1

2

EXTRAORDINARY

VICTORIANS: LEG

AND BACKWARDS

SECTION 251 MW 5:00

DR. ADAM ZACHARY NEWTON OFFICE: BELFER 517

EMAIL: AZNEWTON@YU.EDU OFFICE HOURS: TUES 2:00-4:00 (AND BY

APPOINTMENT)

DESCRIPTION

This Honors English course will aspire to something completely different (at least as far as English courses at YC are concerned). Taking our point from the brilliant comic book series by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil (1999-2010), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that repopulates into its fictional world famous characters from late Victorian and turn-of-the century prose literature, we will revisit the “homeworlds” from which those characters originally came as we chart their complex restaging in steampunk-infused postmodernity. In addition the Moore-O’Neil comic (Vol 1), we will read fiction by Conan Doyle, Fleming, Haggard, Poe, Stephenson, Stoker, Wells. We will also look at some supplementary theoretical and critical texts by such authors as Harold Bloom, Thomas Pavel, Jacques Derrida, Tzvetan Todorov, Umberto Eco, Franco Moretti, and others, as collected in your coursepack. The point? To consider:

• the concept of genre in specific relation to popular and high cultural literary forms. • the notion of “fiction networks” whereby fictional characters enjoy transplanted or resuscitated

life in fictional worlds subsequent to the ones originally imagined for them. • questions of narrative theory as they impinge upon the related genres of novelistic fiction and

comic book.

REQUIREMENTS ▪Attendance, class preparation, and sedulous participation (50%) ▪Angle Discussion Board (10%) ▪Essay 1: 3-4 pp. (15%) ▪Essay 2: 7-10 pp. (25%)

Arm Reliquary, 1300-1325

Gilded silver, gems, mostly replaced by semiprecious stones and glass imitations

22 1/4 in. (56.4 cm) Metropolitan Chapter of Saint Vitus, Prague

3

TEXTS Required (note: please use the specified editions—all should be available at the B&N store on campus):

• Arthur Conan Doyle, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Dover 978-0486-477-831 • Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love , Penguin, 0-14-200207-0 • H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines, Oxford, 0199536414 • Moore and O’Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, America’s Best Comics, 563898586 • Bram Stoker, Dracula, Penguin 014143984X • Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, World’s Classics, 0199536228

• H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, Penguin, 0582419301

• Course pack (to be purchased separately in class for $35.00)

POLICIES AND EXPECTATIONS THIS DOCUMENT: You are responsible for familiarizing yourself with the syllabus and the information it details. Make sure you have read it thoroughly, and return to from time to time during the semester. It represents your first act of close reading.

GRADE PERCENTAGES AND GRADING: • Mandatory attendance/Sedulous Participation 50% • Weekly postings to the discussion forum on Angel 10% • Two essays—14 pages 40% The bulk of your course grade will come from two essays and class participation. I will keep an accurate record of your progress and performance, but please retain copies of your papers (with my comments) on file. ATTENDANCE POLICY: Your attendance is crucial to the success of our collective endeavor. You are expected to attend class regularly and punctually, and to prepare your work attentively. In other words, please be both present and present . Unless you face the most compelling of reasons, you should not miss a single class. If you accumulate more than two unexcused absences, your grade will drop in half-increments per additional absence (A becomes A-, A- becomes B+, etc. Attendance, informally speaking, during my office hours or by appointment is more than welcome. Please seek me out; that’s why I’m here. All students should prepare for, attend, and contribute to all class sessions, and should read and contribute to exchanges in the course’s online discussion forum on Angel.

4

Routine

• Our course meets twice each week with the exception of holidays for a total of 13 weeks and 27 class-sessions. Please be present, on time, and most of all, vocal. It is absolutely essential that you come prepared to speak: to the text, to each other, and to me. A class in which you remain silent is one in which you are only nominally present.

• ABR. Always Be Reading. It is equally essential that you come to class having read the texts

and assigned. What short fiction is due, as for the Poe and Çonan Doyle weeks, make sure you complete it before Monday’s class. When a novel is assigned over four or six classes, pace yourself accordingly, but try to read ahead as much as you can; each work forms a totality and needs to be approached as such, otherwise classroom discussion will be inhibited.

• All reading assignments in the coursepack must also be completed for the assigned sue-dates.

Some essays can be skimmed, while others need more careful attention; I will notify you in advance. Since this is a 2000 level course, a certain dialogue between text and commentary is built-in; this component of the course is therefore quite important. From time to time, I will supply class handouts; you are responsible for keeping these or obtaining copies if you happen to be absent.

