Prof. Frantzen
Fall 2007 courses
afrantz@luc.edu

Englsh 390: 11.30-12.45 T/Th
Men, Masculinity, and Gender in Twentieth-century Warfare

This course will investigate how gender forms relationships among men, masculinity, and violence in warfare. We will begin with three texts from World War I (1914-1918), a classic: Eric Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany) and an unknown jewel: William March's Company K (U.S.). In addition, we will read some icon works, including Tim O'Brien's The Things the Carried (Vietnam), and two works from from Gulf I and II (either fiction or memoirs). Apart from the reading we do as a group, each student will search out and analyze two personal accounts of wartime experience (men's or women's; published or unpublished; drawn from any of the wars we study) in order to explore connections and disjunctions between those works and the narrative(s) from the same conflict we have read in class. We want to find out how closely fictional representations match autobiographical accounts (which themselves might well have fictional components). Critical readings will include Allan Berube's Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (1991), a breakthrough book on the topic. This is a course in gender theory, not queer theory, however; its focus is men of all persuasions. Just as gender-based discussions of women ought to take men into account, our discussions of men and masculinity will concern with women. We're not replacing the traditional rhetoric of "women in X" (see Loyola's course catalogues for the last two decades for plenty of that) with "men in X." There will be three papers, one short (5-6 pp.), one medium (8-9 pp.), and a longer paper using material and ideas developed for the second paper (up to 15 pp.). No exams; discussion, participation, and good research will be crucial.

Course Descriptions for Spring 2007

Reading The Canterbury Tales is one of the high points of the English major. Every year students come in dreading the course only to find that Chaucer is a superb poet and that the course, although challenging, is rewarding and enjoyable. Learning Middle English takes special effort at first, but language and translation skills build up in the first few weeks, and soon you'll find that you able to handle Chaucer's language well. We'll read a good number (but not all) of the tales and will consider a variety of critical perspectives as we discuss them.
Requirements include class participation; a series of announced and unannounced quizzes; two papers (one 4-6 pages, one 8-10 pages); a mid-term and a final examination. Texts: The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. Benson..

Chaucer (ENGL 447)
TUTH 4:15 pm - 5:30 pm

We will explore some of Chaucer's most influential poems, including The Parlement of Foules, Troilus and Criseyde, and a variety of The Canterbury Tales, taking care to learn how Chaucer's language works on the page and sounds off of it. Rather than celebrate the latest theory buzz (which you can't avoid anyway), we study a text that played a founding role in the politics and aesthetics of the New Historicism, Hans Robert Jauss's Toward and Aesthetic of Reception (trans. 1982). Jauss will help us look at how Chaucer and his works functioned in English and American culture after the poet's death, starting with the vigorous reinterpretation of the poet's texts in the fifteenth century and extending to ninteenth- and twentieth-century attempts to create an American Chaucer. Since many people in the class will not be medievalists, this strategy will give us a chance to connect Chaucer to post-Chaucer periods that intersect with the interests of those in the class. Three papers, two shorter (7-8 pp.) and based on interpretive problems in Chaucer's work, and a longer paper (12-15 pp.) concerning Chaucer in a post-Chaucerian period. No exams or quizzes unless it becomes clear that you aren't getting the reading done in Middle English. Texts: The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. Benson; Boitani and Mann, Cambridge Chaucer Companion (2nd ed., 2004); any translation of Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy; any text of Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen.