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43359
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Lecture-Discussion
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R
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1:00PM
-2:50PM
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W
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English Building
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Mahaffey, V
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- Part of Term:
- 1
- Date Range:
- 01/14/19-05/01/19
- Section Title:
- Irish Christian Comedy
- Section Info:
- Sophisticated Christian comedy is arguably rare everywhere but in twentieth-century Ireland, where it was also most dangerous. I plan to examine the burst of Christian comedies that began with John Synge's 1907 The Playboy of the Western World, emerging later in James Joyce's 1914 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and then structuring Finnegans Wake (1939), and culminating in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame (premiering in 1953 and 1957, respectively). Part of what is so interesting about Christian comedy is that it draws attention to the paradoxical and thereby humorous ways in which fictional stories can be true. To subject a religious story to comic treatment unveils the kinship between religious scripture and other forms of fiction; one might define scripture as a story designed to be so serious as to be beyond question. Religion, in fact, binds its believers to certain kinds of thought and behavior (religare means "to bind"). Comedy, in contrast, challenges the sufficiency (or questions the effects) of a given governing story; it unbinds. But comedy cannot challenge religious stories directly without danger of reprisal: censorship or banning of the work; excommunication or even death for the writer. Christian comedy aims not to dislodge sacred stories, but to stretch and multiply them by embedding them in the activities of everyday life. It meaningfully connects sacred truths with what I call "brutal" truths about the brevity and apparent randomness of mortal existence. Most importantly, because comedy is a form of affirmation, Christian comedies effectively affirm the coexistence of the sacred and the profane in an inclusive and dynamic way. They aim to form communities not of "chosen" people, but of all people, including (and sometimes starring) its reprobates. In this course, we will read selected essays about comedy and laughter, including attitudes towards laughter in religion. We will begin by reading a couple of Medieval Bible Plays, perhaps the Towneley Second Shepherds’ Play and The Chester Shepherds’ Play (Rob Barrett will attend this class and help guide our discussion). We will also take a look at Rabelais’ Pantagruel and selections from Erasmus. At this point, we will turn to the main subject of the course, Irish Christian comedy, and begin with Synge’s Playboy. We will then read Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, selections from Finnegans Wake, and end with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Endgame. Requirements for the course include one written/oral report (anything that will fit on one page, to be photocopied, distributed to the class, and read aloud), and several short explications of individual works (probably 3-5 explications). The main focus of the class is on the reading, and the explications are designed to sharpen and deepen the reader’s analytical focus.
- Restriction(s):
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Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
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