(PBDS 717)

                                  Perception and Meaning:  Four Versions of Experience

 

NOTE: This is representative of the syllabi for this course. It is not necessarily the syllabus being used in any one semester.

                                                                                   

 

                                    "To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen."

                                                                                                                                            --Plotinus

 

Perception and Meaning is a background and ideas course and, therefore, concentrates on developing critical and analytical skills, as well as imaginative and creative vision and thought. It will center on understanding some of the varied angles of vision that have become part of the modern and contemporary.  The major assignments for the course are as follows:

 

                        1.         This course will use a seminar format.  Class attendance, therefore, is very significant.  An important part of your final grade will be based upon class participation.

 

 

                        2.         A series of writing and/or design assignments, some creative, some analytical, will be required.  Specific assignments and due-dates will be given in the weekly syllabus.

 

                        3.         A creative journal, writer's notebook, personal diary, commonplace book or box is a part of the course work. Whatever you choose to put in it (and it may include writing, criticism, graphic designs, poems, ideas or plans for ads, photo essays etc.), it should be your book with your reactions to the varied perspectives through which we, as a group, look at writing and design.  In its commonplace book aspect, you may incorporate "found, related objects," your own "black patch, green fingerstall, watch-key and dispossessed wedding-rings."  Let your units reflect (or contrast with) the units of the course; but, again, please let it be your own thing, whether magazine ads, matchbooks, sea shells, posters, or colored leaves.

 

                        4.         A final project and presentation.  You may select and analyze some aspect of perception and meaning in terms of one of the angles of vision of the course or from contrasting points of view,or in light of contemporary ideas and culture. A brief written report of the project must be handed in as part of the presentation.

 

                        5.         Grading will be based on written papers, projects, and class participation and performance.  Your work will be evaluated at the end of the term in four categories carrying approximately these weights:

                                   

                                               


Regular written and oral assignments                         2 parts

                                                Commonplace Book                                                   1 part

                                                Final project, oral and written                                    2 parts

                                                Class work                                                                  2 parts

 

Texts:

 

            Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet

            Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

            Robbe-Gillet, In the Labyrinth

            Nin, The Novel of the Future

            Borges, Labyrinths

            Selected xeroxed materials

 

Suggested Background Material

Film:

            Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson.  Film Art: An Introduction.

            Giannetti, Louis D. Understanding Movies.

            Mast, Gerald and Marshal Cohen, eds.  Film, Theory and Criticism.

            Miller, Mark Crispin (ed). Seeing Through Movies.

            Monaco, James. How to Read a Film.

            Sobchaek, Thomas and Vivian.  An Introduction to Film.

            Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema.

 

Writing and Criticism:

 

            Blonsky, Marshall.  On Signs.

            Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction.

            Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form.

            Camus, Albert.  The Myth of Sisyphus.

            Cavafy, C. Collected Poems.

            Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols.

            Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land.

            Ellmann, Richard and Charles Feidelson, Jr. The Modern Tradition: Backgrounds of                     Modern Literature.

            Forster, E. M. Alexandria.

            Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel.

            Friedman, Alan. Critical Essays on Lawrence Durrell.

            Gardiner, Richard. The Tarot.

            Graves, Robert. The White Goddess.

            Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols.

            Moore, Harry T. (ed.). The World of Lawrence Durrell.

            Sade, Marquis de. Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue.

            Scholes, Robert. Fabulation and Metafiction.

            Seferis, George. Collected Poems.

            Symons, Arthur. The Symbolist Movement in Literature.

            Weston, Jessie. From Ritual to Romance.

 

Art:

 

            Canady, John. Mainstreams of Modern Art.

            Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion.

            Gombrich, E. H. Meditations on a Hobby Horse.

            Hamilton, George H. Painting and Sculpture in Europe.

            Haftmann, Werner. Painting in the Twentieth Centure.

            Read, Herbert. The Meaning of Art.

            Richardson, Tony and Nikos Stangos, eds., Concepts of Modern Art.

            Rosenberg, Harold.  The Anxious Object:  Art Today and its Audience.

            Scharf, Garon, Art and Photography.

            Sontage, Susan. On Photography.

 

 

Class Schedule

 

 

I.          Love, Time, and Memory:  The Light of Romance, the Impression of the Senses

 

                                    "Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things to all men. . . . it is a mirror that reflects the reader's own features and it is also a map of the world."  -- Borges

 

                                    "There is a point where sunlight and inner light meet."  

                                    -- Durrell

 

            Film:  Memento

            Writing:  Lawrence Durrell, Justine

                        Alain Robbe-Grillet, In the Labyrinth

                        (C. P. Cavafy, "The City")

            Art:  Impressionism, Expressionism

            Selected Criticism, Analysis:  Alain Robbe-Grillet, For A New Novel (Excerpts)

 

II.        In Changing Perspective:  Picture or Symbol, the Real or the Ideal

 

                                    "All writers believe they are realists.  None ever calls himself abstract, illusionistic, chimerical, fantastic, falsitical . . ."  -- Robbe-Grillet

 

                                    "Realism is a bad word.  In a sense everything is realistic.  I see no line between the imaginary and the real.  I see much reality in the imagination."  -- Fellini

 

                                    "Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed."  --Durrell

 

            Film:  Blow-Up

            Writing:  Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

                        Julio Cortazar, "Blow-Up"

                        William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

                        (Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning")

            Art:  Realism, Symbolism, Photography

            Selected Criticism, Analysis:  Anaİs Nin, The Novel of the Future

 

III.       Nature and Process:  The Plot Thickens, the Search for the Truth

 

                                    "Art is only alive which helps us see truth."  -- Picasso

 

                                    "Sometimes one is caught pretending to be God and learns a bitter lesson."  -- Durrell

 

            Film:  Citizen Kane

            Writing:   Lawrence Durrell, Mountolive

                        Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

                        Edgar Allan Poe, "The Purloined Letter"

                        Donald Barthelme, "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning"

                                                       Views of My Father Weeping"

            Art:  Cubism, Futurism

              Selected Criticism, Analysis:  Anaİs Nin, The Novel of the Future

 

IV.       Return to Myth:  The Classic Line, the Eternal Quest

 

                                    "Thus reality itself is a thing which falls into mythology with the passage of time. . . . Fiction endures if it partakes of that reality beyond reality, which enables it to survive as myth."  -- Scholes

 

                                    "You have to be faithful to your angle of vision, and at the same time fully recognize its partiality."  -- Durrell

 

            Film:  The Crying Game

            Writing:  Lawrence Durrell, Clea

                           Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck"

                           W. B. Yeats (Selections xeroxed)

                           (George Seferis (Selections xeroxed))

            Art:  Abstract Art, Surrealism

            Selected Criticism, Analysis:  Anaİs Nin, The Novel of the Future

 

V.        Workpoints:  Assignments, Reports, Final Projects