big books

[PNOTESBD at cnsvax.uwec.edu]

After wading through 65 weekend posts (far too many by one MK), I want to
come back to the original question about teaching Big Books.

With the recent Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Clarissa, this one is
probably doable now.  Students can get an overview of the plot which will let
them pay more attention to the letters and the subtle struggle C and L have
over the language of representation.  Of course one could always fudge and
use the abridged version with handouts of the choice letters that were left
out.

Ulysses is often a course all its own, but one can get some pretty good depth
in six weeks (18 hours/18 episodes).  Again, Joseph Strick's film can help
students get an overview and some sense of locale.

GR (what you've all been waiting for) of course has no film adaptation (see
the list archive for earlier casting calls) so no quick and easy overview.
When I've taught it (usually in a literary criticism class, but also in TRP
seminars), I've tried to find logical pause points so the reading comes in
reasonably sized chunks that can be made narratively coherent within the
scope of a class discussion.  Trouble is there are various ways to do this,
and I don't have the exact page breakdowns I've used at hand to share.  I've
had some success with 8 divisions of about 100 pages each, though in that
context we devoted nearly three hours to discussing how to read each chunk.
But I also had success in a recent independent study with chunks of about
40-50 pages each.

I think to really do big books requires students to be re-reading them and
not plunging in for the first time.  This is especially true for Ulysses and
GR since the pleasure of study for me comes from making what we might call
hypertextual connections that jump around the text and reconstruct it in
different patterns from the linear.  Also, one can attend so much more to the
language when that pesky demon of the plot can be put aside (although I also
read for the plot [and in TRP's case plots]).

I've thought about teaching a big books course too--the one change I'd
consider if I was thinking strictly along formal lines would be Tristram
Shandy in place of Clarissa.

As B/4 

Duffy