English 240: World Literature in Translation: Islam's Influence on Canonical Texts 23124, 4 units
Spring Semester, 2006 Professor Tom Gage, with Brad Bissio Class: MWF 15:00-15:50, Founders 111 Office Hours: Mon. and Wed. 1:45-2:45 and by appointment
The course focuses on the impact of Islam on canonical western texts. For 800 years two materialistically superiority cultures, at Cordoba then Istanbul, influenced authors like Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Goethe, who furthered their cultures evolving national identities. Students will read selected works that reveal an Islamic palimpsest that speaks to the present as well as of the past.* To an extent, Islamic cultures are layers upon which the present modern world resides. By deconstructing the binary "us" and "Other," an opposition, which Said calls "Orientalism," students will learn of the commonalities that unite today's cultures. The course will study how Islamic works contribute to the intertextuality of Postmodernism. While acknowledging cultural perspectives, they will construct shared, global understandings by discoursing and negotiating across boundaries of culture and gender. Readings address Orientalism, with electronic texts from : Le Monde, Washington Post, and Manchester Guardian. An example of such intertextuality exists in the following: Music Eric Clapton's two compositions follow the Andalusian tradition of lyric. In his composition "Layla", Clapton acknowledged so-authorship with the Nizami, a 12th Century Persian poet. "Before" represents the lyric tradition of unrequited love, when Clapton expressed his ardor for his comrade's wife. "After" represents less a lyric of the ancient tradition than a souvenir expression. (See Rosa Menocal's _Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric_. Durham: Duke U Pr, 1994.
*Palimpsest is a metaphor derived from the word that denotes ancient layered texts. Before the appearance of inexpensive Chinese paper, an author would compose on expensive parchment of animal skins and pounded papyrus pith. The ancients bleached such messages to recycled the material upon which new texts were written. Today scholars can restore layered texts from the past. The term extends to other arts, like architecture and cuisine. In these two pictures you will see how later structures have been added to the Roman building, a prison in the upper picture and the Theatre of Marcellus in the lower--the former now a 17th Century church and the latter 20th Century apartments.
REQUIRED1. Dante's La Vita Nuova 2. Shakespeare's Othello 3. Racine's Bayazet 4. Voltaire's Candide, Zadig and Selected Stories 5. Loti's Disenchanted 6. Mernissi's Scheherazade Goes West 7. Pamuk's My Name is Red
The above titles are available at the HSU Bookstore. Others titles on the syllabus, which are indicated by an "*", are on the Internet or can be uploaded via Oncores: Supplementary Readings via Oncores or the Web. 1. *"Cannibals of Maar'ra" 2.*Menocal's "al-Andalus and 1492: Ways of Remembering" 3. *poetry of Abul ala al Ma'ar'ri & Abu Nuwas 4. *Borges's, "Averries Search" 5. *"Once in the Auvergne, Past Limousin" 6. *Dante's "Il Vulgari Eloquentia" 7. *Boccaccio's "Ninth Tale, Sixth Day; Third Tale, First Day; and Ninth Tale, Tenth Day 8. *Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale 9. *Poetry of Rumi 10.*Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi 11. *Goethe's Mohamat's Song 12. 8Ghazal XV by Ghalib 13. *Zeynab's and Melek's Testimonies; 14. *Malti-Douglas's Mickey in Cairo/Ramsis in Paris 15. *Mernissi's The Prophet and Women
Optional1.The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal 2. Shards of Love by Maria Rosa Menocal Grades: There will be two midterms, a final, and an empirical task. The grade derives from these, plus regular attendance, participation in class discussions, keeping a journal, and making deadlines. To receive a C or better you must hand in all work, attend all classes, and contribute to each response group. You cannot receive any grade above a "C" with three unexcused absences for three classes. Call me prior to class and leave a message that you will be absent-826 3913 (2). Please read assigned selections in advance of the scheduled date. Frequently, mini-video lectures appear with assignments; please view these as they relate to what will be covered in class.
