This second term of the Honors College literature sequence organizes our readings around the idea of travel to explore important literary themes: language, individuation and identity, culture and cultural relativism, and the definitions of fact and fiction. These issues arise out of the concerns of traveler and narrator. For instance, a traveler's sympathy and identity relates to Socratic self-knowledge and its dark side, narcissism; the language of travel complicates ideas about real and imaginary, especially as we move into the age of enlightenment. Travelers' political and economic aims reflect and create public and private spheres, with their concomitant gendering: geography "maps" the human body. Because the West's colonial impulse grows exponentially from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the ethical dimension of travel and narrative has special meaning for this term of the HC literature sequence. The ways in which literature indexes colonial expansion -- through accommodation and critique -- will be a theme throughout our readings.

HC 222H folds writing analysis (composition) into the study of literature. To that end, please be advised of the university's Web-based composition resources. (Back to top of page)

The texts we will read this term are

• Chaucer, "The Man of Law's Tale" (see note below for the text we'll use in class; click here to read about the BBC version, and watch a short clip),
• The Book of Margery Kempe (WW Norton publishers, ed. Lynn Staley),
• Thomas More, Utopia (Penguin),
• William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Oxford UP, ed. Stephen Orgel),
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters (Virago),
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (WW Norton, ed. M. Shinagel),
• U.E. Winkfield, The Female American (Broadview, ed. M. Burnham)

The last six texts are available at the UO Bookstore. The first reading for the term, Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," is available on-line. Please print the text (or bring a computer to class) according to the reading schedule. To access this text on-line,

• go to the main page of The Electronic Canterbury Tales.
• Find Fragment II / Group B1, The Man of Law's Introduction, Prologue, Tale, & Epilogue (left bar, towards top) and click on it.
• That will bring you to the front page for the Man of Law's Tale. On the left you'll see links to the Tale's four parts (Introduction, Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue); on the right you'll see modern English translations, the best of which (with line numbers, printable, glossary in bottom frame) is Sinan Kökbugur's, which you read with a Middle English gloss on the bottom OR read with Middle English and Modern English translation on the same page (second selection in left-hand frame)! Please print one version of this text or bring a computer to class.
• Notice the other links available, including Historical and Cultural Backgrounds and On-line Notes and Commentaries.

Electronic Reserves No articles are currently posted on electronic reserve; you will be notified if that situation changes. Please note that all Electronic Reserve articles are in PDF format; be sure to have Adobe Acrobat installed on the computer you are using. (Back to top of page)

Requirements:
Response papers. You'll write three short response papers this term (see reading schedule for due dates). These are formal papers in the sense that spelling, grammar, and thinking count--all papers must be neat, typed, revised, finished, and proofread. At the same time, these are papers in which to try out ideas, to experiment and challenge yourself intellectually. I will read these papers, comment on them, and grade them pass/no pass. A passing paper requires a clear and pointed thesis, cogent evidence, and NO grammatical errors. For extra credit, or to make up for a no-pass response paper, you can write your own travel narrative in the style of one of our authors, due the last day of class, Thursday, March 13. Three passing papers will count as a 4.0, two as a 3.0, one as a 1.0. See the reading schedule for response paper due dates.

Article summary and response. During the term, you will read, summarize, and comment on two critical articles. For the first article, due Thursday, January 22, choose one of the following, available in our edition of The Book of Margery Kempe: Atkinson, Staley, Gibson, or Bynum (this last the most "religious" of the four selections). For the second article, due Thursday, February 26, choose between the essays by Ian Watt and Carol Flynn in the selection of twentieth-century critical articles available in our edition of Robinson Crusoe.

• The first sentence of your response will summarize the article's thesis.
• Follow with a paragraph or two to detail the critic's argument, paying attention to such things as method, types of evidence, and critical assumptions.
• Then, in a second paragraph, respond to the article: did it enrich your experience of reading the text? How did it shift your ideas about literary criticism or literature? What further questions do you now have of the text?
• You may discuss your article with others--in fact, I encourage you to do so. At the same time, the summary must be your own work.

These responses, like the response papers, will be graded Pass/No Pass, and you have one week in which to rewrite No Pass summaries.

Graded formal papers. Two five- to six-page papers, each of which may use observations originally explored in respo nse papers. PAPER 1, due Thursday, January 29, will treat "The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale," and/or Margery Kempe. PAPER 2, due Thursday, March 6, will treat Utopia, The Tempest, and/or Montagu's Letters. Note paper due dates: papers must be turned in on the date specified.

Final exam. Cumulative, essay, take-home exam, especially emphasizing our last two texts, due no later than Wednesday, March 19, at 5:00 p.m. (Back to top of page)

Grading: The response papers constitute 15% of your grade; the two formal papers, 30% each; the article summary and response papers 10%; and the final exam will constitute 15% of your grade. (Back to top of page)

Reading Schedule Please read the assigned pages BEFORE the class meeting

Reading guide: texts
The following notes and questions are meant to complement your reading of the text. They touch on the central issues we'll be discussing in class. At the same time, be aware that not every question will be answered, and many issues cross over from one text to the next. You may use this guide to spark your response papers' theses.

