Brilliant Minds

Summer & Fall Reading Lists

Thank you all for a great semester, for your enthusiasm, and generosity!

Our concluding class for the Tuesday morning section will meet in Room 1027.

Our concluding class for the Wednesday evening session will be at our usual time & place.

Our Reading List for Literature for the 21st Century, Summer 2012:

• Julian Barnes, The Sense of An Ending (Knopf)
• Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmerelda (Scribner)
• Tomas Transtromer, The Deleted World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Tea Obreht, The Tiger's Wife (Random House)
• Arthur Phillips, The Tragedy of Arthur (Random House)
• David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House)
• Magdalena Tulli, In Red (Archipelago Books)

Link to the NYU Summer site: LITR-CE9054

Our Reading List for Brilliant Minds, Fall 2012:

• Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles (Penguin)
• Euripides, Hippolytus, trans. Grene (U Chicago)
• Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Ciardi (NAL/Penguin)
• Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. Orgel (Pelican)
• Swift, Gulliver's Travels, ed. Demaria (Penguin)
• Bronte, Wuthering Heights, ed. Nestor (Penguin)
• Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard, trans. Carson (Penguin)
• Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey (Vintage)

Trilling on Forster

As mentioned in class, this is the work by Lionel Trilling on E. M. Forster, with a chapter on A Passage to India, and Forster's own Commonplace Book.

 

Wednesday evening 4/18 class cancelled

Wednesday's class (4/18) is cancelled. We'll pick up where we left off with Synge and make up the session at the end of the semester.

Mansfield Park on Screen & Twelfth Night Reviewed

This film adaptation features Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas Bertram:

A BBC version which stays very close to the text:

Review of Twelfth Night with Beale as Malvolio in the The Guardian:

 

Selections for Whitman

The Library of America edition of Leaves of Grass which I ordered for our reading contains both the 1855 and the final editions. You'll be able to trace the evolution of some of the poems in the final edition as well as appreciate the organic unity of the 1855 version. For our session, I suggest you read the following selections.

From the 1855 edition:

• Preface
• Song of Myself
• A Song for Occupations
• I Sing the Body Electric
• There was a Child Went Forth
• Who Learns my Lesson Complete
• Great Are the Myths

From the final edition:

• One's-Self I Sing
• Eidolons
• Starting from Paumonok
• Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
• I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
• Pioneers! O Pioneers!
• Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
• The Wound-Dresser
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
• O Captain! My Captain!
• You Felons on Trial in Courts
• Laws for Creations
• Kosmos
• Passage to India
• The Sleepers
• A Noiseless Patient Spider
• Halcyon Days
• Shakespere-Bacon's Cipher
• A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads

Summer Session

The Summer Session course description for Literature for the 21st Century with correct book list is now up on the NYU website: 

http://www.scps.nyu.edu/course-detail/LITR1-CE9054/20122/literature-for-the-21st-century

NYQ Reading this Monday

The New York Quarterly is hosting its latest poetry reading this Monday 3/19, 6pm at the Cornelia Street Cafe.

Details at: NYQ Reading Series

Chaucer's Language

Here's a set of links to useful resources on Chaucer's language and Middle English:

Chaucer's English, Chaucer's Pronunciation

An analysis of Chaucer's use of iambic pentameter in the context of the "Wife of Bath's Tale":

Iambic Pentameter

Chaucer's meter is a radical departure from the meter of Old English Poetry:

Old English Meter

Selections for Chaucer

Be sure to read: The Prologue, The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Nun's Priest's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale, and The Wife of Bath's Tale.

Article on Greek Meter

Here is link to an excellent article on the meters of classical Greek poetry: Introduction to Greek Meter. (This will link to a PDF file.) So much of what we miss in translation is a direct appreciation for the sophistication, structure, and nuance of the craft in Homer, Sappho, and Euripides. This article can give you a sense of the richness of the original poetry.

Rewriting the Story of Achilles - From today's Wsj.com

Nearly 3,000 years since he was immortalized in Homer's epic "The Iliad," the Greek hero Achilles is still getting literary makeovers. He has appeared in Dante's "Inferno," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" and the "Captain Marvel" comic-book series. A recent cluster of novels have featured the warrior, including Zachary Mason's "The Lost Books of the Odyssey," literary writer David Malouf's 2009 novel "Ransom" and paranormal-romance writer P.C. Cast's "Warrior Rising," a romantic caper based on the Trojan War (complete with steamy cover art of Achilles' bare chest).

via online.wsj.com