• Reading and writing belong to a single continuum of critical engagement. It is not enough to

read the assigned text; you must also talk back to it. The most basic form this dialogue takes consists of circling key words or underlining significant passages; this means that you must always read with a pen or pencil in hand. It is also always useful to write down questions and comments in the margins of your text. Your marginal comments might include questions or reflections on matters such as plot, character, imagery, language (unfamiliar words or striking turns of phrase, for instance) or anything else related to your experience and interpretation of the text. In addition to marking up your texts, however, you can also cultivate the habit of recording longer responses in a notebook, one separate from your regular class notes, a kind of journal in which you can confront your own evolving interpretations and ideas about what we read. Note, for example, the copious annotations which comprise Jess Nevins’ online commentary to LEG at the following link: http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Jess%20Nevins/League%20of%20Extraordinary%20Gentlemen/Notes%20on%20League%20of%20Extraordinary%20Gentlemen%201.htm.

• Develop whatever method works best for you but whichever form of “talkback” you deploy,

you will find that much of your formal written work will have its genesis in your reading notes. Without these, the texts for this course, in a basic sense, remain unread. So please take notes .

In Class • Bring your text with you to class, always. You must come prepared to discuss the day’s reading assignment and to engage with one another thoughtfully; this means you have taken careful notes, flagged significant or interesting passages in the text, and formulated questions for class discussion. Critical essays should be read with the same care and attention as literary texts.

5

• Please attend to each other. “Pedagogy is a relation, a network of obligations ….To be spoken to is to be placed under an obligation, an initial respect. Nor is this ‘respect’ a matter of deference; it is the simple fact of alertness to otherness.” (Bill Readings, The University in Ruins). I endorse these principles wholeheartedly, and encourage you to do the same. The scene of teaching is the scene of colloquy, of call-and-response. Consider your speaking role as dialogic: addressing others but also prompting, catalyzing, opening a space for their interventions. Aside from a craft and art of its own, speech is collective and communal: every word (says Bakhtin) is “half someone else’s.” Differently put, even our words have “ל“ ה“ ו (la’shem ha’aretz u’mloah) inscribed upon them. • Be smart, be vocal, be invested; but be temperate and self-aware. • Please come to class on time: your punctuality is as importance as your attendance. Similarly, I request that you not bring food or drink into the classroom, or go in and out of the classroom while we are in session unless physiologically compelled. • You may use a laptop in class for taking notes—but only for taking notes. Please silence cellphones before class commences. Online • https://yu.elearning.yu.edu/ is the url that brings you to the Angel Course management system

mentioned above. If you are registered for the course, there will be a link there to the course site once you log in, but it also follows below: https://yu.elearning.yu.edu/section/default.asp?id=201009%5F17106

• On the Course Tab page, click on Lessons, click on the Weekly Discussion Forums Folder, and click on the relevant weekly forum.

• The forum will serve as both an opportunity to think through aloud what you are reading (and

thus, a kind of journal), and a dry-run for classroom discussion. It also counts for 10% of your grade. By Friday (or Sunday) of each week, I will post to our Angel course website some directional remarks (both prospective and retrospective) for your reading and for our collective dialogic labors in class. Each student will be expected to post a short (300-450 word) commentary on primary and/or secondary readings (ideally though not necessarily a combination of the two). Once someone has posted, the remaining class members will “piggyback” on this lead posting with excurses of their own that build on or resituate the original posting. All such interventions should cut across the breadth of the readings, capturing their scope while articulating a synthetic approach to a problem they either define or aggravate.

• If you do not post for Monday’s class, please do so by Wednesday’s. Please review all postings

before you attend (you should photocopy your own posting as well as any others that strike you). NB: Your comment should be heuristic not evaluative, just as the forum is designed for analysis not opinion. Please avoid comments about texts and/or their authors like the following:

6

“I couldn’t make any sense of X.” “I totally disagree with Y.” “Z leaves me cold.” Essentially, you’ll be doing mini close-readings.

• The aim of the online forum is to move as much as possible of the exploratory “first-contact”

of the course online so that students can review such material easily and at length, with classroom discussion focused on working through the critical questions thereby raised. I may occasionally upload documents, as well, so do make friends with Angel.

Writing

• Keep your postings to the discussion forum both limber and lucid. Think of yourselves as both

student and teacher: have your peers in mind as your concrete and immediate addressees.

• One of my own former literature instructors wrote, “Beauty often comes to us through no work of our own, then leaves us prepared to undergo a giant labor.” The degree to which you exert yourself as readers is also the degree to which you receive—and give back—pleasure. Without of course presuming to legislate, I solicit you to want to express yourself and care about the words you choose and the sentences you shape. Literary criticism and theory—which includes your own contributions—is an essential part of literary experience.

