Crime and Punishment The most important things to read on this are ...

<strong>Crime</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Punishment</strong>
<strong>The</strong> <strong>most</strong> <strong>important</strong> <strong>things</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>read</strong> on this are Bakhtin, Problems of Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky's Poetics,
<strong>and</strong> you can supplement this with <strong>The</strong> Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin discusses carnival in
Rabelais <strong>and</strong> His World.
Make sure you underst<strong>and</strong> the following terms from Bakhtin: the polyphonic novel
heteroglossia, dialogism, as opposed <strong>to</strong> monologism, <strong>and</strong> carnival. <strong>The</strong>re are many good
studies of Bakhtin: you could try my own books on Literary Language <strong>and</strong> Narrative <strong>and</strong>
Ideology for a start.
Secondly, generally on Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky, <strong>read</strong> Freud's essay, "Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky <strong>and</strong> Parricide." Also,
a crucial little essay by Freud called “Criminals from a Sense of Guilt” makes connections
between D. <strong>and</strong> Nietzsche.
<strong>The</strong> best single book on D, <strong>and</strong> good for a start-off, is by Richard Peace, though I do not
think he is aware of Bakhtin. <strong>The</strong> best biography of D is by Joseph Frank, this is very
thorough, but he is very anti-Bakhtin.
For the best bibliography on D, look at the study of C <strong>and</strong> P by Gary Cox: <strong>Crime</strong> <strong>and</strong>
<strong>Punishment</strong>: A Mind <strong>to</strong> Murder (1990). Al<strong>most</strong> everything in the library on D will have a
section on this novel, <strong>and</strong> <strong>most</strong> <strong>things</strong> are worth <strong>read</strong>ing, but you will have <strong>to</strong> make up your
mind about how Christian <strong>and</strong> moralistic a work this is.
Some essay titles:
1. Compare Raskolnikov <strong>and</strong> Svidrigaylov: are these characters indeed doubles of each other,
as Svidrigaylov says (4.1.)?
2.Examine Raskolnikov's dreams. How do these illuminate the text for you?
3. Derrida says that "the power of narrative is the power of the police." Porfiry tries <strong>to</strong> impose
a narrative of events upon Raskolnikov: how far can you endorse that narrative, <strong>and</strong> how far
does <strong>Crime</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Punishment</strong> as a narrative contradict the narrative of the police?
4. Examine the relationships of Raskolnikov <strong>and</strong> Svidrigaylov <strong>to</strong> women. (This could be
linked with question 1).
5. Take one chapter that interests you from <strong>Crime</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Punishment</strong> <strong>and</strong> work through it
slowly, showing what is going on. Try <strong>to</strong> use Bakhtin <strong>to</strong> illuminate your <strong>read</strong>ing. (Perhaps
start with a passage from a chapter Bakhtin looks at).
6. Discuss the importance of confession in this novel. (Look at my book on this <strong>to</strong>pic: I have
written a few pages on Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky).
Nietzsche: (1844-1900) "<strong>The</strong> Genealogy of Morals" (1887)
To follow Nietzsche in this text, you need <strong>to</strong> underst<strong>and</strong> "ressentiment," <strong>and</strong> what Nietzsche
means by the idea of the triumph of Christianity as a slave religion as official bourgeois
culture <strong>and</strong> ideology; you need <strong>to</strong> underst<strong>and</strong> his sense of how memory has been constructed

<strong>to</strong> make the subject aware <strong>and</strong> responsible, <strong>and</strong> feeling guilty, <strong>and</strong> you need <strong>to</strong> underst<strong>and</strong> the
ascetic ideal. Any book that helps you on these will be valuable. Books I like on Nietzsche
include:
Alan White, Within Nietzsche's Labyrinth 1990
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche <strong>and</strong> Philosophy, 1983
Jacques Derrida, Spurs, 1972
Tracy B Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche <strong>and</strong> the Politics of Transfiguration 1988
See also my book on Confession, <strong>and</strong> Opera <strong>and</strong> the Culture of Fascism, both of which have
much <strong>to</strong> say about ressentiment <strong>and</strong> "<strong>The</strong> Genealogy of Morals."
