Studies in Symbolist and Modern Literature

Readings in modern, and especially modern lyric, poetry (mostly from the U.S., but also from Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa) in relation to major Frankfurt-School texts (on aesthetics, criticism, and social theory) that emphasize the significance of literature (as well as the other arts) in general and poetry above all; special concentration on the writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, and on their development of Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxian traditions of aesthetics and critical theory; sustained attention to how and why poetry turns out to be so crucial to the Frankfurters’ (and, in particular, to Benjamin’s and Adorno’s) overall analyses of modernity, mechanical/technical/technological reproduction (in both the economic and artistic-aesthetic spheres), and critical agency; consideration of how Frankfurt-School concerns and legacies might engage the changed sociopolitical circumstances and artistic-aesthetic tendencies–and, above all, the poetry–of the last three decades; analysis in turn of how later-modernist and contemporary poets’ work may challenge Frankfurt analyses of and assumptions about poetry, aesthetic experience, and critical agency themselves.  Readings of poetry throughout the course will tend to emphasize formal, stylistic, and philosophical-theoretical matters in order to highlight the consideration of how–and to what degree–artistic technique, in relation to aesthetic form and aesthetic experience (most specifically, lyric experience), may offer stimulus toward and insight into historical, sociopolitical, and ethical understanding and engagement.  Some treatment of Romantic and nineteenth-century poetry, and of 21st-century poetry, but the course will focus primarily on twentieth-century, modernist poetry (including modernist poetry written and published during the apparently postmodern period).  As a shared project throughout the semester, the class will all read and continue discussing together in a sustained manner one volume of poetry (Michael Palmer’s 1988 Sun), while for each week’s class, students and/or the instructor also will have distributed ahead of time xeroxed texts of work by other poets (whom they have chosen to present to, and discuss with, the rest of  the class).

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Michael Palmer,  Sun (North Point Press, 1988); paper.  ISBN: 0-86547-345-5. [Note: This book of poetry is sometimes hard to get; but shipments of it can always be obtained from (the non-profit) Small Press Distribution, which can be reached at 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710, tel (510)524-1668 or (800)869-7553, fax (510)524-0852, orders@spdbooks.org, < http://www.spdbooks.org>.]

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Shocken, 1968); paper; latest edition;

Walter Benjamin,  Reflections (Schocken, 1978); paper; latest edition;

Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin,  The Complete Correspondence: 1928-1940  (translation copyright Polity Press, 1999; first Harvard UP paper edition, 2001); paper.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,  Dialectic of Enlightenment (Continuum; 1987); paper.

Theodor Adorno, Notes to Literature  volume one.  (Columbia University Press; 1991); paper.  ISBN: 0-231-06333-4.

Theodor Adorno,  Notes to Literature volume two.  (Columbia University Press; 1992); paper.

Theodor Adorno,  Aesthetic Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1997); paper.

Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, Rev’d edition (University of California Press, 1996); paper.

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project.  (Harvard UP; 1999; 1st Harvard UP paper edition, 2002); paper; latest edition.

Theodor Adorno,  Minima Moralia (Verso, 1974); paper.

In addition, instructor will distribute numerous xeroxed handouts of required texts that will include work by Kant, Marx, Vallejo, Duncan, Marcuse, De Beauvoir, Brecht, Mayakovsky, Neruda, Rich, and many others.