Now "Departynge":
"Right in the middle of my announced title, such as it first imprinted itself within me, 'the animal that I am (following)' the idea came to me, just recently as I was saying, to inscribe a conjunction with a more or less syllogistic or expletive value, 'the animal that therefore I am.'"
J.D. The Animal That Therefore I Am, p. 74
And after wol I tell of our viage
And al the remenaunt of oure pilgrimage. . . .
"Now lat us ryde and herkneth what I seye."
And with that word we ryden forth our weye.
General Prologue
February 14: "Tailing" Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales as Chaucer's "auto-bio-biblio-thanato-para-genetic-zooto-ography"; narratological traces, tracks, and distractions as the production of endodiegetic narratives.
The Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale as Chaucer's signature Tale; reading / tracking distracting the "Chaucerianimot" and Jacques Derrida, "The Animal That Therefore I am (More to Follow)" ; Homanimo/t/graphesis: "Chauntequeer" and the detumescent "rhetoricock" of the Tale's narrative structure.
February 21: Chaucer Takes Us for a Hey Ryde and a Rede: (Moore to Folweth): Host / Hostage / "Hostipitality" / the Parasite
"Chaucer"'s narratological destinerrancy and the "animort" in The Canterbury Tales:
Required Reading: Chaucer as Loser; Everyone Eats /No One Eats (The Last Judgement Never Arrives); Frenemies
And to the soper sette he us anon.
He served us with vitaille at the beste.
Strong was the wyn, and wel to drinke us leste. . .
Tales of best sentnece and moost solaas,
Shal have a soper at oure aller cost
Heere in this place, sittynge by this post,
Whan that we come agayn fro Canterbury.
The General Prologue, the Prologue and Tale of Sir Topas, the Prologue and Tale of Melibee, the Prologue and Tale of the Parson; the Retraction
Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" (Chaucer's signature: good Chaucer; bad Chaucer; repentant Chaucer; apocryphal Chaucer)
Recommended Reading: Michel Serres, The Parasite
Jacques Derrida, "Hostipitality" in Acts of Religion
J. Hillis Miller, "The Critic as Host," Critical Inquiry Vol. 3, No. 3, (Spring, 1977), pp. 439-447.
February 28 Required Reading: Road Rage: Blow it Out your As%? Eating Sh#t? From Hostelrie to Hostilitie: "departynge"; Chaucer's "meschuances," or mesChaun/c/e/r/s, or the "ars metrick" (calculation, division, meter, arithmetic / "arith-me-tricks") of poetic noise.
1. The Friar's Prologue and Tale
2. The Summoner's Prologue and Tale
3. Valerie J. Allen, "Broken Air," Exemplaria 2004 Cluster on "Medieval Noise"
4. Peter W. Travis, "Thirteen Ways of Listening to a Fart: Noise in Chaucer's Summoner's Tale"
5. Jacques Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context," in Margins of Philosophy
Recommended Readings: Jacque Derrida, "Meschances"
Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny"
Joel Fineman, "The Structure of Allegorical Desire" in Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (1981)
March 7: SPRING BREAK
March 14: Following Chaucer/'s / W/hol/l/y innocents: Chaucer's "animot" as Jew? as child? / "Chaucer," Autop-see, and Endodiegesis
Required Reading:
1.The Prioress's Prologue and Tale and The Man of Law's Proem and Tale (Chaucer re:citing Chaucer)
2. Gilles Deleuze, "Bartleby; or, The Formula," Essays Critical and Clinical
Fragment above from Theodor Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music
Recommended Reading:
1. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, Chapter Two.
2. Jacques Derrida, "Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject," in Points. . . Interviews (Stanford, UP, 200),
March 21: Eat Me: The post-Chaucerian French Fable (La Fontaine and Charles Perrault) and Sovereignty versus the pre-Chaucerian French Fablau
Required Reading:
1. The Miller's Prologue and Tale, The Clerk's Tale and Prologue, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
Required Screening:
The Canterbury Tales (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971)
Recommended Reading:
1. Jacques Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign Vol 1. (pages 32-38; 76-87; 206-17; 339-45.)
2. Louis Marin, "Donkey-Skin or Orality," and "The Fabulous Animal" in Food for Thought, pp. 29-38; 44-54.
3. Jean de la Fontaine, Fables choises / Selected Fables
4. Rene Descartes, Second, Fourth, and Sixth Meditations; click here for Descartes, Discourse on Method
5. Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond ("Section 2. Man is No Better Than Beasts")
Cain and Abel (Genesis, 4, King James Bible)
Walter Benjamin, "Language as Such and the Language of Man," Selected Writings, Vol. 1, 1913-26; edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings.
March 28: The Cadaverization of the Humanimot / The "Face" of Death
Required Reading:
1. The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale and The Canon Yeoman's Tale
Recommended reading:
1. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am (Chapters Three and Four)
2. Jacques Derrida, "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce," in Acts of Literature. ed. Derek Attridge (1989), 253-209.
3. Jacques Derrida, "Two Words for Joyce," in Post-Structuralist Joyce: Essays from French (Cambridge UP, 1984), 145-59.
Required Screening: Se7en (dir. David Fincher, 2005) and, if you have the time to watch it, The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
April 4: Early Modern Chaucer:
Required Reading:
1. The Knight's Tale
2. William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen
Apocryphal Chaucer: Arriving in Canterbury and Visiting the Shrine: The Tale of Beryn
Required Screening:
A Canterbury Tale (dir. Powell and Pressburger, 1944)
April 11 The Monk's Prologue and Tale and The Franklin's Tale
Recommended Reading:
Chapter in Renard in England in Jill Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain
Required Screening:
Donkey-Skin aka Peau d'Ane (dir. Jacques Demy, 1970)
April 18: Becoming In/Edible: Good and Bad Fits: The "Auto" and Endodiegesis and Exodeigesis (to) Tellers: Narrative Within Narratives Without Narratives: Broken Speech: Sovereignty and "Holding your Pees" (Peace / Piece): Demonic Possesion / Madness: "Chaucer's" Impossible Topography
Required Reading: The Manciple's Prologue and Tale and The Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale and Tim William Machan. "Chaucer's Poetry, Versioning, and Hypertext." Philological Quarterly 73 (1994): 299-316.
Recommended: Peter Travis's Disseminal Chaucer
Required Screening:
Le Roman de Renard (dir.Irene and Wladysla Starewicz, 1930)
Epigraphic Epilogue:
In order to have a relation to the sun as it is, it is necessary that,
in a certain way, I relate to the sun such as it is in my absence, and
it is in effect like that that objectivity is constituted, starting
from death. To relate to the thing such as it is in itself--supposing
that were possible--means apprehending it such as it is, such as it would be
even if I weren't there. I can die, or simply leave the room; I know
that it will be what it is and will remain what it is. That is why
death is also such an important demarcation line; it is starting from
mortality and from the possibility of being dead that one can let
things be such as they are, in my absence, in a way, and my presence
is there only reveal what the thing would be in my absence. So can
the human do that?
--Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am