Fill in the blank!

[lollardfish]

Readings - The Self: From Antiquity to You.

• St. Augustine - Confessions
• Abelard and Heloise - Letters
• ______________________________???
• Ralph Ellison - The Invisible Man
• John McCain/Barak Obama - their autobiographies

I have some thoughts, but I want yours!

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Montaigne, Essais.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Pascal, Pensées. Descartes, Discours de la méthode.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Would you care to select one from among your three entirely reasonable suggestions? I am leaning Montaigne, myself. I really only get one.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Montaigne is the one with a sense of humor, and he has the strongest individual voice. He's certainly my favorite of the three. I've never taught any of them, but I think Montaigne was my favorite one to study.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Do you think that ill-educated freshmen will be able to comprehend it? I feel so comfortable with Augustine and Abelard/Heloise that I think I can guide them into the texts ...

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I think so, especially if you pick short and/or funny ones. (I'm particularly fond of the one on cannibals.)

[neogrammarian.livejournal.com]

I'd third the idea of Montaigne. Otherwise, the letters between Baudelaire and Georges Sand are pretty cool, and my provide a nice compare/contrast w/A-H

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I forgot about them! George Sand rawks.

[neogrammarian.livejournal.com]

So true. I was hoping to get to read some of them this summer, but we'll see how my time goes- I hadn't realized they existed until, years ago, I saw a stage production of some of them. Sort of a theatrical representation of their friendship. Since I'm a big Baudelaire fan, I figured that, someday, I would Have to read them!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I've never read them!

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

I loved Pensées when I was an undergrad, and I thought Pascal had a sense of humour. :)

I wanted to throw Descartes out the window, on the other hand.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That's what I think too. I've never taught it.

[new-kid16.livejournal.com]

All my suggestions would be for more medieval folks, which I doubt would be very helpful. Although someone like Frederick Douglass or Harriot Jacobs might be useful, for making the jump from Europe to the US? Sounds like a cool class - I've always wanted to teach one like that! (Though mine would have been populated almost exclusively by crazy medieval people, so it would have had much less widespread appeal...)

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

This class has a mandated inclusion of Ellison in our "common text" seminar series (the Freshmen read Ellison). So I've been sort of stretching from that. We'll do a lot of fun stuff - second life, facebook, conversion narratives. Just searching for "confessions" on amazon.com is fun.

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Francis Bacon's essays, modeled on Montaigne's, could be tossed in from time to time. I teach "Of Studies" in AP Language. They're readily available online.

You may also want to check out "This I Believe" on NPR. Another assignment I do with my students. :)

[madtruk.livejournal.com]

Richard Bach, Illusions
Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

You're missing the 1970's ;-)

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Missing. Such a strange word.

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

At the risk of seeming like self parody.... Seneca is a pretty important classical figure in the history of the self, both because his plays feature outsized characters built around extreme self-assertion and because Roman stoicism has what one recent classicist calls the most rubust version of the self in antiquity. Seneca talks about a daily ritual of self-scrutiny. I just bought, but have not yet read, this:

http://www.amazon.com/Self-Ancient-Modern-Insights-Individuality/dp/0226768252/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212427686&sr=8-4

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Well, where could I find a handy professor willing to educate me on Seneca over beer and tandoori chicken?

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

Yes, if only there were such a person!

I gather this is a class with some set texts? The obvious literary text, to me, is Hamlet--not only because it is an interesting document in the self but also because almost every version of the self has been found in it (he's a stoic, a skeptic, a melancholic, a romantic, a (or maybe the) Freudian subject, a post-modern self-alientated machine, what have you: one stop shopping.

More beer and chicken....

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

The set text is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. The class must be on "the self" in a vague sort of way, and one can take any direction one wants to get there. An I.T. prof teaches a great course called, "Iam my Ipod," for example.

I decided to have them read St. Augustine (because I love teaching the Confessions) and Obama (because there are interesting comparisons made to Invisible Man), and McCain's autobiography for reasons of balance.

Then I had to fill in the blanks with these Freshmen who are, decidedly, not ready for significant reading loads. I feel that I can only add one or two other texts, and felt that the story of Abelard and Heloise would work nicely to do some things that the more formal autobiographical works would not. I also wanted something medieval, just to introduce "my world" to the students.

Then I get one more, maybe two, texts.

[creidylad.livejournal.com]

You could go the "The unexamined life is not worth living" route and study Socrates via Plato's dialogues. (one or two at least...)

I would have suggested Margary Kempe but on reflection, no. NO.

I know too little of your big gap-period to be helpful, but it sounds like you've got some great suggestions.

I think the Confessions are amazing.