Should you lose this URL, you can find this WebPage by entering "GagePage" into any Search Engine and find your way through the links to English 240. Week Date Titles
Wedneday, January 18: Introduction of Course: Translations & History of Islam Read: Cannibals of Maar'ra.* Here are two scripts of the same message , one in Chinese and one in Arabic. Notice how the instruments of each culture determine the shapes of the graphs. A brush forces the Chinese author to compose abbreviated pictures of reality, with only a combinaiton of eight strokes, each linear since the brush impedes curvature. A stylus composing arbitrary symbols for sounds of a particular language, not the thing itself, allows for a greater variety of shapes, both linear and curvilinear. Linked to the underlined words below are images in scripts that convey beyond design a signified evocation, an immediate experience to those who negotiate each script for meaning. The Chinese conveys an abbreviation of the referent in reality. In contrast, in the English sentence "Chutney (my Irish Setter) became president" both the subject and the noun following the verb refer to the same phenomena in reality. That's metonymy. In Arabic, like English, the image is not an abbreviation that conveys immediacy, other than a lovely design (see "Ghazal" below). With metaphor there is a mental step between the symbol for the sound and the meaning of a word or phrase, a marginal translation. For example, in the sentence "My love is a rose," the subject and object refer to two different things in reality; the reader conflates the two into a host of connotations. This illustrated manuscript registers the early entry of Arab numbers into Europe (why are the numbers backwards?): Arabic Numbers "Ghasal" in Urdo in Arabic script In this video you will see an Islamic calligrapher, concentrating on composing an Arabic word for "philosophy." Note how focussed and engaged he is drafting on paper the sacred black ink. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, January 20: Early Days of Islam and Women's Rights Read *poetry of Abul ala al Maar'ra & Abu Nuwas
Please view this video lecture prior to class. Mosque/Church
The following stills of the Cordoba Mesquitas and the Alhambra in Granada focus on general features of mosques: the pray hall Mesquitas, Cordoba--Arches in the Mesquitas, anticipating lines of Doges Palace in Venice;
Hall of Abeneirages, Heaven brought to Earth Mihrab of the Mesquitas Angle of Mihrab ceiling. Yale's Professor Menocal argues that the caliph's constructing this mirab separated the caliph's topos from the community of Muslims, sequestering the religious/political authority from the Cordoban base, a contra-Islamic and anti-democratic gesture that may have led to dissolving the caliphate (see The Ornament of the World).
View this link Arab Ascendency. Click on the map opposite the following claim: "Map of the Great Umayyad Empire, with a small map of its capital, Damascus. This empire was the greatest in the world in the 7th and 8th centuries under Caliph Walid I. The map dates back to 1884." This movie links architecture with the Five Pillars of Islam. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ > Monday, January 23: Islam and Europe (Spain, Sicily, and Venice) Read Borges's Averroes Search For a century Islam occupied Sicily and left its imprint for nearly three more centuries. Note in these still its influence in architecture, metaphysics, and medicine. Saracen Coffered Ceiling of Palacio, Palermo Saracen Coffered Ceiling, Palermo Teachers Under the Tree (Allegorically, the drawing portrays a pagan, Jew, Moslem, and Christian seated as the Lady Intelligence's horse wades in the Stream of Knowledge--the teachers practicing their arts represents unity in the fountain of life and mystical truth. Middle Age Pharmacy-note Arabic script on containers for medicines. From Flemish tradition, Ibn Sina(Ibn Sena or Avencina formulated analysis of symtoms of illnesses still in practice in modern medicine). Averroes or Ibn Rushd, the great Spanish Muslim philosopher, significantly shaped subsequent thought in Europe, as was testified by Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas. Averroes's role is documented as influencing two artists, Andrea di Bonaiuto's quattracento painting, The Triumph of St. Thomas, and Raphael's cinquecento paiting, the School of Athens. Averroe's, St. Thomas's, and Dante's balancing of a priori reasoning and religious faith is embodied in Andreas's painting "The Triumph of St. Thomas" with seven niches of women symbolizing the Sacred Sciences on the left and with seven niches of women symbolizing the Secular Sciences on the right. Historical religious and secular figues crouch before the women. Note Aristotle before the woman of logic, dressed in white, in the third niche from the far right. With Aristotle in the third slot, note Ptolemy, who was responsible for the cosmography in the ceiling of the Hall of Cameras, in the fifth slot; Euclid in th esixth, and Pythagoras in the seventh (grammar, rhetoric, logic, music, astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic). St. Thomas, enthroned, shows the viewer his book, Summa Theological, with Averroes and two others, like a superimposed dream image, sit at Thomas's feet just above the fourteen niches.
