MWF 9:00-9:50 am
Humanities Hall 178
instructor: Laura O’Connor
e-mail: loconnor@uci.edu
office: HIB 252
office hours: W 2:45-4:45 pm; Fri 2:00-3:00 pm
teaching assistant:
Scott Kaufman
e-mail: skaufman@uci.edu
office hours: F 10:00-12:00
This course introduces
students to some classics of twentieth-century drama, fiction, and poetry by
Irish writers. The authors of these
works were directly involved in shaping, and / or resisting, the cultural
nationalist movements that came to define modern Ireland. We’ll read works by Yeats, Joyce, Beckett,
and others in an Irish context with special attention to questions of language
as we examine how these writers, working in conjunction with those who strove
to restore Irish (Gaelic) as a spoken language, undertook to create an
other-than-English literature in English.
We’ll also explore the theme of ambivalent identity that recurs
throughout these works.
Required texts
1. Scribner edition, W. B. Yeats, The Yeats
Reader, (ed Richard Finneran)
2. Dover Thrift editions of J. M. Synge, Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the
Sea and James
Joyce, Dubliners.
3. Grove Press edition of Samuel Beckett,
Waiting for Godot
Note: several of the class readings (including the
readings for next week) are on reserve and may be accessed electronically or
may be photocopied now in their entirety.
Course requirements and
policies: Students are required to read the assigned
texts before each class, to attend all classes punctually, and to participate
in class-discussion on the course note-board.
Several unannounced quizzes on assigned texts will be held during the quarter
to monitor class participation and attendance; these will determine your
participation grade (15%). If you must
miss a class meeting, please let Mr. Kaufman or Dr. O’Connor know before that
class; a courtesy make-up quiz may be scheduled to facilitate students who
missed a quiz due to an excused absence.
Adjustments may be made to the schedule, and if so, the revised syllabus
/ schedule will be announced in class and electronically, and students are
responsible for keeping up-to-date with the revised schedule. You may add / drop courses up to the end of
the second week of classes. Students are
required to write a 5-6 page paper on one of several assigned topics for
submission at 9 a.m. on the specified date (either March 1 or March 12); late
papers will be marked down. There will
also be midterm and final exams. UCI’s code on academic honesty must be honored in all
course-work.
Final grade: participation
15%; mid-term 25%; final 30%; paper 30%
Week 1:
Jan 4: Introduction
Jan 7 selections from Lady
Augusta Gregory, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland; Douglas
Hyde, “Teig O’Kane and the
Corpse” (from W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland 1888)
and “My Grief on the Sea,” “Ringletted Youth of My
Love” (from Love Songs of Connacht); see also
Yeats Reader 303-4; 427-432 and poems (with notes) assigned for Jan
14
Jan 9 Douglas Hyde, “The
Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland” (1892)
Jan 11: review
Week 2:
Jan 14 “The
Stolen Child”; “The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland”; “Who Goes with Fergus?” “The Hosting of the Sidhe”;
“The Song of Wandering Aengus”
Jan 16 “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”;
“To Ireland in the Coming Times”; “Red Hanrahan’s
Song about Ireland,” Cathleen Ni Houlihan
Jan 18 “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”; “The
Folly of Being Comforted”; “Adam’s Curse”; “Words”; “No Second Troy”; “The
Mask”; “Friends” (p 51); “Memory”; “A Deep Sworn Vow” (60); “After Long
Silence” (p 109) {optional: see Reader 313-3 for reminiscence about
affair with Maud Gonne}
Week 3:
Jan 21 Martin Luther King Day
Jan 23 John Millington Synge,
Playboy of the Western World
Jan 25 Playboy contd
Week 4:
Jan 28 Synge, Riders
to the Sea
Jan 30 W.B. Yeats. “September 1913”; “The
Cold Heaven”; “Easter 1916”; “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,”
Feb 1 W.B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan,” “The Second Coming”
Week 5:
Feb 4 TBD
Feb 6 midterm
Feb 8 Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock
(on reserve)
Week 6:
Feb 11 Juno contd
Feb 13 James Joyce, Dubliners
Feb 15 Dubliners contd
Week 7:
Feb 18 Presidents’ Day
Feb 20 James Joyce, Dubliners contd.
Feb 22 TBD
Week 8:
Feb 25 & 27: Elizabeth Bowen (readings on
reserve) preface, “The Demon Lover,” “The Happy
Autumn Fields”
Mar 1 Bowen, “the uncertain
I,” and introducing Beckett; Beckett, Not I (on reserve)
Week 9:
Mar 4 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Mar 6 Waiting for Godot contd.
Mar 8 Beckett contd.
Week 10:
Mar 11 place and memory: W.B.
Yeats, “The Tower”; “Among Schoolchildren”
Mar 12 TBD
Mar
14 review
Final exam 8-10 am, Mar 20