• Your midterm essay is due on 11/3. I will hand out material beforehand so you have a clear

sense of what is expected and how to proceed. Your more extensive, in-depth paper is due January 3.

COMMUNICATION AND ACCESSIBILITY My office hours for the Fall semester are Tuesdays, 2PM to 4PM. This is time reserved for you. Please feel free to meet and talk with me about anything related to the course: its material, any concerns you may have, its meaningfulness and utility. I will always respond to your emails, though not necessarily within twenty-four hours. As a general rule of thumb, an exchange over email is a precursor to fuller and more transparent face-to-face communication. Please keep in mind, though, that it is a tricky medium to get right in the absence of social cues, and is regularly deployed as a short cut to self-expression. A surviving member of the Donner Party after her rescue in 1847 wrote, “Never take no cutoffs.” Take her advice to heart. RESOURCES ▪Literary Resources, compiled by Jack Lynch. (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/). This site collects together some of the best literary and critical resources on the web. There are also links to miscellaneous but often useful and entertaining pages. ▪ Victorian Literary Studies http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Victorian.html A comprehensive list of websites. Devoted to Victorian literature and culture. ▪ The Victorian Web http://www.victorianweb.org/. George P. Landow, Brown University) - the WWW translation of Brown University's Context 61, which serves as a resource for courses in Victorian literature.

7

▪Yeshiva holdings. It is a good idea to familiarize yourselves as early as possible with Yeshiva’s various libraries and the specific holdings and resources available at each. A convenient guide can be found at http://www.yu.edu/libraries/. A list of subject databases is also available online at http://www.yu.edu/libraries/index.aspx?id=18326. ▪Academic Search Engines. http://scholar.google.com/ http://www.fieldsofknowledge.com/ http://www.academicindex.net/ http://www.ipl.org/ ACADEMIC INTEGRITY. Plagiarism and cheating are violations of YU’s policy on academic integrity. By registering in this course, you are promising to abide by all the requirements stated in this policy. Students in breach of it are liable to penalty, including disciplinary action beyond automatic course failure. Ignorance of what plagiarism involves will not be accepted as an excuse. It is your responsibility to recognize the difference between statements that do require documentation and those that do not. If you have any questions about documenting outside research and secondary resources and/or you are unsure of when to document secondary resources, consult the following link: http://www.yu.edu/catalog/undergrad/catalog9899/yeshiva.htm. The only acceptable writing help is from the Writing Center. Less obvious forms of plagiarism include

• Recycling your own work: “Submitting your own work as all or part of an assignment for two different courses [without] the permission of both professors” (xvii).

• Too much help from others: “…getting help from a fellow student, a friend, a relative, or some other person…. [who] exercise[s] skills on your behalf” (xx).

• Patchwriting: Creating “a pastiche of phrases and ideas so that your documentation is unacceptable even if you include a footnote or parenthetical reference” (xxiii).

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES. Students with disabilities who are enrolled in this course and who will be requesting documented disability-related accommodations are encouraged to make an appointment with the Office of Disability Services, (646) 685-0118, during the first week of class. Please keep in mind that you must obtain a new letter for each semester that you request accommodations. WRITING CENTER. The Wilf Campus Writing Center, in Furst 202, offers individualized tutoring that can support your writing for this course. All writers need feedback, even strong ones. Make an appointment and find out about drop-in hours at http://www.yu.edu/writingcenter. Call (212) 960-5290 or email the Director, Dr. Lauren Fitzgerald, at fitzger@yu.edu, for more information. The Writing Center also maintains a large collection of online resources: http://www.yu.edu/yeshivacollege/writingcenter/page.aspx?id=6212&ekmensel=15074e5e_1854_0_6212_4.

8

COURSE SCHEDULE *Note: As you can see, the success of this course depends on your thorough preparation for each class. It is vital to the conversation of the classroom that you read and reread the day’s assignment. All readings should be completed for the day they are listed. Date Theme/Activity Reading Due Assignment

Due

W 8/25 Course Introduction None

M 8/30 Comics as Revisionism League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Understanding Comics handout CP #1-4

Angel Discussion Board

W 9/1 The Question of Literature League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Victorian Afterlife handout CP #5-6

M 9/13 The Question of Genre League of Extraordinary Gentlemen CP #7-8

Angel DB

W 10/15 Dupin: Detective Fiction

Poe, “The Purloined Letter” CP #9-11, pp401-408

M 10/4 Holmes: Detective Fiction

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, “The Greek Interpreter” and “The Final Problem” CP #13, 16-17

