Instructor: C. Fee

Meeting Time: MWF 9:00-9:50

Meeting Place: Patrick-101

Office: G-313A

Office Hours: MW 3:30-5:00 (in my office,) F 1:00-2:00 (at The Ragged Edge,) and by appointment

Office Phone: x6762

Home Phone: 528-4799 (Call before 10:00 pm)

E-mail: cfee@gettysburg.edu
 
 

Required Texts:

Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker : American Urban Legends and Their Meanings. New York: W.W. Norton, 1981. (ISBN: 0393951693)

Fee, Christopher with David Leeming. Gods, Heroes, and Kings : The Battle for Mythic Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. (ISBN: 0195134796)

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf : A New Verse Translation. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000. (ISBN: 0393320979)

Jones, Gwyn and Thomas Jones, trans. The Mabinogion. New rev. ed. Everyman Library. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1993. (ISBN: 0460872974)

Kinsella, Thomas, trans.  The Tain.  Oxford:  Oxford UP, 1970. (ISBN: 0192810901)

Leeming, David Adams. The World of Myth. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. (ISBN: 0195074750)

Leeming, David Adams and Jake Page. The Mythology of Native North America. Norman, OK: The U of Oklahoma P, 1998. (ISBN: 0806132396)

Leeming, David Adams and Jake Page. Myths, Legends, & Folktales of America:  An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. (ISBN: 0195117840)

Selected videos including: Beloved, The Blair Witch Project, Dark passages, The Fisher King, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Last Stand at Little Big Horn, Little Big Man, The Lord of the Rings, Scream, Smoke Signals,Star Wars, O Brother Where Art Thou?
 

Course Description:

Heard any good stories lately?  Perhaps from the friend of a friend?  All cultures have their stories, and as different as they may be on the surface, most myths and legends have some important similarities.  All peoples everywhere ponder their origins, their purpose in the universe, and other big questions, and the answers developed by a particular culture can tell us a lot about that people.  A culture that worships a thunderbolt-wielding king god may be mainly a warrior society;  one that worships an earth goddess fertility figure may be primarily agrarian in nature;  one that worships tragic pop icons struck down by their own excesses may be obsessed with cults of celebrity and narcissism, as well as the inviolate sanctity of individual expression.  In any case, although we learn a great deal about any group of people by the details of the stories they tell, a comparative approach to mythology also allows us to grasp the fundamentally human nature underlying story-telling:  Thus, although the stories we tell may be different from those of the ancient Sumerians, or those of the Celts, or those of the Sioux,  the basic concerns addressed by those stories are often very similar indeed.
 

Course Objectives and General Structure:

This seminar will begin with a discussion of the natures of oral narratives and of mythic archetypes, and an introduction to theoretical concepts which will help us to understand the cultural functions of story-telling and myth-making;  we then will move on to discuss the development of British Medieval literary traditions founded upon far earlier oral materials.  We will conclude our study with an examination of Native American, African American, and contemporary European American oral myths, and note how modern American story-telling traditions link us to those of distant peoples and places.  We will learn to distinguish between what we call “history,” “folklore,” “myth,” and “legend,” and we will find that—although each is different—each is valuable in many different ways to any culture, and indeed, to any person.  We will read and discuss a number of landmark literary works based upon oral traditions, and we will note how oral composition allows a story-teller to tailor the trappings of a saga to suit the occasion and the audience of each particular retelling without altering the basic framework of the narrative.  I will share a number of my own retellings from my forthcoming book on British mythology, and we will examine carefully what I chose to emphasize and why.  Seminar members will themselves turn to retelling various narratives to emphasize points of interest, and the final project in this course will include composing and reciting an oral narrative designed to convey specific aspects determined in advance with the approval of the instructor.
 

Course Evaluation:

Preparation & Participation: 10%

Four Reaction Papers: 10%

Two Short Essays: 10%

Two Short Oral Presentations: 10%

Two Written Movie Reviews: 10%

One Long Oral Narrative: 10%

Final Paper: 15%

Writing Portfolio: 05%

Midterm Exam: 10%

Final Exam: 10%

General Course Workload:

This course is speaking and writing intensive, involves a great deal of discussion and intellectual analysis, and promises to develop personal confidence and leadership skills.  Because this course fulfills the college writing requirement, the minimum amount of writing required is 28 typed, double-spaced formal pages;  thus, allowing for revision, you well may write over 50 pages for this class. Moreover, there are three required oral presentations totaling no fewer than 14 minutes per student.  In addition to traditional reading requirements and exams, students must bring theoretical understandings of oral cultures to bear on their own creative attempts at storytelling.  Thus this course is structured to demand active learning in the extreme, and it combines a number of different types of challenges.
 

Specific Course Requirements:

1) Four very short reaction papers (1-2 pages each).  As the name suggests, these papers should convey your reaction to one or more myths or critical concepts dealt with the week before each paper is due, and therefore will be evaluated on the basis of thoughtfulness, creativity, and coherence. In other words, you can take some risks, as these will be assessed on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. Thus you can guarantee that you will receive full credit on a big part of your final grade simply by giving each reaction paper your best effort (there’s no need to worry about a grade!). The function of these reaction papers is to accustom you to a style of writing that composition teachers call an “invention” strategy.  These papers give you an opportunity to get some ideas onto a page with little risk, and they give me the opportunity to see a little of what you are thinking and of how you express yourself.  Choose topics that interest you, and try to communicate that interest!

