CLAR 109
ARTS AND LITERATURE
Course Description: An interdisciplinary study of literature and the arts of architecture, film, dance, music, painting photography, sculpture, and theater (drama). The aesthetic and thematic connections of the various texts and artifacts will be examined from the perspectives of the four modes of aesthetic response: the heroic, the lyric, the pastoral or elegiac, and the satiric. The course will emphasize the common elements of literary and artistic expression, and the integral nature of the student’s aesthetic response to both literature and the arts.
(Common Syllabus)
INTRODUCTION
Weeks 1 and 2
Discussion of the province of literature and the other arts: architecture, dance, film, music, painting, photography, sculpture, theater (drama).
Discussion of the basic principles of artistic expression, and a critical vocabulary common to both art and literary criticism, as well as a discussion of critical terms that apply exclusively to a particular art, e.g. positive and negative space in painting
Discussion of the four modes: heroic, lyric, pastoral or elegiac, and satiric.
HEROIC:
The Heroic Mode in poetry: selections from Homer’s Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid,, Milton’s Paradise Lost (17th c.), and Tennyson’s Ulysses (19th century)
The Heroic Mode in prose and in drama: Selections from Melville’s Moby Dick (19th c.); Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Coriolanus (17thc.) (alternate selection: Hamlet)
The Heroic Mode in Film, Dance, and Architecture: selections from the films Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible; the ballet Spartacus (Bolshoi Ballet, 1968), Martha Graham, Night Journey; the Gothic Cathedral, Caen, St. Etienne, begun ca. 1067, United Nations Building, 1945.
The Heroic Mode in Photography and Sculpture: Life Magazine photos of Wilma Rudolph in the 1960 Olympics, of soldiers in the Viet Nam war; Stone mountain memorial to the Confederacy; Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus (1530’s), Winged Victory (of Samothrace, ca. 306 B.C.), Andrea Verrrochio, Colleoni (15th c.)
The Heroic Mode in Music: Symphony number 5 by Beethoven
The Heroic Mode in Painting: Cimabue, "Madonna Enthroned.." Bronzino, "Martydom of St. Lawrence."
LYRIC
The Lyric Mode in Poetry: Selections from Sappho (b. 650 B.C.), Petrarch (14th c.), Shakespeare 17th c.), Gongora (early 17th c.), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (19th c.).
The Lyric Mode in Prose and Drama: Selections from Wuthering Heights (10c.), Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding (1933)
The Lyric Mode in Film, Dance, and Architecture: Selections from The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Dead; Tchaikowsky, Swan Lake;, the tango; Eiffel Tower, 1889, Opera House, Sydney, 1971.
The Lyric Mode in Photography and Sculpture: Life photographs of girl burned with napalm in Viet Nam; joyous reunion of air force officer with his family after being shot down in Viet Nam, Kathryn Abbe, untitled, young girl with spoon; Cathedral of Notre Dame, "Virgin and Child," Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Theresa (17th c.).
The Lyric Mode in Music: Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, Liszt, Les Preludes
The Lyric Mode in Painting: Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717), Matisse, Dominican Chapel at Venice, 1949.
PASTORAL OR ELEGIAC
The Pastoral or Elegiac Mode in Poetry, Milton, "Lycidas," (17c.), Whitman, "When Lilacs last by the Dooryard Bloomed,:" (19th c.)Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." (early 20th c.) Blake, selections from Songs of Innocence (late 18th c.)
The Pastoral or Elegiac Mode in Prose and Drama: Selections from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826); Anton Chekov, The Cherry Orchard (1904)
The Pastoral or Elegiac Mode in Film, Dance, and Architecture: Shane, Friendly Persuasion; Peggy van Praagh, Dark Elegies (1937), Nijinski and Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps, Martha Graham, Lamentation; "House No. 23" (in William J. Hennessey, Vacation Houses [NY: Bonanza Books, 1962])
The Pastoral or Elegiac Mode in Photography and Sculpture: Shenandoah Valley (Farm Security Administration, 1930’s); Alfred Drury, Age of Innocence, St. Gaudens, The Adams Memorial (19c. England and France).