Change of European aristocrates' dress over just 150 years indicates how much al-Andalus influenced court life: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wedneday, January 25: The Troubadours & Courtly Love Read Once in the Auvergne.* View this link Arab Ascendancy. Click on the second map of Syria to understand Dante's view of Islam's threat to Christianity. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, January 27: Sicily and the Turbaned Kings Read: Begin Dante's La Vita Vuova I-XV: (optional reading of the Inferno http://www.sfw.org.uk/books/inferno.html Although we are not reading the Comedia, you should peruse Dante's schemata of Hell and compare it with Ibn Arabi's. Diagram of Muslim Inferno (Asin) Dante's heaven is based upon the same cosmography as that which architects , who built the Hall of the Camareswere familiar. If you were standing in center hall and look up at the ceiling, you would see this modified design of the Seven Heavens in Carmares Dome, anticipating Dante's Paradise. The following is a video in which the camera does this for you. The dome of the Comares Hall simulates the seven heavens common to Dante and Islam.
This revised ceiling in the Alhambra anticipates Dante's mythology of the afterlife in the Comedia(see movie Seven Heavens in Carmares Dome, anticipating Dante's Paradise).
Prior to Dante, Purgatory was unheard of in the Western tradition. Did he graft it from Islam? Reading the Vita Nuova, consider how influential was the Islamic culture on his story of Beatrice and Divine Love. Note too how close Dante's explanation for love/lust is to Ibn Arabi's from the passage I upload to you. Beatrice's Tomb, near the Badia in Florence __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, January 30: Dante's La Vita Vuova & Ibn Arabi Read La Vita Nuova, Chapters I-XV
Until recently I hadn't realize that for a quarter of a century I have been teaching in a mosque. Founders Hall at Humboldt State is a Moorist building; its quad is like the courtyard at the Cordoba Mesquitas. The building inverts the east/west orientation. Founders Hall faces west rather than east; its rear entrance is where one would find east , the mihrab and mimbar. __________________________________________________________________________________________________P> Wedneday, February 1: Dante's La Vita Vuova Read La Vita Nuova, Chapters XVI-XLII It can be argued that what the West calls the Renaissance was essentially an Arab-upgrade. Luxuries appropriated into Western culture began with the Omayyad's presence in first Spain and then Sicily, and via emulation in Venice, before flooding into the increasingly fashionable courts of Northern Europe. For vestiges of Islamic culture see these stills: Art;Arabic Numbers; and the university (This Madrasa pre-dates any European university) Madrasa; architecture Saracen Palaces, PalermoSaracen Coffered Ceiling, Palermo.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, February 3: Read Dante's Il Vulgari Eloquentia* & Boccaccio?s Ninth Tale, Sixth Day*; Third Tale, First Day*; and Ninth Tale, Tenth Day* __________________________________________________________________________________________________P> Monday, February 6: First Midterm __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wedneday, February 8: Islam in England: Chaucer and Sir Thomas More's Utopia Read Menocal "al-Andalus and 1492: Ways of Remembering"
Rumi is the Shakespeare of Islam. The material superiority of Islamic states during this period is evidenced by western European painters drapping their models of Mary and Jesus with garments woven in Damascus and Cairo. In a number of Renaissance works, one can find portraits of holy figures with garments proclaiming "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet". As an example check the painting now hanging in the Ufizzi in Florence, Belini's Madonna. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, February 10: Islam and Venice (Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi & Othello) Read Acts I-III of Othello Distancing Due __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, February 13: Islam and Venice (Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi & Othello) Read Act IV & V of Othello __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wedneday, February 15: France: The Reign of the Christian Turk Read Bayazet Acts I-III
As influenced as Europe was by the Omayyad culture of Spain during the first four hundred years of the second millennium, the West was equally influenced by the Turkish superpower for the next four hundred years. The Turks sustained the earlier Greek Byzantium culture and infused a radically new heritage of Islam. Please see video prior to class Church/Mosque/Museum in RealVideo - For 1000 years, the greatest dome in the world -- 536 A.D. until St. Peters.
Janissaries marching to Topkapi __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, February 17: Islam and France Read Bayazet Acts IV-V THe painter Rembrandt, a contemporary of Jean Racine, revealed also his fascination with Turkish culture. Looking at Sultan Ahmet and beyond to Ayia Sofia and the Goldend Horn, Istanbul Mimbar of Suleymaniye Jami, Istanbul Kufic on Pendentive, Suleymaniye Jami, Istanbul Inner Dome, Suleymaniye Jami, Istanbul __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, February 20: Islam and Europe Read Arabian Nights: "The Porter's Tale" Prior to scientific progress of the Enlightenment, the West of the Dark Age began consuming material wealth, exotic foods and fashions from the East, which changed its history. Spices initiated a trend that eventuated in Columbus's trip west. Please view lecture prior to class. Spices are a dietary code of civilization. This Istanbul market shaped the history we know.
