English Composition in Connection with the Reading of World Literature

“He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” – Job: 14:2

“Ah, but before we begin to read
We must water the flowers” –Melih Cevdet Anday, translated by Efe Murad and Sidney Wade

Living according to their own time, flowers are our perennial symbol for beauty that demands nothing from its observer. Their arrival heralds their imminent departure: here briefly, their blossoming seemingly expels all their stored energy. Picking one preserves it for only a few hours at best. “Owning” one must contend with the limit of absolute brevity. Face to face with flowers, one might find one’s hands filled with an overwhelming, dizzying nothing. No single action could culminate the feeling.

At first blush, these floral experiences might seem at odds with writing. Whereas flowers fade, writing preserves; whereas flowers recur, writing accumulates. In this class, we will examine the contact point between these two categories where both might come undone. How does the flower operate as a trope for the effort to fix or distill an otherwise ephemeral moment? How do we understand flowers’ purported inactivity in space in relation to their unprecedented mobility within their own supply chain? Who gets to admire flowers and who must pick them? If flowers serve as one figure of insubstantiality, what is their concomitant role in structures of dispossession, expropriation, and exploitation? Are there any “minor” experiences left? Together, we will work through a collection of poetry, novels, journals, essays, and films that take as their primary concern this object of (supposed) no concern. From the language of flowers to flowers’ language, we will trace budding relations between memory, passivity, girlhood, attention, and secrecy. Throughout our readings, we will consider the correspondence between flowers and the commodification of beauty.

Attention to flowers will double as our course theme and a principle of writing: we will learn that in literature and in botany both there is more than meets the eye! To develop your writing skills, you will emulate the authors we read in closely observing what might appear to be minute or irrelevant and practice “picking” the right textual evidence. The assignments are designed to help you find your own style of argumentation and will include, most significantly, two papers of literary criticism as well as two to three in-class responses. Students will have the option to develop their own florilegium. By the end of the semester, you will see your papers to gorgeous inflorescence: a cluster of flowers arranged on a sturdy main branch.