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Syllabus
Selected American Authors After 1900:
Willa Cather and William Faulkner
(8:88, Section 2)
Fall, 2011 Professor Ed Folsom
9:30-10:20 206 EPB
The Texts: All are available at Prairie Lights Bookstore , 15 South Dubuque Street . I've ordered reliable and readable Vintage editions of the novels. Using these editions will allow us to easily find passages we want to discuss, but if you already have other editions of the novels, there's no need to buy new ones, but be warned that without these editions it may be frustrating finding the page numbers of passages we focus on in class.
Cather (1873-1947):
My Ántonia (1918)
A Lost Lady (1923)
My Mortal Enemy (1926)
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)
Faulkner (1897-1962):
The Unvanquished (1934-1938)
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
The Instructor: My office is 373 EPB, on the third floor (turn left out of the elevator and walk to the end of the corridor). My e-mail address is ed-folsom@uiowa.edu; my office phone is 335-0450 (with Voicemail, so you can leave a message if I'm not there). I'll usually be available before and after class, and my regular office hours are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10:30 to noon. I can meet with you at other times by appointment. I'm usually available for questions after class, and I'm always happy to discuss Cather and Faulkner. I'll be glad to talk with you about any of your concerns with the course.
The Course Website: There is a course website, with links to various Cather and Faulkner resources on the Web. I will continue to update assignments on the “assignments” link on the website. This syllabus is available there, too. Please check the site regularly. Some course assignments will involve using materials on this site. The URL is: www.uiowa.edu/~c008098c . Add it to your list of “Favorites”!
The Course: We will focus on the work of two of the major American novelists of the twentieth century, two of the most innovative and original fiction writers in the last hundred years. James Woodress, in his biography of Cather, says the following: “There are three famous towns in America that belong both to fact and to fiction: William Faulkner's Oxford , Mississsippi; Mark Twain's Hannibal , Missouri ; and Willa Cather's Red Cloud, Nebraska .” We'll be looking at the ways that two of these writers turned their actual regional small towns into fictional worlds and just what was involved in that endeavor.
Faulkner and Cather as Poets:
Faulkner: “I believe that any writer wants first to be a poet. When he finds that he can't write first-rate poetry—and poetry of all must be first-rate—there are no degrees of it . . . then he tries short stories, which is the next severe medium. When that fails, he goes to the novel. That is, he wants first to take the tragedy and passion of experience, life, and put it into fourteen words. If he can't, he tries two thousand words. If he fails that then he takes a hundred thousand.” In 1957: “I wanted to be a poet, and I think of myself now as a failed poet. Not as a novelist at all, but a failed poet who had to take up what he could do.”
Cather: “There is nothing so unmistakable as a true poem; there is nothing over which the conventions of men and the laws of the schools have so little control as poetry. . . . A man can no more write a poem by mastering poetics than a botanist can make a rose, or an astronomer fashion a star. . . . The true poem is and must remain largely an accident. . . . [A] man either is a poet or he is not.” (The male gender is no accident here: Cather once said, “It is a very grave question whether women have any place in poetry at all.” [!])
Their Names: Both these writers invent their names. William Faulkner was born William Falkner; Willa Cather was born Wilella Cather, called Willie, and for awhile styled her name as “William Cather, M.D.” Both Faulkner's and Cather's name changes involve tensions of identification with their ancestors, and both, remarkably, with Civil War soldiers.
Faulkner's great-grandfather, Col. William C. Falkner, was the “first” William Falkner—a violent man who shot and killed a couple of men and was eventually shot and killed himself, the day he was elected to the state legislature, and a poet and novelist to boot. Faulkner's addition of a “u” to his name was a way to separate himself from the Falkner heritage while still identifying with it. Part of what defines Faulkner is his simultaneous attraction to and revulsion from the romantic, chivalric, Southern mind, emblematized by Col. Falkner; Faulkner's name-change is a kind of manifestation of this paradoxical acceptance/rejection. He first added the “u” while he was trying to get into the Royal Air Force in Canada and thought the “u” made him appear more British, but he kept the new spelling when he began to publish ( The Marble Faun was by “William Faulkner”).
