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Paul Friedrich
34801. Anthro/Lit: Pushkin’s Lyric World. Taking
in the broad sweep and the nooks and crannies of Pushkin’s lyric oeuvre,
this exploratory workshop will try to infer the concrete concerns and the
overall worldview of Russia’s greatest poet. While many of his poems
and lines fill into the familiar, Horatian tetrachotomy of eros, politics,
fate, and friendship, there are dozens of less obvious issues to be considered
(e.g., his sensitivity to sick children, his renovative Russification of
classical clichés, his lifelong rebelliousness against tsarist tyranny,
the behavioral explicitness of his erotic poems, and his peculiar empathy
for (persons of) other cultures). While Pushkin was a formal virtuoso, writing
in most of the available meters, and in over a dozen lyric genres, and translating
form or imitating thirteen foreign languages, this course will only touch
on such matters as they relate to the larger issues; similarly, for the history
and society of Russia in the 1820s and 1830s. The main goal is to understand
why Pushkin to this day is read by Russians as a wisdom poet. About twenty
lyrics will be studied with care; Eugene Onegin will be read as
collateral (the Nobokov and/or the Hoffstadter translations). Knowledge of
Russian would be useful but is not a prerequisite. P. Friedrich. Autumn
2001
34802. Anthro/Lit: Homer’s Vision/Western Muse: The
Iliad.
This course will cover all 24 books extensively while focusing in depty on
1, 9, 18, 23, and 24 and select short passages elsewhere. Discussion and
dialogue arising from close readings. Trnaslations: S. Lombardo and R. Lattimore,
supplementd from other sources. “Western muse” means Iliad-inspired
lyric poems and very short segments in epics and dramas - - from Virgil and
Dante to Cavafy and S. Benét. Basic goal: to plumb The Iliad for
insights into problems of beauty/ugliness, truth/mendacity, courage/cowardice,
loyalty/betrayal, in a humanistic and anthropological context. Considerable
concern with poetic language. The Homeric Greek text will be alluded to and
adduced at times, but knowledge of Greek is not a prerequisite. P. Friedrich. Autumn
2001
34803. Anthro/Lit: Tolstoy. P. Friedrich.
34804. Anthro/Lit: Walden & the Bhagavad Gita (=SCTH
42200 ). Thoreau’s Walden is the most distinguished
and influential work of American letters (e.g., its impact of Mahatma Gandhi
and M.L. King, Jr.). The Gita is “The New Testament of Hinduism” and,
often linked with Buddhism, has percolated through much of the world. Thoreau
took the Gita to Lake Walden , studied it avidly, and drew on
its organization, figures, and values. The rich and complex Thoreau/East
Indian connection has been elaborated in many essays and books, and this
course will push the frontiers farther through a “heroic reading” of
all of Walden and much of the Gita. How do these masterpieces
speak to fundamental problems: good/evil, self/cosmos, duty/passion, reality/illusion,
political engagement and philosophical meditation, sensuous “wildness” and
ascetic devotion? To adapt Stanley Cavell, moreover, Walden, like
the Gita begins with its hero in despair and defiance and ends
with his coming to some understanding of the ways of action and of knowledge,
of devotion and nature, of self and the cosmos. Main texts: W. Rossi’s
(Norton) edition of Walden (and Civil Disobedience) and
Stolla’s Gita; some secondary literature. P. Friedrich.
34805 [412]. Anthro/Lit: Comparative Poetry and Politics
(=ComLit 328, SocTh 327). PQ: Consent of instructor. This
course includes fundamentals of poetic language and poetry: the music of
language, theory of figures, the mythological basis, linguistic relativism,
sociopolitical context, and the moral intentions of the poet. Russian,
Eskimo, T'ang Chinese, and modern American examples are considered. P.
Friedrich. Spring 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003
34805. Comparative Poetry/Poetics (=SCTH 32700, HUMA
23700, CMLT 32800). The focus this year will be on how philosophies
or world views can be articulated through the fragments of lyric forms
- - as illustrated by one Chinese and one Russian author and a scatter
of great poems from a world sample (e.g., Latin, Quechua, Tamil). Imponderables
to be meditated on include fate, nature, creativity, illusion, death, and
levels of reality. Required: reading knowledge of one foreign language.. P.
