Histories of the Devil
(second semester, 2012-13)
Professor Jeremy Tambling
The course divides into two halves. In the first (which provides the texts for the essay), you should read:
Marlowe: Dr Faustus. (Please note: this exists in two recensions: the A and the B texts. You need to be aware of both: there are significant differences between these two. The Revels edition, ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, prints both.
Shakespeare: Richard III and Othello
James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
In addition, I will be discussing at least the following, Chaucer, The Friar’s Tale, Dante, Inferno canto 27 and Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, and his Illustrations to the Book of Job. These two weeks will include discussion of Milton, Paradise Lost books 1 and 2.
All these will be provided in the course booklet, as will other texts I hope to get in. The theoretical material, from Freud, and from Walter Benjamin, is also included.
In the second half, weeks 6-11, I will be discussing the following three texts:
Goethe: Faust parts 1 and 2. Penguin trans. by David Constantine.
Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov trans. Richard Pevear (Vintage). Please use this translation, as you will be unable to follow page-references without it.
Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus, trans. Helen Lowe-Porter (Penguin, and Vintage). (the trans. by John Wood is NOT recommended.)
You need to read Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann as soon as you can, and certainly before the classes. Read as much of Goethe as possible, but I shall teach it without making the assumption that you have read it beforehand; we shall go through it in the class.
In addition, I would dearly like to discuss Bulgakov, The Master and Marguerite. If there is any interest, I am happy to lay on another class, but it will not be examined.
The exam will require you to write about one of the Faustus texts (Marlowe, Goethe, Mann), though not necessarily as a full essay.
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