DR. ANCA PEIU, ASSOC. PROF.

ELECTIVE I: WILLIAM FAULKNER AND THE SOUTH

SYLLABUS, COURSE DESCRIPTION & BIBLIOGRAPHY

This special set of lectures aims at introducing undergraduate students to some of the
most representative novels of William Faulkner, whose keystone to the Universe is the County
of Yoknapatawpha.
Therefore, a narratological portrait of the artist is outlined, in which apparently and,
of course, ironically the dominant trace is given rather by the verb TO HAVE than by the verb
TO BE. Students are invited to find out the real object of this necessarily imaginative
possession.
We shall particularly take into consideration such Faulknerian classics as:
THE SOUND AND THE FURY ; SARTORIS (1929);
AS I LAY DYING (1930);
LIGHT IN AUGUST (1932);
ABSALOM, ABSALOM! (1936).
Theoretical & critical support will be found in the works of:
Paul Ricoeur (TIME AND NARRATIVE, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984);
Mikhail Bakhtin, (PROBLEMS OF DOSTOEVSKYS POETICS, in the Romanian version,
published at Univers Publishing House in 1970);
Wayne Booth (THE RHETORIC OF FICTION, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983);
Anca Peiu (TRECUTUL TIMPULUI PERFECT:de la Th.Mann la W.Faulkner, EUB2001)
The main course requirements are just two: thorough reading & full attendance. The final
examination will be written, applying some theoretical viewpoints to some aspects of one (or
more) of the above mentioned novels.

Week 1: A brief introduction to W. Faulkners personality, life & literary career; support: bio-
graphies by Joseph Blotner and Stephen B. Oates; cassette.
Week 2: A general introduction to the main works of literary theory & criticism used here.
Week 3: Ricoeurian TIME EMPLOTMENT tension in THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Week 4: Bakhtinian POLYPHONY in AS I LAY DYING
Week 5: Between TO BE (or TIME) & TO HAVE (or NARRATIVE): ABSALOM,
ABSALOM!
Week 6: (Mock)Objectivity in Fiction(see Wayne C. Booth): LIGHT IN AUGUST
Week 7: Natives & Non-Natives @ Yoknapatawpha. co: Faulknerian typology
Week 8: (neither) Misogyny (n)or Gynolatry in Faulkner: Caddy Compson, Addie Bundren,
Judith Sutpen, Rosa Coldfield, Eulalia Bon, Joanna Burden.
Week 9: Family group-pictures in an oratory of solitude: the Compsons, the Coldfields, the
Sutpen(s), the Bundrens; narratological issues: polyphonic novel, polyglossia, narrative
voices: oratory of solitude vs. silent listening; dialogic/ monologic; laughter and the
carnivalesque
Week 7: The Faustian dimension in Father Son / Mother-Daughter relationships:
Thomas Sutpen & Son(s) / Addie Bundren & Daughter
Week 8: Versions of Otherness / Double Identities: Joe Christmas, Caddy Compson, Judith
Sutpen; hybrid protagonists for (more than) twice told tales; the Story That Would Not
Tell : failed protagonists, failed narrators
Week 9: A 1945-Appendix to a 1929-story. Maps. Chronologies. Genealogies. Faulkners
doomed degesis (my apocrypha)
Week 10: Intertextuality in W. Faulkner: a matter of tradition & dream (see Walter Allen).
THE SCARLET LETTER, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN told
 twice as AS I LAY DYING and ABSALOM, ABSALOM!
Week 11: The Hybrid Triangle: Caddy/Quentin-Benjy-Jason, Addie-Anse-Whitfield, Lena
Grove-Byron Bunch-Lucas Burch, Judith Sutpen- Henry Sutpen- Charles Bon
Week 12: W. Faulkner the last novelist (see Hugh Kenner) or a novelist in the European
sense of the word (see Andr Bleikasten)?
Week 13: W. Faulkner and 20th Century Romanian novel writing: L. Rebreanu, M. Preda
Week 14: Students Choice(s)

