106年第2學期-5126 文學裡的邊緣人 課程資訊

評分方式

評分項目	配分比例	說明
weekly response papers	10	Written to engage with the chapter readings and/or handouts
essays, short	20	Analysis paper of a key literary theory figure
essay, longer	30	Research project
Reports (weekly)	20	Based on assigned pages from the readings
Final Presentation	20	Based on research project

教育目標

1. Students will gain an understanding of how outcast literature has served as a rhetorical response to the various complications of politics, cultural difference, social change, ideology and history itself in American society, and in various world societies. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work. 2. Students will develop the ability to understand the particular literary language of these various fictions, while engaging with theoretical approaches specific to understanding how fictions treating outcasts develop forms of rhetorical and critical discourse that are in turn significant to issues of literary and cultural analysis and interpretation. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work. 3. Students will demonstrate a comprehension of the scope of outcast literature in American and world literatures, reflecting its development as a genre that incorporates historical moments indicative of the cultural issues of particular eras and places. They will demonstrate this comprehension in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work. 4. Students will learn how to apply theoretical approaches necessary to the analysis and interpretation of those selected fictions chosen by them for research, based on the examples that have been investigated from the course readings. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.

課程概述

Literature is rife with figures that may be grouped as criminals, outcasts, pariahs, misfits, abject subjects, scapegoats and bizarre characters. But what does literature treating such outcasts have to teach us about their social manifestations, their existential wherefores and whys? Limning the realms of deviancy, delinquency, decadence and depravity, these often utterly inexplicable and marginalized characters paradoxically invite an analysis of their cultural and psychic causes and effects, their strange origins and their obscure destinations, their imaginative conceptions and their rhetorical purposes. Their deeper philosophical and social significance may be found in the writings of Sigmund Freud, Rene Girard, Georges Bataille, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek and Giorgio Agamben. In particular, Agamben’s notion of “homo sacer,” the man divested of any social standing or civil or human rights, and who may be killed by anyone, resonates strongly with such figures. This course aims to provide an overview of such literature across historical periods and cultures, that readers may derive a stronger understanding of the literary presence of those who just don’t fit in, and who thereby render idiosyncratic if necessary portraits of life’s “other” side, something that haunts the realm of the normal with its alienating and ineffable contradictions and ontological alterity.

基本資料

選修課，學分數：0-3
上課時間：二/6,7,8[LAN212-2]
修課班級：外文學碩1,2
修課年級：年級以上
選課備註：

參考書目

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlett Letter. New York: Simon & Brown, 2012.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Emile Zola, L’Assommoir. Ed. Robert Lethbridge. Trans. Margaret Mauldon. London: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
Stephen Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.
William Faulkner, Sanctuary. New York: Vintage, 1993.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1998.
Darin Strauss, Chang and Eng: A Novel. Reissue edition. New York: Plume 2001.