<strong>The</strong>re is much else written on Nietzsche, of very varied quality. <strong>The</strong> comparisons with
Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky are <strong>important</strong>: N. <strong>read</strong> D <strong>and</strong> commented on him enthusiastically, as he also
liked "Carmen" very much. Use N. <strong>to</strong> <strong>read</strong> Dos<strong>to</strong>yevsky, but also use N <strong>to</strong> see how his ideas
illuminate the whole idea of reaction. A good essay on "<strong>The</strong> Genealogy of Morals" would ask
how the three essays link <strong>to</strong> each other: what is the logic that ties them all <strong>to</strong>gether.
Rimbaud
1854-91
<strong>The</strong> basic dates <strong>to</strong> remember are: 1. his meeting with Verlaine in September 1871 &emdash;
in the year of the Paris Commune (18 March &emdash; 28 May). 25,000 died in the fighting
in Paris in the last week of May. 2. His experiences with Verlaine in Paris <strong>and</strong> London in
1872, culminating with Verlaine shooting him in July 1873. That summer, he finished
"Season in Hell." Rimbaud continued writing, however, the poems called "Illuminations."
Essay question:
Rimbaud's "Season in Hell" is often regarded as his farewell <strong>to</strong> literature. Why did Rimbaud
feel that he wanted <strong>to</strong> say goodbye <strong>to</strong> literature &emdash; identifying this with bourgeois
culture?
"I is someone else" note the importance of the other person who speaks in the "Delirium"
poems.
A good essay question would be <strong>to</strong> explore the notion "Je est un autre."
<strong>The</strong>re is plenty of material on Rimbaud, not all of it easy, however, <strong>and</strong> you will have <strong>to</strong>
persevere with the French.
James Lawler: Rimbaud's theatre of the Self 1992
Nathaniel Wing: <strong>The</strong> Limits of Narrative 1986
Dee Reynolds, Symbolist Aesthetics <strong>and</strong> Early Abstract Art 1995
Kirsten Ross, Rimbaud <strong>and</strong> the Paris Commune, 1988
Svetlana Boym, Death in Quotation Marks 1991
You should try the following ideas:
Links between Rimbaud's sense of being cursed (maudit) with the sense of being Bohemian
<strong>and</strong> being like Raskolnikov, thinking of being a great criminal.

What does Rimbaud <strong>most</strong> dislike in contemporary bourgeois culture? (Beauty, women, talk
of degeneration &emdash; cp. the criminal, who was thought of then as criminal because he
was degenerate; the homosexual <strong>and</strong> the colonial other, or subject.)
How would you compare Rimbaud's critique of his age with Nietzsche's?
What is new in Rimbaud's poetry? How would you begin <strong>to</strong> compare it with Emily
Dickinson's?
Emily Dickinson
Born, 1830 at Amherst, Massachusetts; the oldest <strong>and</strong> <strong>most</strong> traditional part for settlement in
America, called "New Engl<strong>and</strong>." Most wrapped up in the past, <strong>and</strong> in Christianity, <strong>most</strong>
remote from black culture.
In 1855, the family moved <strong>to</strong> the house that she lived in till her death in 1886. Her brother,
Austin, married Susan Gilbert in 1856. <strong>The</strong> wife was ED's <strong>most</strong> valued female friend, <strong>and</strong> the
emotional intensity has often prompted discussion of lesbianism in Dickinson's work.
In 1858 <strong>and</strong> 1861, ED drafted letters <strong>to</strong> a mysterious "Master" who has not been identified,
<strong>and</strong> in 1861, seems <strong>to</strong> have had a crisis-year. From this time on, she became more <strong>and</strong> more
reclusive, <strong>and</strong> dressed in white:
- the colour of virginity, of purity
- of Miss Havisham, in Dickens’s Great Expectations
- the crisis-colour for America, since 1861-5 saw the Civil War <strong>and</strong> the question of the black
as an issue that would not go away. White is therefore the colour of obsession, or of
pathology: if she dressed in white, that might suggest that she was recognising, or responding
<strong>to</strong> a sickness in America; which affected American women, <strong>and</strong> also denied their desire.
