Reading & Composition

Does a text “speak”? How, and to whom, do the words on a page make their unique voices heard? In this course, we will attempt to pinpoint and define some of the different voices that come together to create a work of literature. Our investigation will begin with a few mythical and infernal depictions of haunting songs and sounds that tell their stories in seductive and disturbing ways. In our readings of lyric poetry, we’ll explore how we might characterize the speaking “I” and the different interlocutors he or she engages. From ventriloquism to radio to futuristic talking machines, we’ll also consider various distortions and disruptions of the spoken voice and how these get transposed onto the literary text. Beyond these specific questions, we will of course consider each text on its own terms, paying attention to how its multiple voices intertwine with other central, complex themes and motifs. Throughout the semester, students will hone their own critical and analytical voices with regular writing assignments, revision exercises and in-class presentations.

Readings will include:

Homer, selections from The Odyssey

-Dante, selections from Inferno

Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Selected poems by Sappho, Petrarch, Gaspara Stampa, Robert Browning,

Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars,

F.T. Marinetti, Harold Pinter, Frank O’Hara, Amelia Rosselli, and others

A course reader will also include selected essays by Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler, Adriana Cavarero, Walter Benjamin, J.S. Mill, T.S. Eliot, William Waters, Mladen Dolar, and others, as well as a collection of writing resources