Wedneday, February 22: P>Check this website for Orientalisist Art Gallery From Oncores, please read the two versions of "The Porter and the Three Ladies" In class to view the film Ridicule. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, February 24: Islam and Europe From Oncores, please read Lady Montagu's letters. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, February 27: Distancing Due For Distance (1 & 2) Letter XXX of *Lady Montagu' letters (download) and A contemporary of Queen Elizabeth __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wedneday, March 1: Jacques's Odalisque
Friday, March 3:The 19th Century: Religion, Commerce, and Nationalism Imperialism projected Europe upon the world scene with its scientific progress now becoming a source of emulation. second essay due
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, March 6: The Languages of Nationalism
Goethe?s Mohamat?s Song and from Oncores Irving's "Night Journey" Read: Scheherazade Goes West, Chapters 1-4 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wedneday, March 8: Harem Literature/Orietalism
Read: Scheherazade Goes West, Chapters 5-8 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, March 10: The Mystery of the Harem.
The following vide focuses upon the Topkapi Palace on the promintory and swinging around from the Golden Horn into the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmora with views of Stamboul Join a video walk with Chelik Gulersoy from the restoration of the Byzantine acropolis into a modern restaurant and up the street lined with restored 17th Turkish houses, the
Read: Scheherazade Goes West, Chapters 9 & 10 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Spring Break: March 13-17 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, March 20: The Modern/Post-Modern Period. As Islam represented by the super powers of Cordoba and Istanbul waned, the West emerged as the apogee of progress. History appears to have reversed relations in fashion when comparing the early second millennium with the end and early third. The fiction of Loti and Pamuk reveals how self-definition in an modern culture fosters anxiety. Cinan, perhaps the greatest architect in history, set the standard for building throughout the Muslim world. Looking at Istanbul and the Golden Horn Read: Loti's Disenchanted, Chapter I-IX, pages 1-112 Wedneday, March 22: Read: Loti's Disenchanted, Chapter IX-XXV, pages 112-231 & Scheherazade Goes West, Chapter 11-13 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, March 24: The Modern/Post-Modern Period. >Read Loti's Disenchanted XXVI-LVI, pages 231- 381 Yeni Jami and the Rustem Pasha Jami, Istanbul Mimbar and Mihrab of Suleymaniye Jami, Istanbul __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Monday, March 27: The Modern/Post-Modern Period. Poetry of Ghalib* & Yeazell's "The Pastness of the Orient" (Oncores)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wedneday, March 29: What Clash of Civilizations? A. Read Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*
Cemal Beyefendi, friends in Turkey, May, 2001: What Clash of Civilizations? Distancing Due _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Friday, March 31: Campus Closed Monday, April 3: The Modern/Post-Modern Period. From Oncores, please read "Mickey in Cairo/Ramsis in Paris" and Jorge Luis Borges' "Averroes' Search" Wedneday, April 5: What Clash of Civilizations? Read: from packet passages about the Harem Friday, April 7: What Clash of Civilizations? As Pamuk is for the novel, Bey Chelik Gulersoy was for the renovation of Ottoman architecture. Please view prior to class. Read passages from Demetra Vaka's "Haremlik" (3rd reading in packet) and Zeyneb's "A Turkish Woman's Impressions of Europe" (4th reading in packet) At home (20k) - On Campus (80k)
In the following video lecture, scenes from modern Istanbul link to 16th Century miniature art that is the subject of Pamuk's novel. --------------- Monday, April 10 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 1-5 and from Oncores, read Douglas et all "Mickey in Cairo" --------------- Wedneday, April 12 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 6-10 --------------- Friday, April 14 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 11-15 --------------- Monday, April 17: Turkish Representative Art
>Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 16-20 --------------- Wedneday, April 19 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 21-25 --------------- Friday, April 21 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 26-30 --------------- Monday, April 24 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 31-35 --------------- Wedneday, April 26 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 36-40 --------------- Friday, April 28 >Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 41-45 --------------- Monday, May 1: Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 46-50 --------------- Wedneday, May 3 Read Pamuk's The My Name is Red, chapters 51-55 --------------- Friday, May 5:The My Name is Red, chapters 56-59 --------------- May 8-12: Finals 0 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ May 11: Finals 12:40 PM |
