Michael Groden — Texts and Notes

English 872A — Fall 2007

Course Home Page and Schedule

List of Texts With and About Notes:
Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Nonfiction
Criticism and Scholarship

Classes: Tuesdays 3:30-6:30 - UC 377
Office: UC 383 - Office Hours: Mondays 3:30-4:20, Tuesdays 9:30-11:20
Phones: 661-2111 ext. 85831 (office), 661-3403 (English Dept.)
Email instructor - Instructor's home page

Schedule

DATE
READING(S)
PRESENTATION
Sept. 11

Introduction

 
Sept. 18

Backgrounds, arguments, theories, problems
Jacques Derrida, "This is Not an Oral Footnote" (1991) (*)
Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1987, trans,  1997), Chapter 12 (*)                       
Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (1997), Chapter 1 (*)
Michael Groden, "James Joyce's Ulysses in Hypermedia: Problems of Annotation" (2002) - online
Chuck Zerby, The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes (2002), Chapter 1 (*)

 
Sept. 25

Creative notes 1
Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep (1997), from Chapter 15 (*)
Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George, "A Footnote to the History of the Footnote" (2004) (*)
Mark Dunn, Ibid: A Novel (2004)
Ralph Hanna III, "Annotation as Social Practice" (1991) (*)

 
Oct. 2

Creative notes 2
Jenny Boully, The Body: An Essay (2002), excerpts (*)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

 
Oct. 9

Discourse of notes 1: Medieval and Renaissance
Stephen G. Nichols, "On the Sociology of Medieval MS Annotation" (1991) (*)
M. B. Parkes, "The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book" (1976) (*)
Evelyn B. Tribble, "The Peopled Page: Polemic, Confutation, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs" (1998) (*)

Matt Peebles

Oct. 16

Discourse of notes 2: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Aphra Behn, "A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation" (1680s) (*)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798; rev. 1834) (*)
Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (1997), Chapter 4 (*)
Lawrence Lipking, "The Marginal Gloss" (1977) - online from Weldon Library
Jonathan Swift, "The Battle of the Books" (1710) (*)
Chuck Zerby, The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes (2002), Chapters 3 and 4 (*)

Patricia Graham (18th century)
Nick Milne (Coleridge)
Oct. 23

Discourse of notes 3: Modern Poetry
Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (1941) (*)
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922), with Eliot's notes (*)
Marianne Moore, "Poetry" (1919) and "Marriage" (1923), with Moore’s notes (*)
John Updike, "Notes" (1957) (*)
W. B. Yeats, "The Hosting of the Sidhe" (1899), "The Host of the Air" (1899), "The Second Coming" (1921), with Yeats’s notes (*)

Nick Brown (Yeats)
Ian Maness (Eliot)
Oct. 30

Discourse of notes 4: Audio Notes and Hypertext
Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl (1995) (electronic text) - online from Weldon Library
David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" (2006; print text and audio) (*)

David Hickey (Wallace)
Elan Paulson (Jackson)
Nov. 6

Annotation 1
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813; in The Annotated "Pride and Prejudice," ed. David M. Shapard [2004])

Lindsey Bannister
Suzanne Clark
Nov. 13

Annotation 2
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922), episode 7: "Aeolus" - online
Michael Groden, "The Case of the Snuffed Footnote: A Report From the Stacks" (2004) (*)                     

André Cormier
Dean Ziegler
Nov. 20

Marginalia and Copyright
H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books  (2001), Chapters 5 and 8 (*)
Jonathan Lethem, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism" (2007) - online
Stephen Colbert et al., I Am America (And So Can You!) (2007), Appendix, "The White House Correspondents' Dinner" (*)

Marc Hollett
Nov. 27 demonstrations of your own texts with notes

Lindsey Bannister, Patricia Graham, David Hickey, Nick Milne, Matt Peebles

Dec. 4 demonstrations of your own texts with notes Nick Brown, Suzanne Clark, André Cormier, Marc Hollett, Ian Maness, Elan Paulson, Dean Ziegler


Texts

Jane Austen. The Annotated "Pride and Prejudice," ed. David M. Shapard. Anchor, 2007
Mark Dunn. Ibid: A Novel (2004). Harcourt, 2005
Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire (1962). Vintage, 1989
+ photocopied articles, available online or in Leanne Trask’s office (UC 180) - noted as (*)

Assignments

1) short (15-20 minutes) oral presentation on one of the class topics or texts - 25%
2) annotated text (due as presentation in class on Nov. 28 or Dec. 4 + submission) - 25%
3) essay at end of course - due December 21 (12-15 pages) - 50%