2) Two short written retellings of myths (4-6 pages each) including commentary on the narrative choices made by the student.  Roughly one third of each essay should comprise critical analysis of the retelling:  In the critical section the student should examine what material was emphasized, what was marginalized, what was added or deleted, and why.  It is probable that many students will choose to update myths into contemporary settings and vernacular language, and it will be illustrative for us to examine what each student perceives is timeless about a particular myth.

3) Two oral presentations (3-5 minutes each) based upon the written retellings;  during each presentation the student will present his or her updated myth from memory;  oral recitation is traditionally dynamic, while written records of oral traditions are by necessity static.  Thus it will be useful for students to note how their oral recitations deviate from their own written versions, and to discuss both practical and theoretical reasons for such ad hoc changes.

4) Two movie reviews (4-6 pages each) discussing the mythic archetypes and oral narrative traditions manifested in two or more of the films screened for the class.  No more than one third of each review may comprise salient plot summary;  at least a third should be devoted to a critical analysis of the film’s use of archetypes and narrative traditions, and roughly the same proportion should be devoted to offering examples of analogous archetypes and traditions from our readings of the myths.

5) Two exams concerning the readings, the films, class discussion, and student presentations.  These exams will include both essay questions and short-answer identifications.  Students will have some latitude in choosing which questions to answer (e.g. two out of three essays, five out of eight IDs, etc.)

6) One long oral narrative (8-10 minutes) on a topic of the student’s choosing, with the approval of and consultation with the instructor.  Students will be given a great deal of latitude in the choice of their topics as well as in their approaches to them;  they will be expected, however, to understand and to employ the narrative techniques and formulae we have dissected and discussed over the course of the semester.  Each student will be graded on five points:  (a) presentation;  (b) self-conscious use and understanding of archetypal and narrative motifs;  (c) entertainment value;  (d) allusions to plots and characters of other narratives (classic or popular);  (e) discernable links to primary points outlined in final paper.

7) One final paper (8-10 pages) providing the structure and the primary content of the long oral narrative;  as with the 4-6 page mythic retellings, this paper will be due before the related oral presentation.  Late papers are not acceptable.  One-half to two-thirds of this paper should concern the substance and points of emphasis of the oral narrative to be recited to the class, while one-third to one-half should comprise an analytical and theoretical discussion of the motifs and techniques to be employed in the presentation.  While students should not feel defensive about the narrative choices they make, they should be able to explain and to justify them.

8) Class participation and attendance;  attendance at evening film screenings and at the class Yule festival.

9) Yule tide was sacred in Northern Europe long before the coming of Christianity, and was often associated with rituals of rebirth, fire, and fertility;  what better way to bring a fruitful academic term to harvest?  Student participation in the final Yule festival will involve taking the place of the ancient scop—the Anglo-Saxon bard or  storyteller, first cousin to the Scandinavian skald—and presenting the final oral narrative described in number five (above) during a long evening of storytelling at the end of the term.  The stories themselves need not be traditional, but the techniques should be, and the setting—insofar as it is practicable—will be, and will include ritual elements such as feasting, sacramental fire, and the passing of the harp.  Traditional sacramental beverages will be absent however, due to contemporary strictures.

10) Revision is a crucial aspect of writing, and the structure of this course reflects that importance. The writing component of this course is concerned with acquiring and honing necessary compositional skills;  the primary objectives of such a course often become blurred by the hoop-jumping nature of the grading process, however, and my roles as a facilitator and as a more experienced writer within a community of writers become conflated with my role as evaluator of your work.  This does no one much good. I’d like to teach a course such as this one without grades, but that is impractical for a number of reasons. I have, instead, devised a system whereby grading in this course is structured around those things most important to the practice of writing: hard work, perseverance, and revision, revision, revision. I can’t promise everyone an “A” in this course, but I can promise that I have structured the grading system so that, if you complete all assignments on time, you do not miss class, and you always come prepared and willing to participate, you should earn a satisfactory grade, and you may improve this grade by revising the graded essays. You may revise these essays as many times as you like, and only the highest score of each will be averaged into your final grade. HOWEVER: You must submit each revised draft within ONE WEEK of the day you received the previous graded draft. Please refer to the handout on grading for a break-down of my expectations concerning an "A" essay, a "B" essay, etc.

11) Your portfolio is a complete and organized collection of all of your written work of the semester. It should reflect all of your activities as a writer and the exercise of compiling it is designed to impress upon you the nature of writing as an ongoing and fluid activity, and not as a series of static and unrelated assignments. You may certainly go above and beyond the stated minimum, but your portfolio MUST contain:  4 reaction papers, 2 short papers, 2 movie reviews, and your final long paper. In order to get ANY portfolio credit for an essay, ALL parts of that essay (earlier drafts, outline, etc.) MUST be in the portfolio;  also include any notes or materials from the oral presentations associated with your papers.  Penalties for missing or slapdash work will be assessed at my discretion. Be aware, however, that you may earn a few bonus points if your portfolio is particularly neat and contains extra items from class work or your own work. Keep in mind that your portfolio should be a reflection of your work as a writer.

12) All aspects of this course must be completed in order to pass the course.

Preparation & Participation:

You are expected to be present, prepared, and ready to participate in each and every class period.

Exams:

There will be two exams; each exam will be divided into three sections:
 

• short-answer identifications;
• passage identifications;
• essay questions concerning major themes which we have discussed in class.

We will review before each exam, and the sort of material which you must know will be clearly indicated.