AFTER THE MILLENNIUM, LIBERAL STUDIES 7203-001 HOME
Thursdays 7:30-9:30 p.m. White 115
Dr. Hugh Ormsby-Lennon
Dept. of English SAC 466; Phone/ Voice-mail ext 94655.
Office Hours: Tuesday 4.30-6.00 p.m. and by appointment
Home Phone/ Voice-mail 215.592.8102. E-mail: Hugh.Ormsby-Lennon@Villanova.edu
Home Fax: 215.238.1187.
Home Page: URL: http//www60.homepage.villanova.edu/Hugh.Ormsby-Lennon/
Also accessible via the Villanova Faculty telephone directory on Villanova's web site.
Dr. Margaret Boerner
Dept of English; Voice Mail, ext 83323.
Office Hours: By Appointment.
Home Phone/Voice Mail 215.592.8102. E-mail: Margaret.Boerner@Villanova.edu
Home Fax: 213.238.1187.
ABOUT THE COURSE
Well, here we all are. We've survived Y2K and the arrival of the Third Millennium. For most of us, life continues (and will continue) more or less normally. For what were we waiting--whether in eager anticipation, with dreadful apprehension, or with unmitigated boredom--only a few short weeks ago? In Fall 1999 the MLS Program ran a successful course in the history of millennial and apocalyptic ideas, taught by Gustavo Benavides (Religious Studies) and Emmet McLaughlin (History) in which students were invited to make sense of the hoopla and of the horror with which countless generations had predicted the End-Time. As a bookend to the Fall class, Joe Betz envisioned a Spring seminar in which students would be invited to examine the endlessness of time (publicly rather than individually understood) rather than broken narratives of the world's stubborn refusal to end (or to produce the Big Rock Candy mountain, whether in the shape of a secular utopia or of the New Jerusalem).
Literature is about our humdrum expectations of quotidian life--business as usual--as those are transformed by crises, both familial and (inter-)national. We enjoy literature and movies because they have beginnings, middles, and ends in a way that our lives do not. Even poems as short as haiku or a sonnet offer closure--a sense of an ending--that we can imagine for our own lives. In longer works of the imagination we enjoy grander senses of an end, senses that we cannot know how--or even whether--we shall experience in our own lives. Life goes on after we finish a novel or leave cinemas and theatres, and that is why we rove the realms, however pulpy, of the imagination. We all enjoy the vicarious experience of an End-Time that is aesthetically controlled, whether it be painful or pleasurable, whether the nightmare of the Holocaust or the dream of couples living happily ever after. However delighted or terrified we are left by novels, plays, or movies--and petit mort has sexual connotations in many languages--we are still around to ponder their meanings. What we have tapped into is the life-force endlessly renewing itself, indeed into some promise of life after death.
Step forward a professor of English, Hugh Ormsby-Lennon, and a lawyer/ professor of English, Margaret Boerner, to explain the fascinating intersections of aesthetics and millennialism/ apocalypticism. During the course of the semester we shall test the hypotheses that we have just outlined by reading novels, going to theatre, and watching a wide variety of movies. All imaginative works--from murder mysteries and women's romances to tear jerkers and mad-slasher movies--figure forth, however dimly, the mysteries of the End-Time. Any imaginative production that has a beginning, middle, and an end--from a comic book to a symphony by Beethoven--provides intimations of our own mortality and assuages our need to triumph over it.
For our own syllabus we have primarily chosen works that directly address the Big Topic of End-Time. Not only do they have beginnings, middles, and ends but they also explore worlds that end with a bang rather than gentler whimpers of pleasure or pain. None of our choices is unduly long, although all are rich in materials for debate. Both instructors are also eager to encourage students to scrutinize popular culture--from sci-fi movies to The Simpsons or The Sopranos--to appreciate the ways in which "low art" addresses the same questions as "high art." In some instances--in such films as Terminator and Total Recall, for example--we shall see how brilliantly the Big Topic can be reformulated for mass-consumption. Students will also be encouraged to examine other ways in which popular culture--most notably, perhaps, supermarket tabloids--stimulates our hopes and fears about the End-Time. Tabloids lack aesthetic form but they speak to the same desires that we seek to allay in "mass" works that have an imaginative shape.
Instructors will sometimes introduce the materials jointly, sometimes individually. Student input into the class is vigorously encouraged; other books or films that you would eagerly like to discuss will be added, when possible, to the syllabus towards the end of the semester. This class will thrive upon discussion. While the instructors are eager to inform and to stimulate participants, they know that learning flourishes in classrooms where students make energetic contributions from their own knowledge and experience. Our mini-lectures are designed to provide a requisite basis of information and interpretation; they will comprise only the first words on the novel, play, movie, or topic under discussion. Let the best part of our conversations be yours!
We shall be happy to screen the great movies we plan to discuss--Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Shame, Fellini's Satyricon--in the classroom so that we can freeze-frame or rerun important sequences. But this will mean that classes will have to run somewhat longer. It's your call.
