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BETWEEN THE BIBLE AND A BOOK

Philosophy 450: Philosophy of Literature

Dr. James Hatley
Phone: 677-5072 (O); 543-7635 (H)
Office: Philosophy House, 103
Office Hours: TO BE ANNOUNCED IN CLASS. Please make an appointment with me if you are unable to use the scheduled office hours.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Why do good people suffer? Why do the evil prosper? Why must the world be as it is? These questions lead many thinkers to the notion of theodicy, a justification of G-d’s ways—or the ways of the universe—in the face of human consternation with or affliction by Her/Him/it. Can we and should we justify the world as it is? To answer this question, we will begin by looking at how three different philosophers respond to Biblical Texts— in the case of Martin Buber, to The Book of Psalms, and in the case of Philip Nemo and Henry Bugbee, to The Book of Job—in order to reflect on the question or even desirability of theodicy. After this, we will turn to a series of literary texts—from drama to poetry to novels, in order to continue our conversation on this difficult yet compelling subject. In doing so, we will find the theme to be a complex one with many historical, cultural and religious implications. And we will hone our hermeneutical skills in interpreting a variety of literary genres from a series of religious and cultural traditions.

Since this is an enriched course being offered for four credits, students are required to engage in two extra-classroom projects. In the first students will break up into groups in order to put on a scene from one of the plays we will be reading in class. In the second, students will read an additional book on their own and then write a response to it in light of what they have learned in class over the semester. This second project will require the student to keep a reading journal of at least a page a week for the entirety of the course.

REQUIRED TEXTS

AA Tony Kushner: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

GE Martin Buber: Good and Evil

RBJ Henry Bugbee: “A Reading of the Book of Job” Henry Stories

JEE Phillippe Nemo: Job and the Excess of Evil (with additional essays by Emmanuel Levinas and Michael Kigel)

KL William Shakespeare: King Lear

PaPl Sarah Ruhl: Passion Play, a Cycle Play

PC Paul Celan: 3 Poems

PuPa Cynthia Ozik: The Puttermesser Papers

Required Background Reading

The Book of Job

The Book of Psalms

The Gospel of Matthew

JPS—Hebrew/English Tanach (with Hebrew text aside English)

Additional Required Text for Individual Project—Choose One Sophocles Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone Marge Piercy He, She, It Nathaniel Hawthhorne The Scarlet Letter Samuel Beckett Endgame and Waiting for Godot Herman Melville Moby Dick Isaac Bashevis Singer Satan at Goray, or Enemies: A Love Story Eli Wiesel Night David Grossman See Under: Love Jane Hamilton A Map of the World Wendell Berry Sabbath Poems Jerzy Kozinsky The Painted Bird Stephen Mitchell A Book of Psalms, Adapted from the Hebrew Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres Leslie Marmon Silko Ceremony Louise Erdrich Love Medicine, or Four Souls, or Tracks Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being Fydor Dosteyevsky The Brothers Karamazov David James Duncan The Brothers K Albert Camus The Plague Toni Morrison Beloved Khaled Hosseini The Kite runner Orhan Pamuk Snow Chaim Potok My Name is Asher Lev

GRADING

Weekly Questions (10) 20%

Response Papers (3) 36%

Oral/Dramatic Interpretation of Play 10%

Class Presentations (3) 09%

Individual Response Paper 10%

Reading Journal 10%

Participation 05%

ASSIGNMENTS

Weekly Reading Questions will be turned in by the student ten times during the semester. This assignment requires that you respond in a short essay a typewritten page in length to a question given the week before about a reading we will be discussing that day in class. Your short essay must be turned in at the beginning of the class in which the reading is to be discussed. You should bring two copies of this assignment to class--one to turn in and the other to help with your notes and to share with the class, if called upon.  If you turn in reading questions after the day they are due, the best grade you can receive is a C.

Response Papers: Response papers are the principal manner in which your grade will be determined. They will be assigned roughly every four weeks and require that you write a four page essay in which you will respond thoughtfully to a question pertaining to what we have been reading and discussing in class. A response paper should make use of citations from the text(s) appropriate to the question to be answered. In a response paper you are to give reasons for any position you take. The question "Why?" should always be in the back of your mind as you write.

Individual Response Paper: You will write an additional response paper on a literary work you have undertaken to read outside of class. It will be due during finals week at the end of the semester.

Reading Journal: In the reading journal, you will reflect on the class discussions and lectures in order to assess how they affect or illuminate your understanding of the work of literature you have chosen for your individual reading project. At least one typewritten page must be written weekly. They will be reviewed twice during the semester and then again at the end of the semester.

Oral/Dramatic Interpretation of Play: You will work with a group of your fellow students to put on a scene from one of the plays we will be reading in class this semester. You will be required to put on the scene outside of class in a public space (in the lounge at the student center, in the red square, at a philosophy society meeting, etc.) sometime during the course of the semester.

