HILI G4002 INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY AND LITERATURE

Fall 2012
Carol Gluck

Monday, 1-3 pm

The Course: An exploration of the interconnections and intersections between history and
literature, both as categories of cultural production and as scholarly disciplines. In the past thirty
years the boundaries between history and literature have become usefully blurred, as literary scholars
pursued the historical aspects of their texts and historians recognized the literary aspects of their
narratives. The result is a propitious intellectual moment, which enables scholars to address new
methodological horizons that combine close reading of texts with expansive attention to historical
context.

The course treats the subject in terms of both theory and practice. Theoretical readings address the
relations between history and literature, with a focus on texts relevant to scholars working in the
field today. Exemplary recent works of English-language scholarship highlight the kind of creative
blending of literary and historical approaches that the students may pursue in their M.A. essays.

Requirements: Full and close reading of the French and English texts; several class reports; active
participation in discussion; weekly postings to CourseWorks (due 3 p.m. Sunday); a short mid-term
and longer final essay, both of which are interpretive and analytic, not research, papers. There will
also be outside lectures and optional writing workshops.

Readings: All required and optional articles and book chapters are available on CourseWorks,
either in PDF files or by hyperlink to the relevant journal. Columbia University ID (CUID)
required for access.

The following required books are on reserve at Reid Hall and recommended for purchase:

Judith Lyon-Caen & Dinah Ribard, LHistorien et la littrature (La Dcouverte, 2010)
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (Verso, 2005)
Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-colonial Imagination (Verso, 2007)
Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-century Paris and London (California, 1990)
Christopher L. Hill, National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of
History in Japan, France, and the United States (Duke, 2009)
Yambo Ouologuem., Le Devoir de violence (1968) (Les Editions du Rocher, 2003)

The following optional books are on reserve but may be purchased as useful references:

Denis Hollier, A New History of French Literature (Harvard, 1989)
Antoine Compagnon, Le Dmon de la thorie: Littrature et sens commun (ditions du Seuil,
1998); in English: Literature, Theory, and Common Sense (Princeton, 2004)





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Syllabus

PROLOGUE

10. Sept. Introduction

17. Sept. Truth and Narrative
Carlo Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Brandeis University Press, 1999), p. 1-37; 71-91;
92-110
Rapports de force. Histoire, rhtorique, preuve (Le Seuil, 2003), ch. 1, 3, 4
Frank Ankersmit, Truth in History and Literature, Narrative 18, n. 1 (Jan. 2010) p. 39-47
(optional: 29-39)

Optional:
tienne Anheim & Antoine Lilti, Savoirs de la littrature , Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales
n. 2 (Mars-Avril 2010), p. 253-260


HISTORIES OF LITERATURE

24. Sept. Literary Histories
Roland Barthes, Histoire et littrature: propos de Racine, Annales. conomies, Socitis,
Civilisations 15, N.3 (1960), p. 524-37.
History and Literature, in On Racine (California, 1992), p. 153-72
Denis Hollier, ed., A New History of French Literature (Harvard, 1989), p. xxi-xxv
and passim [focus on three articles of your choice]
Marielle Mac, Michel Murat, Vincent Debaene, Jean-Louis Jeannelle. Quest-ce que
lhistoire littraire des crivains?, Acta Fabula (30. Jan 2012)
Vincent Debaene, Le Point de vue de lindigne ou comment on crit lhistoire de la
littrature, Romanic Review 100, n. 1-2 (Jan-Mar 2009), 15 p.

Optional :
Antoine Compagnon, Le Dmon de la thorie: Littrature et sens commun (ditions du Seuil,
1998), lHistoire , p.209-39
Literature, Theory, and Common Sense (Princeton, 2004), History pp. 146-68


1. Oct. Literary Sociologies
Pierre Bourdieu, Les Rgles dArt: gense et structure du champ littraire (Seuil , 1992), Avant-
propos, Flaubert analyste de Flaubert , Trois tats du champ , p.9-245
The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford, 1995), Part I, p.
1-173.

8. Oct. Literary Geographies
Franco Moretti, Conjectures on World Literature, New Left Review (Jan-Feb, 2000), p. 54-
68
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (Verso, 2005), p. 1-92
Graphes, cartes et arbres. Modles abstraits pour une autre histoire de la littrature (Les Belles
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Lettres, 2008)
Pascale Casanova, La Rpublique mondiale des lettres (ditions du Seuil, 1999), Ch. 1, Principes
dune histoire mondiale de la littrature
The World Republic of Letters (Harvard, 2004), ch. 1, Principles of a World History of
Literature, p. 9-44
Pour une littrature-monde en franais, Le monde, 16. mars 2007

Optional:
douard Glissant, Une nouvelle rgion du monde (Gallimard, 2006), p. 21-76
Eileen Julien, The Extroverted African Novel, in Franco Moretti, ed., The Novel, Vol. 1,
History, Geography, and Culture (Princeton, 2006), p. 667-700


15. Oct. Literary Reverberations (exemplar)
Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-colonial Imagination (Verso, 2007)


