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The Epic Novel

Comparative Literature 572T

Dr. Joanne Gass

Dept. of English and Comparative Literature                                

Office: UH440

California State University, Fullerton

Telephone:  (714) 278-2713

e-mail:  jgass@fullerton.edu or 42Joanngas@msn.com

Fax:  (714) 895-5751

Required Texts:       (Pay attention to the translator's name where indicated; not just any translation will do.)

James Joyce, Ulysses 

Homer, The Odyssey

Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

John E. Woods, translator

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Tolstoy, War and Peace

Louise and Aylmer Maude, trans.

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Samuel Putnam (Translator)

Course Description:

When we think of the epic, we most often think of Homer, the Iliad and The Odyssey. Because of Homer, we also have a definite idea as to what conventional stylistic devices make up the hallmarks of an epic. When it comes to the novel, we are less sure of ourselves; therefore, this seminar will attempt to develop a definition of the epic novel, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey, and then working our way through some novels which have been called ‘epic’. Participants in the seminar should have read The Odyssey in advance so that it can be discussed at the first seminar meeting. After that, we will read Don Quixote,   War and Peace, Magic Mountain, Ulysses, Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Moby Dick. In addition to a seminar paper on one of the assigned novels, students will prepare an annotated bibliography, make a presentation upon their research into theories of the epic, and, at our final meeting, in debate form, create a definition of the epic novel.

Course Schedule:

Week #1:               Introduction

                               The Odyssey

Week #2:               Reports on epic theory

Week #3:               Reports on epic theory

Week #4:              Reports on epic theory

Week #5:             Gargantua and Pantagruel   

Week #6:             Gargantua and Pantagruel   

Week #7:              Gargantua and Pantagruel      

Week #8:               Don Quixote  

Week #9:               Don Quixote    

Week #10:            Moby Dick  

Week #11:             Moby Dick

Week #12:             The Magic Mountain

Week #13:              The Magic Mountain

Week #14:              Ulysses

Week #15:               Ulysses

Week #16:               Presentations

                                Seminar Papers and Annotated Bibliographies Due

Selected Bibliography:

Theory of the Epic and theory of the Novel:

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, fourth ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953.

Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.

---. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.

                    Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn.                  Ed. Hannah  Arendt. New York: Schocken  Books, 1978.

                    ---. Reflections. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Ed. Peter Demetz. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978.

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1961.

de Certeau, Michel. The Writing of History. Trans. Tom Conley. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.

Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953.

Cuthbertson, Gilbert Morris. Political Myth and Epic. Michigan State UP, 1975.

Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel. New revised ed. New York: Dell Laurel, 1969.

Fielding, Henry. Preface to Joseph Andrews. Ed. R. F. Brissenden. New York: Penguin, 1982.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980.

Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature, fifth ed. New York: MacMillan, 1986.

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971.

Leitch, Thomas M. What Stories Are: Narrative Theory and Interpretation. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1986.

Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1971.

                    Merchant, Paul. The Epic. (1971)

Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, Vol. 1. Trans. Kathleen McLauthlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.

Tillyard, E. M. W. The Epic Strain in the English Novel. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: U of California P, 1957.

                    Yu, Anthony C. ed. Parnassus Revisited: Modern Critical Essays on the Epic Tradition. (1973).

Doody, Terrence. "Don Quixote, Ulysses and the Idea of Realism." In Mark Spilka and Caroline McCracken-Flesher, eds. Why the Novel Matters: A Postmodern Perplex. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.

Murillo, L. A. "Don Quixote as Renaissance Epic." Papers of the Pomona College Cervantes Symposium, Nov. 16-18, 1978. In Michael E. McGaha. Cervantes and the Renaissance. Easton, PA: Juan de la Cuesta, Newark: Dept. Of Langs. & Lit., U of Delaware.

Salingar, L.G. "Don Quixote as Prose Epic." Forum for Modern Language Studies, Fife KY16 9PH, Scotland, 1966.

de Unamuno, Miguel. Our Lord Don Quixote: The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho with Related Essays. Trans. Anthony Kerrigan. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1967.

Wolford, Chester L. "Don Quixote and the Epic of Consciousness." In Felix Menchacatorre, ed. Ensayos de literatura europea e hispanoamericana. San Sebastian: U del Pais Vasco, 1990.

---. "Don Quixote and the Epic of Subversion." In José J. Labrador-Herraiz and Juan Fernandez-Jiminez, eds. Cervantes and the Pastoral. Cleveland: Cleveland State UP, 1986.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. New York: Chelsea, 1986.

Pascal, Roy, and Keith Bullivant. "The Magic Mountain and Adorno’s Critique of the Traditional Novel." In Keith Bullivant, ed. Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1977.

Worthington-Waller, Pepper. "Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain: Eternal Quest, Eternal Paradox." Mount-Olive Review, 2 Spring 1988, 25-42.

 Gargantua and Pantagruel:

War and Peace: