NOTE: NOT UPDATED
This syllabus is a record of the original plan for the course. For the new, online format and reduced requirements, see the following:
Syllabus Contents
Description
Classics
Reading Requirement
Grading
Indulgences
Technology
Books
Course Policies
Description
“Of all great writers of world literature, Rabelais is the least popular, the least understood and appreciated. And yet, of all the great creators of European literature Rabelais occupies one of the first places… Because of his literary power and historical importance, Western literary critics and writers place him immediately after Shakespeare or even next to him.”
With these striking paradoxes, the 20th-century Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin framed for himself a quest to redeem and understand the 16th-century novels of François Rabelais as great works of world literature. He had set himself no easy task: Rabelais’ novels, recording the exploits of a family of medieval giants, are obscene, bizarre, parodic, absurd, irrational, and hostile to every form of established power. To understand these works and put them in their context, Bakhtin developed two concepts that have come to occupy a central place in contemporary literary criticism: grotesque realism, and the carnivalesque.
Carnivalesque art draws its energy from the medieval feast time of Carnival, when hierarchies are inverted, authority is subjected to laughter, social boundaries are dissolved, and human beings are freed from the shackles of respectability, shame, and the law. The grotesque, a mode of art closely allied to the carnivalesque, celebrates everything that is base, low, physical: the bodily mechanisms of ingestion, excretion, and reproduction, the abundant fertility of the earth, the exuberance of natural, living bodies. Bakhtin saw these paired concepts as widespread in Renaissance literature and as central to an understanding of Rabelais’ novelistic art.
In this course we will follow Bakhtin’s prompting by trying to understand the ideas of the grotesque and the carnivalesque in Rabelais’ novels and in the plays of Shakespeare. The revival of these forms of literature in the European Renaissance owed a clear and conscious debt to the grotesque literature of Greece and Rome, and so we will also a pair of key classical authors whose works can help us map out a history of grotesque art in the European tradition: the Greek comic poet Aristophanes, and the Roman comic novelist Petronius.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you will be frequently invited in this course to bring in contemporary art that you feel can be understood through the lens of grotesque comedy. I use the term “art” here as a capacious one, meant to include not simply “high art” but (and especially) the kind of art we encounter in our daily lives: TV, movies, pop music and its music videos, graphic novels, fiction and fanfiction, memes and other social media forms, video games, YouTube videos, and on downward.
Classics
This course is one of many offered by the DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS this semester. Classics in the Bi-Co embraces the interdisciplinary study of Greek and Roman lives and ideas through the texts, artifacts, and languages of the ancient world — and seeks to bring Greek and Roman culture into dialogue with other historical cultures and with contemporary questions, problems, and worlds. Students can explore ancient Greek and Latin languages from the elementary level up, as well as courses that work with translated materials on ancient cultures and their reception. These courses are frequently interdisciplinary in nature and approach the past and its afterlife from perspectives that draw on the fields of literature, history, religion, rhetoric, art, and philosophy. If you’d like to learn more about courses, majors, and minors in our department, just let me know!
Reading Requirement
The most important requirement of this course is that you do the reading. This means reading carefully and thoughtfully the readings assigned, in advance of the day they are listed on the schedule. Everything else in this course is built around the expectation that you are reading all the assigned material – do that, and you’ll succeed.
Grading
This course utilizes specifications grading. This means that there are a variety of assignments available for you to do throughout the semester, and it’s up to you to decide what grade you want to earn and to do the requisite number of assignments for that grade. Individual assignments will not receive a score or grade: if you fulfill the instructions and the high standard we will set together for our work, you will receive credit. The goal of this method is to increase transparency around grading and to provide students more agency in determining how they’d like to participate in the course; it can be a little complicated, however, so if this is the first specifications course you’ve taken, make sure you understand how the system works early in the semester. In the first weeks of the term, you’ll be asked to complete a plan for the course that will help us both have a clear sense of your intentions and expectations for the semester.
Your grade will be based on the set of assignments described below. Several types of assignments have a “plain” and a “deluxe” version; the deluxe version means doing the same work, but with a more intensive set of expectations.
- Appetizer Presentations: Take the lead in class for 5-10 minutes to start a conversation about a topic you’re interested in.
- Final Project: The last week of class will be reserved for students to present the results of an ongoing project related to the course: a formal research investigation, a creative response project, or something in between.
- Make mine Deluxe: For a Deluxe Final Presentation, produce a polished version of the project that you can hand in, such as a formal paper or completed creative project.
- Portfolio: At the end of the semester, everyone must assemble a portfolio of the work they’ve done, compiling contributions to the course website, presentations, final projects, and reading diary entries. You’ll cap this off with a reflection over the work you did in this course.
- Make mine Deluxe: For a Deluxe Portfolio, find a creative or polished way to produce your Portfolio as a physical or digital document; bind it into some kind of booklet, add illustrations, make it into its own webpage, or otherwise make it into a lasting, coherent object in itself.
- Reading Diary: As a class, we’ll keep a collective online diary chronicling our responses to the primary sources we read in the course. You’ll earn credit by contributing to ongoing conversations or starting new ones in the thread for each week’s reading.
- Contribution: All students are expected to find ways to contribute to the course on a weekly basis. We’ll have a conversation in class about the forms this contribution might take, but the two most obvious forms are speaking during class conversation and commenting on online discussions. Some days, I may ask you to write during class or prepare work to share in class; these kinds of assignments will form part of your Contribution score. Work that you’re doing to fulfill any other requirement does not count towards your Contribution.
- Each day of class, you’ll earn a Contribution score out of 2 points:
- 2) You came to class on time, fully prepared, and participated in the day’s communal work
- 1) You came to class, but were late, unprepared, or did not participate fully
- 0) You did not attend class.
- You can earn 1 additional point each week by commenting on other students’ posts on the course webpage.
- In other words, to earn the maximum contribution score, you should plan to attend class and to actively participate in the work of the class each day, and to offer at least one comment on another student’s work on the website each week.
- Each day of class, you’ll earn a Contribution score out of 2 points:
Your final grade in the course will be based on how many and what kinds of assignments you completed. In the chart below, “D” indicates the “Deluxe” version of the assignment (so for example to earn a 3.7, you must complete 2 Appetizer Presentations, 1 of which must be “Deluxe”).
| Final Grade: | 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.3 | 3.7 | 4.0 |
| Appetizer | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 (1D) | 2D |
| Final Project | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1D | 1D | 1D |
| Final Portfolio | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1D |
| Reading Diary | 0 | 3+ | 7+ | 8+ | 9+ | 10+ |
| Contribution | 40/60 | 44/60 | 50/60 | 54/60 | 56/60 | 58/60 |
Indulgences
“I saw Maître Jean Le Maire playing at being pope, making all those wretched kings and popes from this world kiss his feet; he was showing off, giving them his blessing and saying: ‘Come and buy your pardons, you rogues, come and buy. They’re going cheap. I grant you absolution from all your pins; and by my dispensation you need never be other than worthless.'” (Epistemon’s vision of the sale of indulgences in Hell, Pantagruel 20).
Problems arise in everyone’s life over the course of the semester: an unfortunate collision of course obligations, personal losses, illness, and so forth. To provide some added flexibility to the course, I hereby grant each student two Indulgences. You can spend one of your Indulgences to do any of the following:
- Buy a 48 hour extension for an assignment.
- Excuse an absence.
- Revise and resubmit an assignment that did not earn credit.
- Create some wiggle room in your coursework in other ways as yet unforeseen.
When you want to use an Indulgence, contact me as soon as you can to discuss what you’re after; not all of these benefits can be used with all assignments. For example, if you’re signed up to present an Appetizer Presentation on a certain day of class, there may not be another free slot to move your assignment to, even if you were willing to buy more time with an Indulgence.
There may be one or two opportunities over the course of the semester to earn extra Indulgences through works of supererogation, such as attending an optional lecture or completing an additional assignment; if you find yourself in need of extra forgiveness, let me know, but otherwise these opportunities will be announced in class.
Technology
I do not normally encourage the use of computers, tablets, phones, etc. in this class. There is a substantial body of research indicating that the use of laptops and tablets during class can disrupt learning and discussion; particularly in a class like this, where conversation among students is the core mode of learning, the presence of a distracting device can degrade the quality of the course for everyone.
If you have been authorized for an accommodation to use a computer in class, please notify me and supply the required documentation. Even if you do not have an official accommodation, if you feel that bringing a computer or tablet to class will aid your learning and will not distract you or your fellow students, please let me know.
On certain days of class, readings will be distributed as PDFs. My preference will be for you to print these out and bring paper copies to class; if this is in any way a hardship, let me know and I can have them printed for you. Regardless, everyone must have access to the day’s assigned readings in some form every day of class.
If, however, you are using a computer or tablet in class to do anything other than the work of the class, you are not only detracting from your own learning, but disrupting our environment of collaboration and distracting your fellow students – all of which I consider to go strongly against the spirit of the Honor Code.
Books
The following books are available in the bookstore (or, of course, through various online and physical vendors). For works not originally written in English, you must obtain a recent, published translation. Most translations freely available online are outdated and old-fashioned; for this course in particular, older, out-of-copyright translations will not be sufficient, because they tend to obscure or even omit sexually explicit or otherwise “scandalous” material that will be essential to our pursuit of grotesque realism. The texts I have chosen are reliable translations with useful notes that are relatively inexpensive. The simplest way forward will be for everyone to purchase or obtain the texts I recommend; if you have access to some other translation of the same text and aren’t sure whether it will be suitable for our course, please feel free to contact me.
- William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors. Simon and Schuster (Folger Shakespeare Library). ISBN: 978-0743484886
- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Simon and Schuster (Folger Shakespeare Library). ISBN: 978-0671722784
- Petronius (transl. P. Sullivan). The Satyricon. ISBN: 978-0140448054
- François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Transl. M.A. Screech. Penguin. IBSN: 978-0140445503.
All other readings will be available through the course webpage.
Important Statements and Policies
Accommodations
Haverford College is committed to providing equal access to students with a disability. If you have (or think you have) a learning difference or disability – including mental health, medical, or physical impairment, please contact the Office of Access and Disability Services (ADS) at hc-ads@haverford.edu. The Coordinator will confidentially discuss the process to establish reasonable accommodations. Students who have already been approved to receive academic accommodations and want to use their accommodations in this course should share their verification letter with me and also make arrangements to meet with me as soon as possible to discuss their specific accommodations. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and require advance notice to implement.
It is a state law in Pennsylvania that individuals must be given advance notice if they are to be recorded. Therefore, any student who has a disability-related need to audio record this class must first be approved for this accommodation from the Coordinator of Access and Disability Services and then must speak with me. Other class members will need to be aware that this class may be recorded.
Academic Integrity
In a community that thrives on relationships between students and faculty that are based on trust and respect, it is crucial that students understand a professor’s expectations and what it means to do academic work with integrity. Plagiarism and cheating, even if unintentional, undermine the values of the Honor Code and the ability of all students to benefit from the academic freedom and relationships of trust the Code facilitates.
Plagiarism is using someone else’s work or ideas and presenting them as your own without attribution. Plagiarism can also occur in more subtle forms, such as inadequate paraphrasing, failure to cite another person’s idea even if not directly quoted, failure to attribute the synthesis of various sources in a review article to that author, or accidental incorporation of another’s words into your own paper as a result of careless note-taking.
Cheating is another form of academic dishonesty, and it includes not only copying, but also inappropriate collaboration, exceeding the time allowed, and discussion of the form, content, or degree of difficulty of an exam. Please be conscientious about your work, and check with me if anything is unclear.