In Cather's case, her great-grandfather, James Cather, was a Confederate during the Civil War, supporting his home state of Virginia even though he opposed slavery, but his son (Cather's grandfather) was her namesake: William Cather, who eventually had a long flowing white beard and looked like a prophet, broke with his family during the Civil War and fought for the Union against his own family. Their farm in Virginia was the site of many conflicts between North and South, and the area came under both Union and Confederate control. After the War, grandfather William Cather became sheriff of his county, and his son (Willa's father) married a woman from a strong Confederate family, Mary Virginia Boak, daughter of Rachel Boak (the model for Old Mrs. Harris). Rachel had three sons, all of whom served in the Confederate Army, and one of whom, William Seibert Boak, died in the battle of Manassas . Willa dropped the “e” in “Seibert” and added Sibert as her own middle name while she was living in Pittsburgh, pretending from then on that she was named for the dead uncle she never knew (her first book, April Twilights , was by “Willa Sibert Cather”). Willa's father had a sister named Wilella, who died in childhood, so this ghostly presence also haunts Willa's name-identity, a name that has elements of her family's Union past and her Confederate past, her father's family and her mother's, but mostly elements of her own imagination.
Their Educations: The college educations of both these writers took place at state universities: Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska ( Lincoln ) and Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi .
Their Careers: It will seem like we'll be reading a lot of books, but in fact we won't get anywhere near reading the complete novels (let alone the complete fiction—both authors wrote many short stories) of these two writers. Here is a list of their books, with the ones we're reading in boldface:
Cather (1873-1947):
April Twilights (1903) [poems]
The Troll Garden (1905) [short stories]
Alexander's Bridge (1912)
O Pioneers! (1913)
The Song of the Lark (1915)
My Ántonia (1918)
Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) [short stories]
One of Ours (1922)
A Lost Lady (1923)
The Professor's House (1925)
My Mortal Enemy (1926)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
Shadows on the Rock (1931)
Obscure Destinies (1932) [short stories; includes “Old Mrs. Harris” ]
Lucy Gayheart (1935)
Not Under Forty (1936) [essays]
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)
Faulkner (1897-1962):
The Marble Faun (1924) [poems]
Soldier's Pay (1926)
Mosquitoes (1927)
Sartoris (1929)
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Sanctuary (1931)
These 13 (1931) [short stories; includes “A Rose for Emily” ]
Light in August (1932)
Salmagundi (1932) [essays, poems]
A Green Bough (1933) [poems, written earlier]
Doctor Martino and Other Stories (1934) [short stories]
Pylon (1935)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
The Unvanquished (1938)
The Wild Palms (1939)
The Hamlet (1940)
Go Down, Moses (1942)
Intruder in the Dust (1948)
Knight's Gambit (1949) [short stories]
Collected Stories (1950)
Requiem for a Nun (1951)
A Fable (1954)
Big Woods (1955) [short stories]
The Town (1957)
New Orleans Sketches (1958) [early stories]
The Mansion (1959)
The Reivers (1962)
Flags in the Dust (1973) [original version of Sartoris ]
The Writing: I will have you write several brief (three-page) papers about specific parts of texts by Cather and Faulkner. You will also write one five-page essay comparing specific scenes or characters in a Faulkner novel and a Cather novel. Very little has been done on the relationships between Cather and Faulkner, so this is productive and relatively unexplored territory.
Your essays will be informed by your careful reading in the works of both authors. I have also put on reserve biographies of each writer: James Woodress's Willa Cather: A Literary Life (1987, also available online at the Willa Cather Archive Website ; you'll find a link on the course website), and Joseph Blotner's Faulkner: A Biography (1974). These books are available in the Reserve Room on the first floor of the Main Library, and you may check them out for two hours at a time.
The Class Sessions: I want to challenge you to do your best work. A class like this one involves more than just doing the reading, taking the quizzes, and showing up occasionally. This is a relatively small class—too large for ongoing informal discussion, but small enough for a lot of interaction, between you, me, and the other students in the class. Each of us becomes in this course an integral part of an evolving community of interpretation. The classroom experience can be vitalizing, but we all have to work at it. Attendance, obviously, is expected and vital and necessary. What you say in the class, the ideas you will come with each session to be ready to toss into the scatter, will energize the class sessions and create the course. If you miss an occasional class, that's your business, but if you miss too many classes you begin to affect not only your performance but the overall critical community of which you are a part. More than three unexcused absences (a week's worth of classes) will have a significant negative impact on your grade.