Friedrich. Spring 2003
34807. Anthro/Lit: Thoreau’s Walden & Journals. Thoreau’s Walden,
the most distinguished and influential work of American letters, has become
part of our literary consciousness, just as Resistance to Civil Government,
has carried into our political conscience, and elsewhere into the world (e.g.,
its influence on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.). Both works
and related writings perdure as pertinent to many issues: environmentalism,
poetry and philosophy, and civil liberties. This course, exploring basic
dimensions of Walden, will grapple with Thoreau’s rich legacy:
e.g., individualism and community, the practical and the transcendental,
solitary meditation and political engagement. Two chapters of Walden per
week will be discussed in detail, plus short lectures on historical context
and critical issues. Some attention to the Bhagavad Gita and other
Oriental influences. Main reading: Walden and Resistance toCivil
Government (with selections from the Journals and criticism),
William Rossi, ed. P. Friedrich. Autumn 2002, Autumn 2003.
34808. Anthro/Lit: The Bhagavad Gita.
The Bhagavad
Gita or Celestial Song, the “New Testament” of
Hinduism, has spoken to many parts of the world. This is partly because
of the way it combines practical issues of work, duty, and political or
military engagement, with a host of eternal philosophical problems: essence,
existence, renunciation, desire and lust, truth and analogy, the function
of irreducible knowledge, “the unmanifest beyond the unmanifest.” The
course will focus on certain specific questions in the Gita: the “denial
of opposites,” the role of poetry, particularly of climactic metaphors,
and the relation between aesthetics and politics. The basic text is W.
Sargeant’s Bhagavad Gita, with its translations and comments,
supplemented by R.C. Zaehner’s annotated Gita, and the many
translations that give insight. Some attention to the role of the Gita in
America , notably Thoreiau. The Sanskrit original will be referred to at
times but knowledge of Sanskrit is not necessary for the course. P.
Friedrich. Autumn 2002, Autumn 2003.
Anthropology 34809 Anthro/Lit:
Frazier’s Cold Mountain (=SCTH
32910). The basic hypothesis governing this course is that
Charles Frazier’s epic Cold Mountain (1997), far from
being just “an
astonishing first novel” or a “most enthralling first novel,” as
some critics condescending have it, is, not only the great American novel
we have been waiting for, but a natural rookie in the western canon,
in a set, that is, that includes the best of Austin, Balzac, Dickens,
Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Faulkner, Flaubert, Joyce, Melville, Stendahl, and,
yes, even Leo Tolstoy. To explore and test out this hypothesis, and it
is only that, we will, in workshop style, examine Cold Mountain from many of
the angles and levels which it so masterfully integrates: anti-slavery
and anti-war ideology, Old Testament values, birds/omens, the Buddhist
subtext (e.g., compassion), Cherokee culture and history, character development,
Christian values (e.g., redemption), Civil War history, contemporary intellectual
history (especially Emerson), the art of dialogue, epic narrative, feminist
positions, the role (e.g., as ritual) of horticulture, cooking, and eating,
humor, magic and the absurd, language (e.g., dialectism), anthropology
of landscape, lyric epiphany, natural history/environment (reverence for
nature), the Odyssean substratum, Southern and Medieval ideals (e.g., the
valiant warrior/knight), the symbolist strategy (e.g., the crow), theory
of tragedy and death, folk wisdom and philosophy for life (ref., e.g.,
moral choice), and the overall philosophical and structural orchestration
of the book. (Amid this panoply of factors, my own personal interests include
the symbolic role of flora, the ways Frazier renews the language, the nostos (return)
theme, and the overall orchestration”). During our “heroic” Thoreauvian
reading, each student will select one or two of the aspects listed above
for special interpretation and a paper. The few students who have not already
done so will be asked to read Homer’s Odyssey en route. P.
Friedrich. Spring 2004.
34814. Anthro/Lit: World Poetry-1 (=SCTH 32720). Reading,
performance, analysis, discussion of a wide sample of lyric poems – e.g.,
Villon, Sappho, Dickinson, Sumerian, Tamil (Ramanujan) – with some
focus on Modern Russian and T’ang Chine se (e.g., Want Wei, Han Shan).
Poetic form, poetry and politics, religious subtexts. Readings: S. Caton’s The
Peaks of Yemen I Summon or L. Abu-Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments (Bedouin).
Native American poetry (World Poetry-II) in the Spring Quarter. P. Friedrich,
Autumn 2004
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