As to writing requirements, we remain flexible. We
anticipate twenty pages of writing from each student and suggest that you may like to
submit a ten-page paper to each instructor. Due dates? Let's talk.
Reading List
Roland J. Faley, Apocalypse Then and Now: A Companion to the Book of Revelation (Paulist Press)
George Orwell, 1984 (New American Library)
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Levine/ Scholastic)
Samuel Beckett, Endgame (Grove)
George Orwell, Animal Farm (New American Library)
Art Spiegelman, Maus (Random House)
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (DelRay)
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems (Penguin)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harper)
SYLLABUS AND COMMENTARY
Jan 13 Introduction. A preview of the course.
End-times in art and in life. What governs our choice of the works on the syllabus? A
brief history of millennial movements and an explanation of why they are flourishing
today. Communities, sometimes virtual, can range from New Agers and Channelers to Branch
Davidians and Militia Members. Why do such kooky groups still attract devotees? How can we
stay out of their clutches? We should, however, remember, the extent to which other
movements--from devout Christians and Web aficionados to free-market economists and
sometime politicians like Newt Gingrich--run on millenarian energy. To what extent are we
all apocalypsists?
Before the next class, participants will:
(i) watch the following videos: Terminator, Total Recall, and The Rapture. If you have time, you may also wish to refresh your memory of The Road Warrior movies.
(ii) begin reading Roland J. Fahey, Apocalypse Then and Now: A Companion to the Book of Revelation.
Jan 20 End-Time in Popular Culture Today. We shall discuss millenarian and utopian fantasies as presented in the videos that we have watched. We shall also begin discussing The Book of Revelation which is included, in full, in Faley's Apocalypse Then and Now; you may also wish to read Revelation more sequentially in your own Bibles. Father Faley's book is a Catholic exposition of The Book of Revelation designed "to make this mysterious part of scripture accessible to a popular audience"--like our own class! A book that emphasizes faith rather than the "higher" biblical scholarship, Apocalypse Then and Now remains eminently readable.
Jan 27 The Book of Revelation--according to Father Faley (and others).
Feb 3 George Orwell, 1984. Students are also encouraged to watch the movie 1984. This is a classic dystopia--that is, a utopia gone hideously wrong--and those of us who remember approaching the year 1984 can understand something of last year's premillennial frenzy. 1984? Orwell published the book in 1948, shortly before his death, and merely changed the last two digits of the year. Not much of a numerological mystery (contrast 666).
Feb 10 J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This children's book has been at the top of The New York Times's best-seller list for a year (where it is now accompanied by the two succeeding volumes of the seven part series that Rowling has promised); it now also heads the Times's list of best-selling paperbacks. It is top-drawer pulp fiction destined to become a classic. We shall explore its presentation of End-Time mythologies.
Feb 17 Samuel Beckett, Endgame. Members of the class will see this play in production at Villanova's Vasey Theatre on this date, instead of meeting in the classroom. At this performance, the director and cast-members will answer questions from the audience.
In Beckett's Endgame the blind and paralyzed Hamm is nursed by his ambulatory servant Clov. Meanwhile, his legless parents Nagg and Nell survive in trashcans. After much joking, harsh language, and the exchange of memories, a character dies. "Dependent on each other, " writes a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
these characters question an existence where meaning is unlikely to emerge and there is nothing to be done. The play is an endgame of language, theatricality, and savage humour, deriving metaphoric power from the game of chess, the threat of atomic war, and fear of social and familial breakdown.
Feb 24 (No class: each instructor has academic commitments off campus that cannot be rescheduled.)
Mar 2 SPRING BREAK
After Spring Break, our schedule is more provisional and we are actively soliciting suggestions from students. What follows is how we envision the second half of the class before student proposals.
Mar 9 George Orwell, Animal Farm. (We shall see whether the cable TV version is yet available on video.)
Mar 16 Art Spiegelman, Maus.
Mar 23 In-class screening and discussion of Ingmar Bergman's film Shame.
Mar 30 Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Students will also watch the movie version of this book, Blade Runner.
Apr 6 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
Apr 13 T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Arthur Prufrock" and The Waste Land.
April 20 No class: Maundy Thursday.
April 27 In-class screening and discussion of Fellini's Satyricon against the backdrop of The Book of Revelation.
May 6 In-class screening and discussion of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal within the context of Father Fahey's Apocalypse Then and Now and of other themes discussed during the semester.
NOTE: Writing assignments: All papers must be typed, except for those completed in the classroom. Students must retain a printed copy of their papers; the assumption that a copy of an essay will continue to reside on a diskette or a hard drive does not remain an acceptable substitute. In the event that a paper goes unaccountably astray, it is the student's responsibility to have a replacement. In certain circumstances, papers can be handed to a secretary in the English Department. Because of computer viruses, essays cannot, unfortunately, be accepted as e-mail. On occasion, papers may be faxed to our home.