1 Fables MT 2017 Dr. Ema Vyroubalová (co-ordinator), vyroubae@tcd.ie Dr. Margaret Robson, margaretrobson0@gmail.com This course explores the rich tradition of animal fables in English, highlighting the lasting influence of the classical animal fables of Aesop and the related tradition of beast literature. The selected texts, which span the medieval period, the early modern period (Renaissance) and the Enlightenment, will introduce students to important literary forms including fable, bestiary, allegory, comedy and satire. Our themes will include the representation and anthropomorphization of animals in literature, the blurring of boundaries between humans and animals, and the limitations of human reason and morality. We will also raise broader literary questions, from querying the author s and reader s roles in endowing texts with symbolic meaning to defining the very purpose of writing and reading literary works. Required Texts: 1. The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, rev. with introduction by Christopher Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 0199552096 2. Ben Jonson, Volpone, ed. by D. Bevington and R.B. Parker (Manchester University Press, 1999) 0719051827 3. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. by Phillip Harth (Penguin Classics, 2007) 0140445412 4. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver s Travels, ed. by Robert DeMaria, Jr. (Penguin Classics Revised Edition, 2003) 0140437347 Week 1: Week 2: Week 3: Week 4: Week 5: Week 6: Week 7: Week 8: Week 9: Week 10: Week 11: Week 12: Lecture Schedule: Introduction: the genre of beast fable and Aesop s Fables (EV) Beasts in Literature and Art before Chaucer (MR) Beast Literature in the 14 th Century (MR) Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nun s Priest s Tale (MR) Animal Companions in the 14 th Century (MR) Robert Henryson, Fables (MR) Study Week Early Modern Animal Literature and Edward Topsell (EV) Edmund Spenser, Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale (EV) Ben Jonson, Volpone (EV) Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (EV) Jonathan Swift, Book 4 of Gulliver s Travels (EV)
2 Bibliography and overview of lectures: Introduction: Aesop s Fables and the genre of beast fable The opening lecture will introduce students to the genre of beast fable and to the prototypical example of this literary genre, the body of texts known as Aesop s Fables. We will start with some examples of Aesop s Fables and with their origins in Ancient Greece. We will then look at the major trends in the evolution of the Aesopian canon, from 6 th century BCE to the present, with a focus on their versatile applications across the centuries, which ranged from straightforward moral edification of children to refined tools of political dissent. A selection of the best-known Aesopian Tales can be found in Aesop: The Complete Fables, edited and translated by Robert and Olivia Temple (Penguin Classics, 1998). For an overview of the fables history as children s literature, see Chapter 2 in Seth Lerer: Children s Literature, A Reader s History from Aesop to Harry Potter (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2008). For an overview of the fables political deployment, see Annabel Patterson: The Fables of Power, Aesopian Writing and Political History (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991); Mark Loveridge: A History of Augustan Fable (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1998); and Jayne Elizabeth Lewis: The English Fable: Aesop and Literary Culture, 1651-1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2006). Beast Literature before Chaucer: No Primary Reading The following lecture will introduce students to the importance of birds and bird debate in the medieval tradition, focussing on the Owl and the Nightingale, Chaucer s Parliament of Fowls (explored in greater depth in Week 3) and John Clanvowe s Boke of Cupid (also called The Cuckoo and the Nightingale). See Jill Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For the texts, see The Owl and the Nightingale, ed. and trans. Neil Cartlidge (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001); John Clanvowe, The Boke of Cupide, God of Love, or The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, in Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints, ed. Dana M. Symons (Kalamazoo, 2004), online at http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/symonschaucerian-dream-visions-and-complaints. Beast Literature before Chaucer: Secondary Reading A comprehensive introduction to this material, and to a number of the texts covered in the first half of this course, can be found in Jill Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) and Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2010). Other accounts of the beast fable can be found in: Howard Needler, The Animal Fable Among Other Medieval Genres, New Literary History 22.2 (1992): 423-39; or in Arnold Clayton Henderson; Medieval Beasts and Modern Cages: The Making of Meaning in Fables and Bestiaries, PMLA 97.1 (1982): 40-49.
3 Beast Literature in the 14 th Century: Primary Reading Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls The Parliament of Fowls is available in The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, rev. with introduction by Christopher Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). The lecture will also discuss William Langland s poem Piers Plowman and a selection of medieval English drama but you do not need to read these texts in advance. Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls: Secondary Reading J. A. W. Bennet, The Parlement of Foules: An Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957) D. S. Brewer, The Genre of The Parliament of Fowls, in Chaucer: The Poet as Storyteller (London: Macmillan, 1984) A. J. Minnis, The Parliament of Fowls, in Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 252-321 Chaucer, The Nun s Priest s Tale: Primary Reading The Nun s Priest s Tale is available in The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, rev. with introduction by Christopher Cannon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Chaucer, The Nun s Priest s Tale: Secondary Reading Derek Brewer, Chaucer: The Poet as Storyteller (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 90-106 Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, 2 nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 338-56. David, Alfred; The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer s Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976) Animal Companions: Primary Reading Sir Gowther The short romance Sir Gowther is available online: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/laskaya-and-salisbury-middle-english-bretonlays-sir-gowther Henryson: Primary Reading Fables, in The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. by Robert L. Kindrick (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). Available online at: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/morfram.htm Henryson, Fables: Secondary Reading Goldstein, R. James; Discipline and Relaxation in the Poetry of Robert Henryson, in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350- c.1500 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)
4 Henderson, Arnold Clayton, Having Fun with the Moralities: Henryson s Fables and Late Medieval Fable Innovation, Studies in Scottish Literature 32 (2001): 67-87 Ridley, Florence H.; The Treatment of Animals in the Poetry of Henryson and Dunbar, Chaucer Review 24.4 (1990): 356-66 Animals in the early modern + enlightenment periods: No primary reading This lecture will give an overview of the changes in attitudes to real animals and in their representations in both literary and non-literary texts in the early modern (Renaissance) and then enlightenment periods. Early modern + enlightenment periods: Secondary Reading Acheson, Katherine: The Picture of Nature: Seventeenth-Century English Aesop's Fables Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 9.2 (2009): 25-50 Sprang, Felix: 'Trite and Fruitlesse Rhapsodies'? The Rise of a New Genre in the Light of National Identity: Vernacular Science Writing in Early Modern England, Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, 124.3 (2006): 449-73 Harrison, Peter: The Virtues of Animals in Seventeenth-Century Thought, Journal of the History of Ideas, 59. 3 (1998): 463-84 Noel, Thomas: Theories of the Fable in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia U Press, 1975) Wolloch, Nathaniel: "The Limits of Enlightenment Sensitivity to the Suffering of Animals", In Cohen, Esther and Toker, Leona, eds., Knowledge and Pain (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 123-144. Spenser, Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale Available in Spenser: The Shorter Poems, ed. R.A. McCabe (London: Penguin, 1999) (will be distributed electronically). Spenser, Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale : Secondary Reading Herron, Thomas: Reforming the Fox: Spenser s Mother Hubberds Tale and the Beast Fables of Barnabe Riche and Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, Modern Philology 105 (2008): 336-87 Giglio, Kate: Female Orality and the Healing Arts in Spenser s Mother Hubberd s Tale,in Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008): 13-24 Atchity, Kenneth J.: Spenser s Mother Hubberd s Tale: Three Themes of Order, Philological Quarterly 52 (1973): 161-72 Jonson, Volpone Ben Jonson, Volpone, ed. by D. Bevington and R.B. Parker (Manchester University Press, 1999) (Revels Student Edition) Jonson, Volpone: Secondary Reading Richard Dutton, Ben Jonson, Volpone, and the Gunpowder Plot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
5 Stephen J. Greenblatt, The False Ending in Volpone, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 75 (1976), 90-104 R.B. Parker, Volpone and Reynard the Fox, Review of English Studies 1 (1950), 242-44 Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees Please read the Preface, The Grumbling Hive, the Introduction, and An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. by Phillip Harth (Penguin Classics, 2007), 51-92 Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: Secondary Reading Porter, Roy Shaftsbury and Mandeville in Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin, 2003) Hundert, E.J.: The Enlightenment s Fable: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) Farrell, William: The Role of Mandeville s Bee Analogy in The Grumbling Hive, in SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 25 (1985), 511-27 Swift, Book 4 of Gulliver s Travels, A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms Jonathan Swift, Gulliver s Travels, edited by Robert DeMaria, Jr. (Penguin Classics Revised Edition, 2003) [Only read Book 4] Swift, Book 4 of Gulliver s Travels: Secondary Reading Kelly, Anne Kline " Gulliver as Pet and Pet-Keeper: Talking Animals in Book 4," ELH 74 (2007): 323-49 Lamb, Jonathan: "Gulliver and the Lives of Animals" in Frank Palmeri (ed.) Humans and Other Animals in Eighteenth Century British Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 169-78 Claude Rawson, God, Gulliver, and Genocide in God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Learning Outcomes: By the end of this module students will: Have read a selection of animal-oriented fables, satires and allegories, from the medieval period to the end of the eighteenth century Have a critical awareness of the diversity of the fable and beast literature traditons and of the major historical trends within these traditions Be conversant with literary forms such as fable, allegory, parody and satire Be aware of the key writers in the evolution of a non-realist tradition before the modern period Be familiar with relevant critical and theoretical studies
Write fluent and compent essay on a topic related to the fable and beast literature traditions 6