Angel DB

W 10/6 Holmes: Detective Fiction

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, “The Musgrave Ritual” CP 14-15, 18

M 10/11 Ms. Murray: Dracula Angel DB

W 10/13 Ms. Murray Dracula CP pp393-400

M 10/18 Ms. Murray: Dracula Angel DB

W 10/20 Ms. Murray Dracula

M 10/25 Griffin: Science Fiction The Invisible Man Angel DB

9

W 10/27 Griffin: Science Fiction The Invisible Man CP #21

M 11/1 Griffin: Science Fiction The Invisible Man Angel DB

W 11/3 Griffin: Science Fiction The Invisible Man Essay 1 due

M11/8 Jekyll: Sensation Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde Angel DB

W 11/10 Jekyll: Sensation Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde CP #20

M 11/15 Jekyll: Sensation Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde Angel DB

W 11/17 Jekyll: Sensation Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde

M 11/22 Quartermain: Adventure Fiction

King Solomon’s Mines Angel DB

W 11/24 Quartermain: Adventure Fiction

King Solomon’s Mines CP 410-442

M 11/29 Quartermain: Adventure Fiction

King Solomon’s Mines Angel DB

W12/1 Bond: Spy Fiction From Russia With Love

M 12/6 Bond: Spy Fiction From Russia With Love CP #19

Angel DB

W 12/8 Bond: Spy Fiction From Russia With Love

M 12/13 Bond: Spy Fiction From Russia With Love Angel DB

W 12/15 Fanboys: Victorian Afterlife

Steampunk Magazine CP #22

M 1/3 Final Paper Essay 2 due

10

YESHIVA COLLEGE ENG 2051H-- CRN 17106

EXTRAORDINARY VICTORIANS: LEG AND

BACKWARDS

SECTION 251 MW 5:00

DR. ADAM ZACHARY NEWTON

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA……………………………….…1

2. WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN…………………...17

3. JESS NEVINS, NOTES ON LEG………………………………………………………….27

4. PETER COOGAN, “THE PREHISTORY OF THE SUPERHERO”……………………………..33

5. HAROLD BLOOM, “THE BREAKING OF FORM”…………………………………………55

6. HUMM, STIGANT, WIDDOWSON, INTRODUCTION TO POPULAR FICTIONS………………75

7. ROSS C. MURFIN, “WHAT IS CULTURAL CRITICISM?”…………………………………….87

8. FRANCO MORETTI, FROM “THE SOUL AND THE HARPY: REFLECTIONS ON THE AIMS AND METHODS OF LITERARY HISTORIOGRAPHY” IN SIGNS TAKEN FOR WONDERS ...................99

9. DANIEL CHANDLER, “AN INTRODUCTION TO GENRE THEORY”………………............115

10. TZVETAN TODOROV, “THE ORIGIN OF GENRES”……………………………………..129

11. JACQUES DERRIDA, “THE LAW OF GENRE”……………………………………..............143

12. EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE PURLOINED LETTER”……………………………………....157

13. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, “THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN”………………..173

14. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, “THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN”………………..201

15. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, “THE ADVENTURE OF SOLITARY CYCLIST”…………..............227

16. ROSEMARY JANN, “SHERLOCK HOLMES CODES THE SOCIAL BODY”……………...............247

17. FRANCO MORETTI, FROM “CLUES,” IN THE SOUL AND THE HARPY …………………...257

18. MARTIN PRIESTMAN, FROM “SHERLOCK HOLMES—THE SERIES”……………………..267

19. UMBERTO ECO, “NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN FLEMING”………………………...............279

20. ITALO CALVINO, “LEVELS OF REALITY IN LITERATURE”………………………………313

21. THOMAS PAVEL, “THE ECONOMY OF THE IMAGINARY” AND “BORDER, DISTANCE, SIZE, INCOMPLETENESS” IN FICTIONAL WORLDS………………………………………….....325

22. JASON CRAFT, “COMICS UNIVERSES AS FICTION NETWORKS”…………………………..357

23. STEAMPUNK MAGAZINE: “WHAT THEN, IS STEAMPUNK?” “ON RACE AND STEAMPUNK,” “INTERVIEW WITH ALA N MOORE”……………………………............................................375

12

24. VICTORIAN POPULAR GENRES—“THE ORDINARY AND THE EXTRAORDINARY,” CRIME CULTURE,” “LATE VICTORIAN ROMANCE,” “ADVENTURE FICTION…………………….393