- the colour of snow, of paper that has not been printed on (see the poem "Publication is the
auction" no. 709. Dickinson wants her work <strong>to</strong> remain like white paper.
On Dickinson, you should <strong>read</strong>:
S<strong>and</strong>ra Gilbert <strong>and</strong> Susan Gubar, <strong>The</strong> Madwoman in the Attic, 1979
John Cody, After Great Pain, 1971
Robert Weisbuch, Emily Dickinson's Poetry, 1975
Paula Bennett, Emily Dickinson, Woman Poet, 1991
Martha Nell Smith, Rowing in Eden: Re-<strong>read</strong>ing Emily Dickinson
(there is a large secondary literature on Dickinson. For the idea of the hymen, see the essay
by Geoffrey Hartman in "Criticism in the Wilderness," 1980.
For a Bibliography, see Judith Farr, ed. "Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays"
1996.
Note what there is not in ED's poetry:
No his<strong>to</strong>ry in the poems
No his<strong>to</strong>ry <strong>to</strong> be worked out from the poems: they seem <strong>to</strong> have no his<strong>to</strong>ry
No identifiable speaker.
No ranking, no selection, or ordering of the poems
No study of how <strong>to</strong> write, or comments on what she writes
No plot <strong>to</strong> the poems overall
No titles
No punctuation.

In a letter, ED said, "When I state myself, as the representative in the verse [that is, when the
word "I" appears], it does not mean me, but a supposed person."
Essay title:
Emily Dickinson's poetry seems <strong>to</strong> work by negatives. What have you found in the poetry <strong>to</strong>
challenge you?
You may find it helpful <strong>to</strong> compare ED with Charlotte Perkins Gilman, <strong>and</strong> with the
Bibliography on her.
<strong>The</strong> Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
(Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Some <strong>read</strong>ing suggestions for those interested in working further, or in writing, on this text.:
Ellen Moers, Literary Women 1977
Shari Bens<strong>to</strong>ck (ed.) Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship
Michelle A Massé In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism <strong>and</strong> the Gothic 1992
Diana Price Herndl, Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction <strong>and</strong>
Culture , 1840-1900 , 1993
Annette Kolodny, "A Map for Mis<strong>read</strong>ing," New Literary His<strong>to</strong>ry 11, 1980,
451-67.
Susan S. Lanser, "Feminist Criticism, "<strong>The</strong> Yellow Wallpaper" <strong>and</strong> the Politics of Color in
America" Feminist Studies 15.3. 1989, 415-41.
Novels behind <strong>The</strong> Yellow Wallpaper:
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847) <strong>and</strong> Villette (1853); Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1816)
Kate Chopin, <strong>The</strong> Awakening (1895) develops closely from Gilman's novella.
On the Gothic theme in nineteenth-century fiction:
S<strong>and</strong>ra Gilbert <strong>and</strong> Susan Gubar: <strong>The</strong> Madwoman in the Attic 1979
Juliann Fleenor, (ed.) <strong>The</strong> Female Gothic 1983
On ecriture feminine, see Ann Rosl<strong>and</strong> Jones, "Writing the Body: Towards an underst<strong>and</strong>ing
of l'ecriture feminine," in Elaine Showalter (ed.) <strong>The</strong> New Feminist Criticism, 1986 (an
ultimately hostile view of Helen Cixous, Luce Irigaray <strong>and</strong> Julia Kristeva, whose writings
may be found, initially, in <strong>The</strong> New French Feminisms ed. Elaine Marks <strong>and</strong> Isablle de
Courtivron, (1986).
On feminist criticism, see:
Toril Moi, Sexual / Textual Politics 1985
Pam Morris, Literature <strong>and</strong> Feminism 1994
Gayle Greene <strong>and</strong> Coppelia Kahn, Making A Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism 1985
You should also look up Gilman on the subject catalogue on the library computer, <strong>and</strong> for
more detailed work, look at the entry on mental illness <strong>and</strong> literature. For psychoanalysis, the

volume by Freud <strong>and</strong> Breuer, Studies on Hysteria (1895) is <strong>important</strong> background <strong>read</strong>ing: I
hesitate <strong>to</strong> recommend anything by Lacan, but his work provides an essential context.
<strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw
Henry James's short s<strong>to</strong>ry (call it a novella) was first published as a serial in a magazine in
1898 <strong>and</strong> then issued in book-form. It was revised ten years later for Henry James's definitive
edition of his books, <strong>The</strong> New York edition, with a Preface added. <strong>The</strong> Nor<strong>to</strong>n Critical
Edition of the novella prints it <strong>to</strong>gether with some older criticism; but good modern criticism
of it includes
Shoshana Felman, in Writing <strong>and</strong> Madness 1985. This essay first appeared in 1982 in the
journal Yale French Studies.
Ned Lukacher, Primal Scenes
Peter G Beidler, - anthology of criticism of the text. 1995. This reprints only part of Felman's
essay.
Terry Heller, <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw: Bewildered Vision 1989
T.J. Lustig, Henry James <strong>and</strong> the Ghostly 1994. See Bibliography.
Jeremy Tambling: Henry Jmaes: Critical Issues 2000
For a comparison with Freud on hysteria, <strong>and</strong> Freud's treatment of "Dora," one of the famous
analyses of Freud, which has been much commented on, see Paula Marantz Cohen, essay in
the journal Criticism 28, 1986, 73-87.
On Alice James <strong>and</strong> the hysteria in <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw see Oscar Cargill, in Kimbaugh's
Nor<strong>to</strong>n edition. Cargill also suggested that Freud <strong>and</strong> Brauer's "Studies on Hysteria"
influenced James.
On Alice James, her Diaries, <strong>and</strong> her letters are both available in the library; so are
biographies of the James family; including William James (philosopher, psychologist), <strong>and</strong>
Henry James. See the biographies by R.W. B. Lewis, by F.O. Matthiessen <strong>and</strong> of James'
father, by Alfred Habegger.
On hysteria in the 19th century, see Elaine Showalter, <strong>The</strong> Female malady; 1985; <strong>and</strong> her
essay in S<strong>and</strong>er L. Gilman (ed.) Hysteria Beyond Freud. <strong>The</strong> material on 19th century
hysteria is vast: see my notes on Emily Dickinson.
Other places where you might look for material on <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw would be American
Literature <strong>and</strong> Nineteenth Century Literature. <strong>The</strong>se are solid journals. <strong>The</strong>re is much other
material on James in the American literature section, <strong>and</strong> you should look at this.
<strong>The</strong> best idea for an essay would be <strong>to</strong> ask whether you think the ghosts are "real" or a feature
of the governess's hysterical imagination. <strong>The</strong> view that they are not real was first out
forward by Edmund Wilson in an essay called "<strong>The</strong> Ambiguity of Henry James" , <strong>The</strong> Triple
Thinkers.
Don't forget the frame-narrative: the question why the s<strong>to</strong>ry is <strong>to</strong>ld by Douglas. This could
make a good basis for an essay. <strong>The</strong> novella is basically au<strong>to</strong>biographical in form, but does
the governess think of herself as anything but absolutely normal? Are the children normal?
Don't forget the comparison with Jane Eyre <strong>and</strong> the "madwoman in the attic."

You could try a comparison between the issues of <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw <strong>and</strong> what Emily
Dickinson writes about: this would be very interesting. Other comparisons <strong>to</strong> be made would
be with Raskolnikov's state of mind; <strong>and</strong> you could think about the text as modernist, in that
it refuses <strong>to</strong> be interpreted: it is not clear what has happened in the text, <strong>and</strong> any attempt <strong>to</strong>
pin it down turns out <strong>to</strong> be impossible. In what ways is <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw a modernist
work? Or a feminist text? Or a text simply trying <strong>to</strong> cause a thrill? Or a text about the
corruption of children?
