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David Bromwich
David Bromwich
American Possibility and American Necessity
A seminar given at the John M. Olin Center the University of Chicago
1. The Aboriginal Self Tuesday, November 6
Readings:
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Self-Reliance"
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young, Goodman Brown"
Emily Dickinson (in Complete Poems, ed. Thomas Johnson), "There's a certain slant of light" (#258), "'Tis so appalling' - it exhilarates" (#281), "The Soul selects her own Society" (#303), "The Soul's Superior instants" (#306), "There came a Day at Summer's full" (#322), "It was not Death, for I stood up" (#510), "The Soul has Bandaged moments" (#512), "Of nearness to her sundered Things" (#607), "The tint I cannot take -- is best" (#627), "I cannot live with You" (#640), "A loss of something ever felt I" (#959).
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
2. Is There a Social Self? Wednesday, November 7
Readings:
Ernest
Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants" (in Men
Without Women)
Flannery O'Connor, "The Artificial Nigger" (in A Good Man is Hard to Find)
Ralph Ellison, "An Extravagance of Laughter" (in Going to the Territory)
3. Men and Women at Work Thursday, November 8
Screening: His Girl Friday, director Howard Hawks
Supplementary
Reading
For 1 and 2:
John Jay Chapman, "Emerson"
Hawthorne, "Roger Malvin's Burial"
Hemingway, "The Battler"
O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
For 3:
Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness, ch. 5
Maria DiBattista, Fast-Talking Dames, ch. 8
.