ELECTIVE II: AFTER THE FINAL NO:THE WORLD OF WALLACE

STEVENS
SYLLABUS, COURSE DESCRIPTION & BIBLIOGRAPHY

This optional course in 20th Century American Poetry provides an introduction and an
encouraging approach to a somewhat discouraging part of modern literary heritage. Hence, full
(& also active) attendance of the classes is required all the more since, in our country,
Stevensian verse is only available in anthologies, which means that the professor in charge must
supply students with copies of more than 30 poems, two essays, and a play by the author in
question. I can only hope that demanding though it may seem this elective course finally
rewards its audience. It is with this hope on my mind that I wrote the book bearing the very title
of this course. It is meant as a readers guide to what is actually undertaken during the classes.
Students will have to write essays. The final test is also written.
The sources of my Stevensian texts are two volumes:
STEVENS, WALLACE, COLLECTED POETRY & PROSE, Library of America, Literary
Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, 1997;
STEVENS, WALLACE, PALM AT THE END OF THE MIND, THE, SELECTED POEMS
& A PLAY, Edited by Holly Stevens, Vintage Books, Random House, 1971.

The best part of the theoretical & critical bibliography here employed comes from:
BLOOM, HAROLD, WALLACE STEVENS: THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATE, Cornell
Univ. Press, 1980;
JARRELL, RANDALL, POETRY AND THE AGE, Noonday Press, New York, 1972;
KERMODE, FRANK, WALLACE STEVENS, Faber & Faber, London, 1989;
LENSING, GEORGE S., WALLACE STEVENS AND THE SEASONS, Louisiana State U.
Press, Baton Rouge, 2001;
PEIU, ANCA, AFTER THE FINAL NO:THE WORLD OF WALLACE STEVENS,
EUB, 2001;
RICOEUR, PAUL, RULE OF METAPHOR, THE, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

SYLLABUS OPTIONAL COURSE

ON WALLACE STEVENS

Week 1: An Introduction to the Poets Life & Career(s). Wallace Stevens and Modernism.
Week 2: Stevenss Vision on The Irrational Element in Poetry and H. Blooms Theory of
the ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE
Week 3: Wallace Stevenss Two or Three Ideas: notions of ORDER & FINAL BELIEF
Week 4: Symptoms of Stevensian Imagism: Playful Experiment and Gaudy Verse in: 13
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Metaphors of a Magnifico, The Pleasures of
Merely Circulating,Six Significant Landscapes
Week 5: Stevensian Metaphor between Reality and the Capable Imagination: Mrs. Alfred
 Uruguay, Sea Surface Full of Clouds
Week 6: Music in Wallace Stevens: The Idea of Order at Key West, Mozart 1935, Sad
Strains of a Gay Waltz, Anglais Mort a Florence
Week 7: Stevensian WINTRY MOOD: The Emperor of Ice-Cream, Depression before
Spring, Dance of the Macabre Mice, The Snow Man
Week 8: Dramatic Personae in Wallace Stevens: (I) MAN in The Man on the Dump,
Connoisseur of Chaos, The Well Dressed Man with a Beard, The Man Whose
Pharynx Was Bad, Man Carrying Thing
Week 9: (II) WOMAN-PERSONA in: Sunday Morning, Blanche McCarthy, The World
as Meditation,A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Week 10: (III) LION-PERSONA in: Poetry Is a Destructive Force, Lions in Sweden,
The Glass of Water
Week 11: Metaphor of FINAL BELIEF in: Asides on the Oboe, Of Modern Poetry,
Montrachet-le-Jardin
Week 12: Bowl, Cat and Broomstick: Reflections on a Tragicomic Self-Portrait
Week 13: The Stevensian Longer Poem as Crisis-Poem (see Harold Bloom, George S.
Lensing on the subject); e.g. The Comedian as the Letter C or Description without
Place, or Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, or Esthtique du Mal
Week 14: Bottoms Dream: The the of a WS. Shakespeare in Wallace Stevens. Pages
of illustration: (not only) Peter Quince at the Clavier