The Pastoral or Elegiac Mode in Music: Beethoven, 6th Symphony, Stravinsky, Pulcinella.
The Pastoral or Elegiac Mode in Painting: Tintoretto, The Last Supper (16th c.), Rembrandt, Night Watch, (1642).
SATIRIC
The Satiric Mode in Poetry: Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock, Byron, "Vision of Judgment," T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (18h, 19th, 20th c.).
The Satiric Mode in Prose and Drama: Voltaire, Candide (18th c.); Cervantes, "The Dialogue of the Dogs" (from Exemplary Novels, 17thc.); Calderon, Life is a Dream (17thc.)
The Satiric Mode in Film, Dance, and Architecture: Woody Allen, Midsummer Nights Dream; Ballet, Carmina Burana; Isadora Duncan, Vincenzo Galeotti, Whims of Cupid; Deconstructionist Building, Ohio State University Campus, Egg Shape, Albany NY Plaza (1970’s--perhaps unintentional)
The Satiric Mode in Photography and Sculpture: Winfield Parks, Jr. Beach Feet; Pierre et Gilles, Le Garcon Papillon (Kevin) [103]; Peter Agostini, Hurricane Veronica (1962), Jean-Robert Ipousteguy, La Terre, 1962.
The Satiric Mode in Music: Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, Richard Strauss, Don Quixote.
The Satiric Mode in Painting; the Bayeux Tapestry (medeival); Andy Warhol, Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962), Ester Hernandez, Sun Mad, 1982.
A retrospective analysis of the modal approach to arts and literature.
ADDITIONAL
READINGS
HEROIC
Poetry
Anonymous: Cantar de Mioi Cid
Ercilla y Zuniga, The Araucanian
Tasso Gerusalemme Liberata
Kazantzakis. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Prose & Drama.
Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim, Nostromo.
Arthur Miller, Death of A Salesman
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, Philoctetes
LYRIC
Poetry
Juan Ruiz The Book of Good Love.
Unamuno The Christ of Velasquez
Housman, "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff," "Is My Team Ploughing?" "On Wenlock Edge."
Wallace Stevens, "The Man With The Blue Guitar."
Dylan Thomas, "Poem in October," "Fern Hill," "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
Richard Crashaw, The Flaming Heart ("Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa, As She is Usually Expressed With a Seraphin Beside Her")
Prose and Drama
Borges, "The Aleph."
Calderon de la Barca, Life is a Dream
Santa Teresa Spiritual Report: The Transfixion
Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Pier Lagerquist The Sybil
Tirso de Molina El burlador de Sevilla
Zorrilla Don Juan Tenorio
PASTORAL/ELEGIAC
Poetry
Wallace Stevens, "To An Old Philosopher in Rome."
Yeats, "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory," "When You Are Old And Grey and Full of Sleep."
Garcia Lorca, Ode to Dali
Prose and Drama
Austen, Persuasion
Doctorow, World’s Fair
Blythe, Ronald, The View in Winter; Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
Ford Madox Ford, No More Parades
Kazantzakis, Report to Greco
James Joyce, Ivy Day in the Committee Room
Lampedusa, The Leopard
Proust, The Past Recaptured (Selections)
Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Zweig, Stefan The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography
SATIRIC
Poetry
Chaucer, "The Miller’s Tale."
Samuel Johnson, "The Vanity of Human Wishes."
Prose and Drama
Joyce, Ulysses ("Aeolus")
Thomas Mann, Confessions of Felix Krull
Jaruslav Hasek The Good Soldier Schweik (Svejk)
Anonymous, Lazarillo de Tormes
Moliere, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
Villon L’Epitaphe
Anouilh, Antigone