Class Presentation: Three times during the semester each student will lead a discussion of the questions assigned for that week in class. This will occur on Tuesday, the first day the class meets every week. The student serving as the discussion leader will have written out her or his answers to the questions for that week beforehand and will be prepared to share those answers in order to invite other student’s to participate in the discussion. The student should also come up with two additional questions that students and professor should consider. We will begin our discussion with these questions by the student.

STUDENT WRITING CENTER: At the University Writing Center at Herb’s Place, trained consultants are ready to help you at any stage of the writing process. It is often helpful for writers to share their work with an attentive reader, and consultations allow writers to test and refine their ideas before having to hand papers in or to release documents to the public. In accordance with Salisbury University’s mission to foster a student-centered learning community, the writing center is a student-centered place; therefore, visits are not mandatory. However, all undergraduates are encouraged to make use of this important student service.

HONOR CODE: Each written assignment should be accompanied by the following statement, dated and signed by the student: “This assignment was completed honorably by me and is my own work.”

Weekly Themes, Readings, Assignments, etc.

WEEK ONE (): Writing in the Shadow of the Bible

Readings: Three Poems by Paul Celan, Psalm 104, Book of Psalms

Reading Questions: (due Thursday,):

WEEK TWO (): The Drama in the Book of Psalms of the Good Soul confronting Evil in the World

Readings: Good and Evil, Book of Psalms

Reading Questions:

WEEK THREE (): The Suffering of the Individual Human—A Philosophical Approach to the Book of Job

Readings: The Book of Job; Job and the Excess of Evil, 1-41

Reading Questions: 1) Describe what Nemo terms the “repulsive” reading of the Book of Job. Do you agree with his assessment of this reading? Why or why not?; 2) Describe the different aspects of anxiety Job feels. Which is the most crucial and why?

WEEK FOUR (): The Sting of Evil

Readings: The Book of Job; Job and the Excess of Evil, 81-112

Reading Questions: 1) Explain what Nemo means when he claims: “The evil that Job suffers is eternalized.” (p.99) Why is eternity a much more difficult issue than is death for Job and Nemo? 2) What does Nemo mean in Chapter Four (“The Intention” by the “Giver”?

Assignment: First Response Paper Due: Compare and Contrast Paul Celan’s poem “Psalm” to Psalm 73, as analyzed by Martin Buber. In each case the text has to do with the struggle of a soul to make sense of a world fraught with cruelty and arrogance, in which evil-doers are even given leave to eat the good, “as if they were bread.” Which Psalm do you think more truthfully sets out the case for the soul’s struggle with evil? Support your conclusion. Feel free to make reference to Celan’s poem “Death Fugue,” as well as to other psalms discussed by Buber, in making your case. 3 plus pages.

WEEK FIVE (): An Answer (sort of) to Evil

Readings: The Book of Job; Job and the Excess of Evil, 112-182

Reading Questions: 1) What does Nemo mean by “faith” and how is it the “fruit of the excess of evil”?; 2) What is the structure of revelation in Job, according to Nemo? What does Nemo mean, do you think, by “revelation”?; 3) Do you agree or disagree with Nemo’s depiction of G-d? Why or why not?

WEEK SIX (): A Taoist Inflection to the Book of Job

Readings: Henry Bugbee on the Book of Job Henry Stories

Reading Questions: 1) What does Bugbee mean by the impersonality of the rose and the rain? How can this impersonality be a good? 2) What does Bugbee say about the issue of Justice in Job?

Assignment: Second Response Paper Due

WEEK SEVEN (): A Retelling of Job in a Pagan Key

Readings: King Lear

Reading Questions: 1) How does the fool seek to instruct Lear? Is this instruction helpful? How is it similar to or different from the instruction Job receives from the four comforters?; 2) What grave error, in your estimation, does Lear make that leads to his affliction? Can he be said to deserve what he suffers? Why or why not?; 3) Would you want Lear to come visit you, if her were your father? Why or why not? What obligations do we owe a parent and why?; 4) Rather than being betrayed by G-d (actually the g-ds, since Lear is a pagan king), Lear seems more betrayed by his own family? Is that betrayal worse? Why or why not?

Assignment: First Six Pages of Reading Journal Due

A Good Article on Typological Readings in the Christian Tradition

WEEK EIGHT (): A Retelling of Job in a Pagan Key

Readings: King Lear, Biblical Lear I Biblical Lear II

Reading Questions: 1) Both Gloucester and Lear have moments of Jobian affliction and Jobian illumination. Briefly, compare and contrast the experience of these two figures in regard to their affliction and illumination; 2) In what way does Lear’s final illumination concerning his affliction either further or abandon the illumination of Job at the end of the Book of Job?; 3) In what way does Tom O’Bedlam instruct Lear about affliction? In what way is her similar to and in what way is her different from the four comforters of Job?

