Ok, kids. Which one of these things is not like the other?

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Stephen K. George, Editor, Ethics, Literature, & Theory: An Introductory Reader
Leo Tolstoy , The Death of Ivan Ilych
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
Patricia Gaffney, To Have and To Hold (this is an out of print paperback. You will need to buy it online, using a site like Addall.com. I will also place three copies on library reserve).
*All other readings are available on e-reserve

If you chose the genre fiction … you’re right!

I have been teaching some version of ethics and literature for about 10 years, every 2-3 years. The course basically interrogates the relationship between fiction and ethics, both everyday ethics and ethical theory.  I start with a simplistic idea that fiction contains moral lessons which are imparted to passive hearers.  Then we mine fiction for more complex ethical lessons. By about the time we are reading Sartre, we are starting to wonder why someone chooses to express an ethical idea in fiction rather than prose, and vice versa.  We question our assumptions about what it is to “do ethics”, or what “ethical theory proper” looks like. We start to question to rigid boundary between the poets and the philosophers with Nietzsche, and by the time we hit Borges we have lost it totally (I used to teach Plato’s Pharmacy by Derrida but didn’t have time this semester.).

My approach to ethics in fiction is heavily influenced by the ethical criticism movement, associated with Martha Nussbaum, Wayne Booth and others. But it wasn’t until I started reading and blogging about romance that I even noticed that when they talk about the importance of fiction to ethics they are always talking about Proust or James or Woolf. So I added the last section of the course — which basically asks the question whether literature is superior to genre fiction, per se, and whether it is better in particular for doing the kinds of things Booth, Nussbaum and their ilk believe it can do, specifically, ask “what is the good life for human beings?”. It also allows me to introduce questions about the ways in which gender is associated with popular culture in general and genre fiction (not just romance) in particular, and the ways in which gender influences our distinctions between high and low art.

I had hoped to write many more blog posts on these topics as they relate to romance, and to the debates in Romanceland. That has not happened (yet). But I do plan to blog my “lecture” on the Gaffney, which I plan to use to ask whether genre fiction can do the things ethical critics think literature can do, and to ask whether this is an example of a kind of book that Posner talks about, a book which has literary, but lacks ethical value, and may not only lack ethical value, but may contribute to a significant problem in our culture, sexual violence against women (although Posner would never in a million years say a romance had literary values, either!).

Here’s the syllabus in case you’re interested:

ORDER OF READINGS:

Aesop’s Fables (browse) http://aesopfables.com/aesopsel.html
Three Billy Goats Gruff (first version only) http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html
The Little Red Hen http://www.bres.boothbay.k12.me.us/wq/nnash/WebQuest/little_red_hen.htm
The Rainbow Fish http://www.eurotales.eril.net/fish2uk.htm
Darcia Narvaez, “Does Reading Moral Stories Build Character?”*

Marianne Jennings, “The Absence of Stories: Filling the Void in Ethics” (George)
Nina Rosenstand, “Stories and Morals” (George)
Ursula Leguin, “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas”*

Cunningham, “Reading For Life” (George)
Tobias Wolff, “The Chain”, “The Night In Question”*
Sartre, “The Wall” *

Nussbaum, “The ‘Ancient Quarrel’: Literature and Moral Philosophy” (George)
Plato, Republic (360 B.C.E.) (selections) PDF
Leo Tolstoy, “What is Art?” (1896)
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Why Write?” from What is Literature? (1947)*
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”*
Sartre, “No Exit”

Oscar Wilde, Preface, The Picture of Dorian Gray, preface*
John Gardner, “Premises on Art and Morality” (George)
Yoko Ogawa, “Pregnancy Diary”*

Abraham B. Yehoshua, “The Moral Connections of Literary Texts” (George)
Wayne Booth, “Why Ethical Criticism Can Never Be Simple” (George)

Richard A. Posner, “Against Ethical Criticism”
Borowski, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”*

Wayne C. Booth, “Who Is Responsible In Ethical Criticism?” (George)
Joyce Carol Oates, “Art and Ethics?” (George)

Claudia Mills, “Appropriating Others’ Stories: Some Questions about the Ethics of Writing Fiction”*

Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (selections)*
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Richard Rorty, “Philosophy As a Kind of Writing”*
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard”, “Lottery in Babylon”, “Borges and I”*

HERE’S THE SECTION THAT’S TOTALLY NEW. I BLAME YOU ALL IF IT FLOPS:

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“Is High Art Superior?”, Ch. 2 of What Good are the Arts? By John Carey*
“Reading Romance Fiction”, Ch. 4 of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture, by Joanne Hollows*
Patricia Gaffney, To Have and To Hold
Jack Harrell, “What Violence in Literature Must Teach Us” (George)
Orson Scott Card, “The Problem of Evil in Fiction” (George)
Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”*

So far it’s a great class, with wonderful students. It’s mostly men, so it will be interesting to see how the Gaffney plays. I welcome any comments on this post, but I should warn you that I won’t get into the Gaffney or the question of rape in romance, because not only have I blogged about both already, but I plan to do posts on Gaffeny in a couple of weeks.

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