The Quizzes and Final Exam: Because so much of this class depends on your participation, I will give frequent quizzes covering the assigned reading. These quizzes will be brief, objective exercises (mostly True-False) that will assure that everyone keeps up with the reading, which is after all the minimal expectation for the course. The questions will be detailed enough to ascertain that you are reading the novels carefully. The quizzes should be an “easy” part of your course grade, rewarding you for reading the texts with the care any difficult novel requires. If you miss a quiz, you may take it either immediately before or after the next class (and the next class only ). If you have an official written medical or other university-approved excuse, it will count for full credit. Otherwise, you will lose a grade the first time you have to make up a missed quiz, and two full grades the second time. After that, missed quizzes are simply F's. It's always better to let me know ahead of time if you are going to miss class, so that I can let you know what you've missed and how to make it up. I'll add up quiz grades twice during the semester--one "overall" grade for quizzes during the first half of the term, another "overall" grade for second-half quizzes. Each time, I'll drop your lowest quiz grade when figuring out your average. If you miss more than two quizzes during either half of the semester, your "overall" grade for quizzes will be an F for that half. The best advice is to do all the reading carefully, come to class regularly, and take the quizzes when they are offered.
The final exam will consist of a number of short essay questions in which you will be asked to compare scenes and characters and ideas from Cather and Faulkner and put them in the context of Faulkner's and Cather's careers. This two-hour exam is scheduled for Friday, December 16, at 7:30 a.m. in this classroom. Please mark this time on your calendars now.
To Begin: Read the two short stories I've given you, one by Cather and one by Faulkner—one I assume many of you have read at some point and one I assume few of you have encountered. These are both stories about the death of an old woman in a small regional town. Just to reverse the usual balance, Cather's is very long and Faulkner's is very short. “Old Mrs. Harris” appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal in 1931, where it was entitled “Three Women,” and was republished in Cather's collection of three stories, Obscure Destinies (1932). “A Rose for Emily” originally appeared in Forum in 1930, Faulkner's first publication in a major national magazine, and was revised and included in These 13 (1931). So these two stories were written and published within a year of each other and deal with comparable situations. Let's use them as a place to begin to track out some differences and some similarities between the two authors. Begin reading “Old Mrs. Harris” for next class; on Tuesday there will be a quiz covering both stories.
Think about and jot some notes about the following things: (1) “Old Mrs. Harris” was originally entitled (when it was published in Ladies Home Journal ) “Three Women.” What does the original title do to the story? Given Cather's education in classical languages and literature, do “three women” suggest any mythic figures? If so, how do they influence our reading of the story? What does the change of the title to “Old Mrs. Harris” do? What does that title indicate or suggest to you? (2) Determine the earliest event in the story (the thing that happened before anything else did). Why does it appear when it appears, and what is its significance? Is there a place in the story where it opens up to a vastly earlier time (before any of the characters lived)?
Think about this 1936 Cather comment in relation to the story: “One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.”
