“Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; / Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d” (Macbeth III.iv)

In the Poetics, Aristotle writes that “there are some things that distress us when we see them in reality, but the most accurate representations of these same things we view with pleasure.” Edmund Burke echoes this sentiment in 1757: “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience.” In this course, we’ll do the work of English 200--generally designed to offer techniques and practice in the reading and enjoyment of literature as a source of both pleasure and knowledge about human experience—with this alchemy in mind. Both Aristotle and Burke trace the process of how that which is unusual or discomfiting becomes pleasurable, through some act of representation or distance or modification; for the purposes of this course, that act is the literary figuring of those “things that distress us.” The course will focus on strange things in literature—what is considered strange in various contexts, how such things are represented and theorized, and what happens when writing itself becomes unfamiliar. The course will begin with Macbeth, and its climate of incessant unease, and move on to focus primarily on works from the nineteenth century, a period obsessed with categorizing and representing the strange, perhaps tracing this idea into the twentieth century, as Gothic characteristics become associated with the closely related genre of horror, and literature becomes concerned with representations of other kinds of strangeness—foreignness, modernity, illusion. By covering this generically and temporally expansive range of works, we’ll trace the legacy of the strange into our own time, and give attention to the question of the specific ways (including but not limited to the course description’s suggestions of imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense) literature works to offer pleasurable insight into (sometimes unnerving) human experience.

English 200 meets the university “W” requirement, which means that students must produce 10-15 pages of graded, out-of-class writing, which must be significantly revised. This will take the form of either two 5-7 page papers, or one 10-15 page paper. (For more specific W-course criteria, please see http://www.washington.edu/uaa/gateway/advising/degreeplanning/writreqs.php). Besides these papers, course work may include discussion leading, electronic postings, reading quizzes and exams, response papers, research work, presentations, etc.

Course Readings (subject to adjustment and change):
Macbeth, Shakespeare - 0393977862
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte - 0393978893
Dracula, Bram Stoker - 014062063X or 0140434062
Endgame, Samuel Beckett. 0802150241
*Course Pack/e-reserves with both primary and secondary readings
(readings may include: poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, T.S. Eliot, and others; short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poe, and others; drama by Joanna Baillie and others; critical materials by Burke, Freud, and others).