"Man of Law's Prologue and Tale": Part romance, part saint's life, part allegory, this text invokes melodramatic horror in response to, among other things, dysfunctional families and cosmic turbulence. Notice the details we do get directly from the tale, and think about what is left out, especially in contrast to either Mandeville's account of the saints' lives you've read. What, if anything, is "real" about this tale? How does that reality square with a teller who is a lawyer? How does "journey" differ from "escape" or "exile"? What is the role of belief in this tale? Notice Custance's speeches-- how do her words square with the way she's described? Think about it culturally, individually, narratively, nationally. Choose a particular episode and analyze its meaning of "travel" in relation to belief, gender roles, rulership, or obedience.

The Book of Margery Kempe: Critics have often differentiated between Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales, and Chaucer, the character in the Canterbury pilgrimage. So too for Margery Kempe. Lynn Staley, editor and translator of our edition of The Book of Margery Kempe, differentiates Kempe, the author of the book, from Margery, the character /persona Kempe creates for the book. How does this paradigm affect your understanding of the descriptions of suffering the text includes? What does it mean to suggest that suffering heightens spirituality? What are the evidentiary moves that Kempe makes in order to support Margery's claims? Does she establish a difference between a pilgrimage and a "trip"? How does writing fit into the relationship between spirit and body? Characterize Margery's "voice": be alert to what you're taking from the text, and what expectations or assumptions you're bringing to your analysis.

Utopia: Originally in Latin, Utopia was translated into English in 1556 by Ralph Robynson, who produced his translation after More's execution and during the reign of Henry VIII's Catholic daughter Mary. Raphael Hythloday addresses the complex intersection between wealth and morality by attaching ehtical meaning to mercantile practices. Among other interesting moments, Hythloday argues against the death penalty for vagrancy. The identity of More with Hythloday is as intriguing as that between the pilgrim and author Chaucers, or between Kempe and Margery. In Book One, how does the dialogue form affect the "truth-value" of Hytholoday's, or More's, opinions? In Book Two, do you detect any humor/irony/sarcasm in the description of Utopian ethics or government? How does humor contain, exploit, or invoke danger? How does danger intersect with travel? with self-knowledge?

The Tempest: The fertile intersections among family-polity-theatre that appear on the island intersect dynastic concerns (Prospero-Miranda; Alonso-Ferdinand) with mercantile reward (Stephano and Trinculo) and colonial oppression (Caliban-Sycorax) with magic (Ariel). Why does Prospero have books along with his magic staff? What does this play say about "good rulership"? Greenaway's film Prospero's Books is a creative retelling of Shakespeare's play. What does Greenaway emphasize, and how is the textual different from the visual? How "dramatic" is Greenaway's film, and how do you account for the differences between film and play? What sorts of things does Greenaway's film use that were unavailable to Shakespeare and his stagecraft? What do play and film underscore in their interpretation of "the book"?

The Turkish Embassy Letters: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu accompanied her husband, the British Ambassador, to his post in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) in 1716. Few British women had made such a journey. She wrote to various friends and acquaintances, including her sister, the Countess of Mar, and the poet Alexander Pope. After her return, she revised her letters as if for publication, but they weren't published until after her death in 1763. What types of sights or experiences seem to interest Montagu most as she crosses Europe and arrives in Turkey? Does she write differently to different correspondents? She was English, Protestant, aristocratic and female; do these aspects of her identity seem to you to mark her letters, and if so, how? Does she display the condescending attitude of many later Europeans toward non-Western or "Oriental" regions and peoples?

Robinson Crusoe: Daniel Defoe's famous novel was one of the four best-selling works of fiction in Britain's rapidly expanding print marketplace during the decades 1700-1740. Of the others, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is also a travel fiction, indicating the intensity of readers' fascination during this period with travel, adventure, and different, exotic people and cultures. Travel writing was one of the best-selling nonfiction genres (along with religious material), and Defoe clearly drew on true stories such as that of Alexander Selkirk. But other genres or traditions, such as the "guide" and spiritual autobiography, were also influential for Defoe's writing and his contemporaries' interpretation of his book. What, exactly, does Robinson consider to be his "original sin"? Is it punished? What are his chief fears on the island, intially and later? Are they realistic? Is this a psychologically plausible account of extended solitude? How would you describe his relationship with Friday?

The Female American: This pseudonymous novel is one of the many "Robinsonades," of knockoffs of Defoe, capitalizing on his novel's immense popularity. The author also draws on the well-known story of Pocahontas for Unca Eliza's parents. What difference does it make having a woman rather than a man--and a biracial woman, half Indian, half European--as the protagonist of the castaway tale? Where does this author choose to depart from Defoe's model, and what might be the significance of the differences?

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