CONDITIONS OF LITERATURE

22. Oct. Authors
Roland Barthes, La Mort de lauteur, (1968), Le bruissement de la langue (Seuil, 1984), p. 61-
67.
The Death of the Author, Image, Music, Text (Hill & Wang, 1978), p. 142-48
Michel Foucault, Quest-ce quun auteur? (1969), Dits et crits: 1954-1988 (Gallimard, 1994),
p. 789-821
What is an Author? Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews
(Cornell, 1980), p. 119-138
Vincent Debaene, Ladieu au voyage : Lethnologie franais entre science et littrature (Gallimard,
2010), p. 28-42

Optional :
Philippe Carrard, Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier
(Johns Hopkins, 1992), p. 84-121

29. Oct. Readers and Books
Michel de Certeau, L'Invention du Quotidien. Tome 1 Arts de Faire (Union gnrale dditions,
(1980), Lire : Un braconnage , p. 279-296
The Practice of Everyday Life (California, 1984), Reading as Poaching, p. 165-176
Robert Darnton, Reading, Writing, and Publishing, in The Literary Underground of the
Old Regime (Harvard, 1982), p.167-208 (notes: p. 236-250)
Judith Lyon-Caen, La Lecture et la vie: les usages du roman au temps de Balzac (Tallandier, 2006),
p. 108-189

Optional:
Roger Chartier, LOrdre des livres (ditions alinca, 1992), p. 13-33
The Order of Books (Stanford, 1994), 1-23
Antoine Compagnon, Le Dmon de la thorie: Littrature et sens commun (ditions du Seuil,
1998), Le Lecteur , p.147-175
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Literature, Theory, and Common Sense (Princeton, 2004), The Reader, pp. 102-22


5. Nov. How Books Move [exemplars]
Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrims Progress
(Princeton, 2003), p. 11-41, 113-215, 228-239
James Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago, 2000), p.1-40, 77-110, 299-335
Martin Puchner, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton,
2006), p. 1-66 (notes: p. 263-70)


12. Nov. Literature and Society [exemplar]
Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-century Paris and London
(California, 1990), p. 1-80; 135-198


HISTORY AND LITERATURE: INTERSECTIONS

19. Nov. Narrative:
Hayden White, Historical Text as Literary Artifact, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural
Criticism, (Johns Hopkins Press, 1978), p. 81-100
Carlo Ginzburg, Proofs and Possibilities: Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis, The
Return of Martin Guerre in Threads and Traces: True, False, Fictive (California, 2012),
p. 54-71
Kate Flint, Criticism, Language and Narrative, in The Victorians and the Visual Imagination
(Cambridge, 2000), p. 197-235
Paul Ricoeur, La Mmoire, lhistoire, loubli (Seuil, 2000), 307-38
Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago, 2004), p. 238-61
Jacques Revel, Ressources narratives et connaissance historique, Enqute: Anthropologie, histoire,
sociologies, 1 (1995), 19 p.


26. Nov. Text and Context:
Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism (Chicago, 2000)
p. 1-19, 163-210
Dominick Lacapra, Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts, History and
Theory 19, no.3 (Oct. 1980), 245-76; also in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts,
Contexts, Language (Cornell University Press, 1983]), p. 23-71
Chantal Thomas, "L'hrone Du Crime: Marie-Antoinette Dans Les Pamphlets," La
Carmagnole Des Muses: L'homme De Lettres Et L'artiste Dans La Rvolution, ed. Jean-
Claude Bonnet, Lib. du Bicentenaire de la Revolution (Armand Colin, 1988), p.
245-260
The Heroine of the Crime: Marie-Antoinette in Pamphlets in Dena
Goodman, ed., Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen (Routledge, 2003),
p. 99-116
Anna Boschetti, The Intellectual Enterprise: Sartre and Les temps moderns (Northwestern, 1988),
p. 8-11, 184-196
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Optional:
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, The Roads of the Novel, in Franco Moretti, The Novel, vol. 2,
Forms and Themes (Princeton, 2006), p. 611-646
Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-sicle Vienna : Politics and Culture (1961) (Vintage, 1981), 181-207

3. Dec. Nation and Narrative in the Nineteenth Century World [exemplar]
Christopher L. Hill, National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of
History in Japan, France, and the United States (Duke, 2009)


LITERATURE AS HISTORY

10. Dec. The Historical Novel: Theory
Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel (Nebraska, 1982) p. 17-88
James Kerr, The Historical Novel and the Production of the Past in Fiction Against
History: Scott as Storyteller (Cambridge, 1989), p. 1-17
Emmanuel Bouju, Exercice des mmoires possibles de lhistoire et littrature -prsent ,
Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales 65, n. 2 (Mars-Avril 2010), p. 417-438

17. Dec The Historical Novel: Practice
Yambo Ouologuem., Le Devoir de violence (1968) (Les Editions du Rocher, 2003)
The Yambo Ouologuem Reader: The Duty of Violence, A Black Ghostwriter's Letter to France,
and the Thousand and one Bibles of Sex, trans. Christopher Wise, Trans. (Africa World
Press, 2008).

Others:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of the Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate, 2006)
L'autre moiti du soleil, trans. Mona de Pracontal (Gallimard, 2008)
Ousmane Sembene, Les bouts de bois de Dieu (1960) (Pocket, 2002)
Gods Bits of Wood (Heinemann, 1962)
Ahmadou Kourouma, Allah nest pas oblig (Seuil, 2002)
God Is Not Obliged (Anchor, 2007)
Maryse Conde, Sgou (Robert Lafont 1984)
Segu (Penguin, 1996)
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (Picador, 2009)
Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children (1980) (Random House, 2006