, "Introduction" (CFT ix-xviii)

The Cinderella Scenario

T 2/9 Maria Tatar, "Introduction: Cinderella" (CFT 101-107); Charles Perrault, "Donkeyskin" (CFT 109-116); Brothers Grimm, "Cinderella" (CFT 117-122); Joseph Jacobs, "Catskin" (CFT 122-125)
Th 2/11 "Yeh-hsien" (CFT 107-108); "The Story of the Black Cow" (CFT 125-127); Lin Lan, "Cinderella" (CFT 127-131); "The Princess in the Suit of Leather" (CFT 131-137)

T 2/16 Sandra Cisneros, "The Family of Little Feet" and "Chanclas," and Agnes Sam, "High Heels" [both available in Lessons area on course ANGEL space]; Edwidge Danticat, "Night Women" (SIW 347-350)
Th 2/18 Jack Zipes, "Breaking the Disney Spell" (CFT 332-352); Donald Haase, "Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales" (CFT 353-364); Maria Tatar, "Sex and Violence: The Hard Core of Fairy Tales" (CFT 364-373)

T 2/23 Maria Tatar, "Introduction: Little Red Riding Hood" (CFT 3-10); "The Story of Grandmother" (CFT 10-11); Charles Perrault, "Little Red Riding Hood" (CFT 11-13); Brothers Grimm, "Little Red Cap" (CFT 13-16)
Th 2/25 James Thurber, "The Little Girl and the Wolf" (CFT 16-17); Italo Calvino, "The False Grandmother" (CFT 17-19); Chiang Mi, "Goldflower and the Bear" (CFT 19-21); Roald Dahl, "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" and "The Three Little Pigs" (CFT 21-24)

T 3/2 Neil Gaiman, "Locks"; Angela Carter, "The Company of Wolves"; and Nalo Hopkinson, "Riding the Red" [all available in Lessons area on course ANGEL space]
T 3/4 Robert Darnton, "Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose" (CFT 280-291); Zohar Shavit, "The Concept of Childhood and Children's Folktales: Test Case-'Little Red Riding Hood'" (CFT 317-332)

Su 3/7 deadline for submitting RESPONSE ESSAY in the RE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space: 11:30 pm [you may instead choose to submit a different one at the start of the next unit]
T 3/9 Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano, Sandman: The Dream Hunters
Th 3/11 William Carlos Williams, "The Use of Force" (SIW 1351-1354); Gabriel Garc’a M‡rquez, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" (SIW 462-466); Clarice Lispector, "The Smallest Woman in the World" (SIW 792-796); Octavio Paz, "My Life with the Wave" (SIW 1085-1089)

M 3/15-F 3/19 SPRING BREAK: NO CLASSES.

T 3/23 Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist" (SIW 681-687); Jorge Luis Borges, "The Circular Ruins" (SIW 123-127); Kurt Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron" (SIW 1299-1304); Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelos" (SIW 779-784)
Th 3/25 Julio Cort‡zar, "A Continuity of Parks" (SIW 325-327); Woody Allen, "The Kugelmass Episode" (SIW 20-29); Leslie Marmon Silko, "Yellow Woman" (SIW 1167-1175)

The Scheherazade Situation

T 4/6 The Arabian Nights 148-203; Marita Warner, "The Old Wives' Tale" (CFT 309-317)
Th 4/8 The Arabian Nights 203-260; Edgar Allan Poe, "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade," The Arabian Nights 356-372

M 4/12 deadline for submitting RESPONSE ESSAY in the RE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space: 11:30 pm [if you submitted one at the start of the previous unit, you do not need to turn one in now, unless you want extra credit]
T 4/13 Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Ch. 1-5 (1-93)
Th 4/15 Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Ch. 6-12, About the Names. . . (94-216)

M 4/19 deadline to post FINAL PROJECT proposal to discussion forum on course ANGEL space: 11:30 pm
T 4/20 Patricia Grace, Potiki, Part One (7-84)
Th 4/22 Patricia Grace, Potiki, Parts Two to Three (85-185) [instead of meeting in class, students will have until Friday at 11:30 pm to contribute at least 2 discussion board posts on this section and the novel as a whole]

How Narrative Matters

M 4/26 deadline for submitting CRITICAL ESSAY in the CE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space: 11:30 pm [if you submitted one for the previous unit, you do not need to turn one in now, unless you want extra credit]
T 4/27 John Barth, "Lost in the Funhouse" (SIW 84-101); Ann Beattie, "Snow" (SIW 107-109); Margaret Atwood, "Happy Endings" (SIW 42-45); Lorrie Moore, "How to Become a Writer" (SIW 909-914); Steven Millhauser, "Cat 'n' Mouse" (SIW 888-897)
Th 4/29 Sheri Tepper, Beauty, Foreword-Ch. 16 (i-130)

M 5/3 deadline for submitting RESPONSE ESSAY in the RE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space: 11:30 pm [if you submitted one for the previous unit, you do not need to turn one in now, unless you want extra credit]
T 5/4 Sheri Tepper, Beauty, Ch. 17-23 (130-285)
Th 5/6 Sheri Tepper, Beauty, Ch. 24-29 (286-412); course evaluations

F 5/14 FINAL PROJECT due by 11:30 pm in FP Drop Box on course ANGEL space

B. Class Policies

1. Attendance. As stated in Section VI above, barring emergencies each absence after the second will lower your final course grade by a full grade. Be aware that absences due to emergencies are the only absences that will not be counted toward your total for the semester. Emergencies include but are not limited to death in the family, hospitalization or serious illness, and natural disasters; scheduled and unavoidable school-sponsored events (games, meets, performances, etc.) are also counted as emergencies for the purpose of this attendance policy. Besides emergencies, the only other absences that won't affect your participation/preparation grade are excused absences. Please notify the instructor over email, in advance if possible and, if not, as soon after the absence as possible, if you wish an absence to be considered as an emergency or excused absence; the decision will be made at the instructor's discretion.

2. Online Participation. Please familiarize yourself with the college's Computer and Network Usage Policy in the University Catalog 2009-2010 and check with your instructor first before posting something to the course ANGEL space that is not directly related to the course.

3. Late Assignments. Online posts that are not well-timed with the course material and fail to spark other students' interest and responses will not count the same as well-timed posts or posts that do inspire further discussion. Late critical essays will not be accepted or graded. Only students who ask for an extension at least two days before the due date of any written project will be granted an extension.

4. Plagiarism and Academic Integrity. To plagiarize is "to steal and pass off as one's own the ideas or words of another" (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary). SUNY Fredonia strongly condemns plagiarism and takes severe action against those who plagiarize. Disciplinary action may extend to suspension from privileges or expulsion from college. Please familiarize yourself with the college's Academic Integrity Policy in the University Catalog 2009-2010 and check with your instructor if you have any questions about it.

5. Students with Disabilities. If you have a documented disability, please contact our Office of Disability Support Services in the Learning Center at Reed Library.

6. Cell Phones and Other Portable Electronic Devices. Please turn them off before you enter the class. If I see you using them while class is in session, I will hold onto them for you until we are done for the day. I will consider requests to use laptops for notetaking purposes.

ENGL 209: Novels and Tales, Spring 2010
Created: 1/26/10 4:54 am
Last modified: 4/20/10 1:03 pm
Webmaster: Bruce Simon, Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia
Feel free to explore the Fall 2004, Fall 2003, and Fall 2002 versions of this course.