Schedule for Reading and Discussion (tentative):
|
Mon Aug 22: Introduction Wed Aug 24: "Old Mrs. Harris" Fri Aug 26: "Old Mrs. Harris" [Quiz on "Old Mrs. Harris" and "A Rose for Emily"] Mon Aug29: "A Rose for Emily" Wed Aug 31: "A Rose for Emily" Fri Sep 2: The Unvanquished [Chapters 1-2] My Ántonia [Book 1] Mon Sep 5: Labor Day [No class] Wed Sep 7: The Unvanquished [chs. 3-4] Fri Sep 9: The Unvanquished [chs. 5-6] Mon Sep 12: The Unvanquished [ch. 7] Wed Sep 14: Unvanquished / My Ántonia Fri Sep 16: My Ántonia [Book 1] Mon Sep 19: My Ántonia [Books 2-3] Wed Sep 21: My Ántonia [Books 4-5] Fri Sep 23: My Ántonia [Books 4-5] Mon Sep 26: The Sound and the Fury [April 7, 1928 section] Wed Sep 28: The Sound and the Fury [June 2, 1910 section] Fri Sep 30: The Sound and the Fury [April 6, 1928 section and April 8, 1928 section] Mon Oct 3: The Sound and the Fury Wed Oct 5: A Lost Lady [Part One] Fri Oct 7: A Lost Lady [Part Two] Mon Oct 10: A Lost Lady |
Wed Oct 12: Film on Southern Writers As I Lay Dying Fri Oct 14: Film on Southern Writers / As I Lay Dying Mon Oct 17: As I Lay Dying Wed Oct 19: As I Lay Dying Fri Oct 21: As I Lay Dying Mon Oct 24: As I Lay Dying Wed Oct 26: My Mortal Enemy Fri Oct 28: My Mortal Enemy Mon Oct 31: My Mortal Enemy Wed Nov 2: Absalom, Absalom! Fri Nov 4: Absalom, Absalom! Mon Nov 7: Absalom, Absalom! Wed Nov 9: Absalom, Absalom! Fri Nov 11: Absalom, Absalom! Mon Nov 14: Absalom, Absalom! Wed Nov 16: Absalom, Absalom! Fri Nov 18: Sapphira and the Slave Girl Mon Nov 28: Sapphira and the Slave Girl Wed Nov 30: Sapphira and the Slave Girl Fri Dec 2: Sapphira and the Slave Girl Mon Dec 5: Sapphira and the Slave Girl Wed Dec 7: Sapphira and the Slave Girl Fri Dec 9: Conclusion [Fri Dec 16: Final Exam, 7:30 a.m.] |
Time Expectation: The College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences wants me to remind you that this is a three-hour course and
that the general expectation for time you spend outside the course for
reading, writing, and course preparation should be around six hours per
week. This will vary from student to student, of course, but that's the
general guideline, and I'll be making assignments with that guideline
in mind.
Electronic Communication: University policy specifies
that students are responsible for all official correspondences sent to
their standard University of Iowa e-mail address (@uiowa.edu). Students
should check their account frequently.
Academic Honesty (College of Liberal Arts Policy Statement):
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences expects all students
to do their own work, as stated in the CLAS Code of Academic Honesty.
Instructors fail any assignment that shows evidence of plagiarism or other
forms of cheating, also reporting the student's name to the College. A
student reported to College for cheating is placed on disciplinary probation;
a student reported twice is suspended or expelled. The Code of Academic
Honesty is available here.
Students with Disabilities: If
you have a disability that may require some modification of seating, testing,
or other class requirements, please let me know so that we can make appropriate
arrangements. See me after class or during my office hours. It is the
student's responsibility to contact Student Disability Services (SDS),
3100 Burge Hall (335-1462), and obtain a Student Academic Accommodation
Request form ( SAAR ). This form specifies what course accommodations
are judged reasonable for a given student. If I can't provide those accommodations,
I will contact the SDS counselor within 48 hours of receiving the form.
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Reacting Safely to Severe Weather: In severe weather, class members should seek shelter in the innermost part of the building, if possible at the lowest level, staying clear of windows and free-standing expanses. The class will continue if possible when the event is over. (Operations Manual, IV. 16.14. Scroll down to sections e and i for severe weather information.)
Other Concerns: If you have general concerns, problems, or complaints about the class, please come talk to me so that we can try to resolve things. If you are not satisfied with the resolution, you may make an appointment to discuss your concern with Professor Barbara Eckstein, director of the undergraduate program, in 308 EPB (barbara-eckstein@ uiowa.edu). Appeals of Professor Eckstein's decisions go to Professor Claire Sponsler, chair of the English Department (claire-sponsler@uiowa.edu, 335-0454), and then to the College of Liberal Arts Academic Programs Office, 120 Schaeffer Hall (335-2633). The full policy covering student complaint procedures and other academic concerns is available in the Student Academic Handbook, available online. This course is offered by the College of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This means that class policies on matters such as requirements, grading, and sanctions for academic dishonesty are governed by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Students wishing to add or drop this course after the official deadline must receive the approval of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.