WEEK TEN (10/29, 31): A Retelling of Christ’s Passion as a Retelling of a Retelling of Job in a Contemporary, Genocidal Key

Reading: A Passion Play, The Gospel of Matthew, Play

Reading Questions: 1) What is the significance of the cycle of passion plays that is the subject of this play? What comes of the playwright locating the play in three different historical eras? 2) Pick either 2a or 2b. 2a: The Passion Play traditionally is about the suffering of Christ on the cross to save humankind from its universal perversion through sinfulness. In this manner, the Christian Passion, according to Christians, more deeply resolves the issues of suffering raised in Job. Do you think the Christ(s) in this play is/are in keeping with this understanding? Why or why not? In answering, consider whether there might be a difference between the role of Christ and the man playing this role. OR 2b: The role of Violet is not one normally considered part of the traditional Passion Play. She exists on the margins of the plays we read about here. How does her presence affect the meaning of the passion plays being performed in this cycle?; 3) Do you think this is mainly a Christian play, a Jewish play, a Biblical play? Or something more than any of these?

A Passion Play: Arena Stage Production

Review of A Passion Play

WEEK ELEVEN (11/5, 7): A Retelling of the Golem as a Retelling of a Retelling of Job in a Contemporary, Civic Key

EXPERT QUESTONS: Echeverria, Floriana; Garner, Robert Scott; Hauck, Matthew Brian

Reading: The Puttermesser Papers, Parts 1 and 2

Reading Questions: 1) Why does Puttermesser construct the Golem? In what way does this motivation relate to the Book of Job?; 2) What characters in the Puttermesser Papers (so far) resemble those in Psalm 12 who speak with a double heart?; 3) Is Puttermesser wiser or in despair or both by the end of the Golem episode? Why or why not?

Assignment: First 10 Pages of Reading Journal Due

WEEK TWELVE (11/12, 14): NO CLASSES! MEET AND WORK IN PERFORMANCE GROUPS.

WEEK THIRTEEN (11/19): Continued discussion of Part I of Puttermesser Papers:

First Set of Expert Questions will be discussed in class: Echeverria, Floriana; Garner, Robert Scott; Hauck, Matthew Brian

Reading: The Puttermesser Papers, First Two Sections

Reading Questions: 1) Discuss the relationship of Xanthippe the Golem to Puttermeser--how does each side of this relationship illuminate the character of the other entity?; 2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of the philosophical life according to the Golem section of the Puttermesser Papers? Do you agree with this assessment?

Assignment: Second Response Paper Due: Compare and contrast the personage of Job in The Book of Job with the characters of Gloucester and Lear in King Lear. In doing so, develop how each is devastated by infinition/transcendence and how each becomes a prototype for a notion of repentance and redemption. Pay attention to how each character or personage makes an argument concerning the significance of his suffering and how that argument is transformed in a moment of redemption. Discuss the appearance vs. the evident non-appearance of G-d as an announcement that is transcendent. Finally, argue whether Lear or the Book of Job is the truer account of the human situation. In doing so, take stock of how your preference relates to the manner in which you would understand and live out the significance of your own human existence, particularly in regard to the suffering you confront within it. Biblical Lear I Biblical Lear II

WEEK FOURTEEN (11/26, 28): A Retelling of the Golem as a Retelling of a Retelling of Job in a Contemporary, Civic Key

Reading: The Puttermesser Papers, Remainder of the Novel

Expert Questions: Jackson, Calvin; John, Zachary Candler; Kunkel, Joseph Richard; Lewandowski, Marcin Marek , Miller, Ryan Scott; Myers, Jessica Leigh; Newell, Hilary Gooden; Rivera-Pratts, Jessica Marie; Ruoff, Alexander James, Schaffer, Amber Lauren; Wayne, Alison Paige

Reading Questions: 1) What might be argued are the strengths and weaknesses of the artistic perspective on a life, in light of the third section of the Puttermesser Papers?; 2) Compare and contrast Puttermesser's vision of Gan Edyn in the first paper and the revelation of Pardes (Paradise) in the final section of The Puttermesser Papers.; 3) How might Buber's thoughts on Psalm 73 find some significance in the final events of Puttermesser's life?

WEEK FIFTEEN (12/2, 4): Performances and Discussion. Return to A Passion Play for a more detailed discussion.

Reading Questions: Self-assigned

Play Performances: Wednesday in Class

FINALS WEEK

Assignment: 15 Pages of Reading Journal Due

Assignment: Third Response Paper Due Starting with the book you have been reading this semester, discuss how it might be interpreted as a response to the questions raised in the Book of Job and in the Psalms about the significance of suffering, repentance, conversion and redemption. Keeping Nemo’s analysis of Job in mind, in what manner does suffering become an excess, an evil in your book? What are the different strategies adopted by differing characters to responding to this evil? Does a particular response of a central character in your book renew or redeem her or his life? In what way do you find the infinite being given or refused a voice in the book’s language and story? In what manner does the book either present a theodicy or engage in a critique of it? Finally, reflect, given your experience this semester, on the difference between reading a book as literature and as (religious) revelation. Does your book ask for both manners of reading? Do you feel comfortable in engaging in both manners of reading? Why or why not?

This paper should be at least 5 pages long. It MUST be sent to me VIA EMAIL in WORD FORMAT (.doc) by NOON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14^th. Since I will be out of town on that date, I will NOT be able to pick up any hard copies of your paper in my mail box.