Literature and Ethics
Upper-level course, Department of English,
University of Aarhus, Spring 2003
— Dominic Rainsford
Session plan and reading list,
with links for further study
Session I (07/02): introductory
Session II (14/02): John Webster, The Duchess
of Malfi; Aristotle; Hobbes
The full text of The Duchess of Malfi (The Dutchesse of Malfy), other texts by Webster and many about him, are available in Literature Online (free access from Statsbiblioteket and University networked computers).
Sessions III–IV (21 and 28/02): Shakespeare, Othello;
Geoffrey Galt Harpham, ‘Ethics’; Levinas, ‘Is Ontology Fundamental?’
The full text of Othello, other texts by Shakespeare and hundreds about him, are available in Literature Online.
Sessions V–VI (14 and 21/03): Blake, The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell and America; Charlotte Smith, The Emigrants;
Mary Wollstonecraft, extract from A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman; W. D. Ross, ‘Intuitionism’; Friedrich Nietzsche, Second Essay,
On the Genealogy of Morals.
William Blake
Archive (an extraordinary project, which allows you to compare different
hand-coloured versions of Blake's works in high resolution on-screen).
Many texts by and about Blake, Smith and Wollstonecraft are available
in Literature Online.
The Nietzsche
Channel (a bit weird, but worth a look).
Sessions VII–VIII (04 and 11/04): Conrad, Lord
Jim; reviews of Lord Jim in the Bookman and Critic;
Thomas Nagel, ‘Moral Luck’
The full text of Lord Jim is available online at the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia.
Many texts about Conrad are available in Literature Online.
Joseph Conrad
Society of America
Sessions VII and VIII will be followed by screenings
of
—— Easter vacation ——
Session IX (25/04): Fargo; Three Kings; Steven Carter, ‘”Flare to White”: Fargo and the Postmodern Turn’; Margot Norris, ‘Only the Guns Have Eyes: Military Censorship and the Body Count’
Session IX will be followed
by screenings of two episodes of the Sopranos
Many texts by and about Harrison are available in Literature Online.
Tony Harrison at Contemporarywriters.com
New poem by Harrison on the War in Iraq , first published in the Guardian, 1 April 2003.
Poem
by British Poet Lauriate Andrew Motion , first published in the Guardian,
3 April 2003.
Session X will be followed by
screenings of two more episodes of the Sopranos
Session XI (Wednesday 07/05, 13:15, in Bygn. 467, lok. 415) Special session: Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London), on “Literature, Ethics and the Holocaust”.
Primo Levi, Ch. 8, ‘This Side of Good and Evil’, and Ch. 9, ‘The Drowned and the Saved’, from If This Is a Man; Robert Eaglestone, Ch. 5, ‘”What Is Hecuba to Me?: Language Beyond Being and the Task of Criticism’, from Ethical Criticism.
Sessions XII and XIII (09 and 12(?)/05): The
Sopranos (selected episodes); John Rawls, from A Theory of Justice;
R. M. Hare, ‘The Structure of Ethics and Morals’; Lynne S. Arnault, ‘The Radical Future of Hare’s Moral Theory’;
Peter Singer, ‘Living to Some Purpose’; Michael Moore, ‘Why Doesn’t GM
Sell Crack?’ and ‘I Want My Tax Break or I’m Leaving’; various news items
concerning The Sopranos from BBC News Online and other sources.
The Sopranos
(official site)
The Sopranos – Family Values