Death in Venice
We will look at this text via the film made by Luchino Visconti in 1971, starring Dirk
Bogarde, <strong>and</strong> with music from his 3rd <strong>and</strong> 5th Symphonies by Gustav Mahler. I recommend
that you also try <strong>to</strong> <strong>read</strong> the novella by Thomas Mann (1875-1955).
<strong>The</strong> difference in the film is that Aschenbach is made not a writer, as he is in the novella, but
a musician &emdash;specifically the Jewish composer of symphonies, who lived in Vienna,
Mahler (1860-1911). Much of the extra dialogue that the film puts in comes from Thomas
Mann's later novel, Doc<strong>to</strong>r Faustus, which is about an imaginary musician, partly based on
Nietzsche, <strong>and</strong> partly on Arnold Schoenberg, the Modernist composer. Schoenberg believed
that music should be a <strong>to</strong>tally intellectual structure, <strong>and</strong> devised a highly objective system of
writing, called the twelve <strong>to</strong>ne method, in order <strong>to</strong> present it. <strong>The</strong> film shows arguments
between Aschenbach <strong>and</strong> another musician who is supposed <strong>to</strong> be Schoenberg, but the
arguments are very difficult <strong>to</strong> follow. Basically, in this film, A., who goes <strong>to</strong> Venice <strong>to</strong>
recuperate from a nervous breakdown, <strong>and</strong> there falls in love with the Polish boy Tadzio, has
tried <strong>to</strong> write music that denies the emotions, <strong>and</strong> that is anti-sensual, because music
&emdash; such is the power of the devil in it; leads you back <strong>to</strong> sexuality, <strong>to</strong> the body, not
<strong>to</strong>wards some kind of higher sphere. A. is shocked <strong>to</strong> discover that when he is in Venice, his
emotions are released, <strong>and</strong> that they turn out <strong>to</strong> be homosexual in character.
<strong>The</strong> difference from the novella is great, however, for A in that is not a talented artist, though
this point is not easy <strong>to</strong> grasp, because the ironic structure of the writing conceals it, <strong>and</strong>
many <strong>read</strong>ers <strong>and</strong> critics of Mann take A. <strong>to</strong> be wholly genuine. I see him as bourgeois,
writing work that will flatter the bourgeoisie, <strong>and</strong> actually pro<strong>to</strong>-fascist &emdash; as
Germany was pro<strong>to</strong>fascist, before the take-over of power by the Nazi party in 1933. (See my
Opera <strong>and</strong> the Culture of Fascism (1996), which has some discussion of this <strong>and</strong> of the
novella.) <strong>The</strong> fascist writer makes some disturbing discoveries about himself in Venice, once
he lets go …
<strong>The</strong> novella may be regarded as a critique of both Germany <strong>and</strong> of Pla<strong>to</strong>nism, the idea that
there can be a sublimation (ie. diversion) away from sexuality. It may be a confessional text
(Mann may have something of Aschenbach in him). It may be also that the novella should be
regarded as the ultimate in modernism, like <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw &emdash; a parable
without a meaning, a s<strong>to</strong>ry which refuses <strong>to</strong> be interpreted. It has aroused continuous
interpretation, however, since it first appeared (1913); e.g. by D. H. Lawrence, who wrote an
early review, (<strong>and</strong> it was the first essay I wrote for publication, in New Universities
Quarterly, around 1981).
<strong>The</strong> film also includes aspects of Nietzsche. It keeps in the s<strong>to</strong>ry, derived from "Doc<strong>to</strong>r
Faustus" that N. deliberately infected himself with syphilis by visiting a brothel; it also plays
on the idea, which is also Nietzschean, that life has <strong>to</strong> be accepted in its <strong>to</strong>tality. It is therefore
anti the ascetic ideal. One poem that Nietzsche wrote, in Thus Spake Zarathustra appears in

the film, set <strong>to</strong> music by Mahler, as part of Symphony no. 3. See Zarathustra section 3
chapter 15.
<strong>The</strong> bibliography on Mann is huge. <strong>The</strong>re are some comments on the film in Donald
Mitchell's study of the opera of Death in Venice (by Benjamin Britten). <strong>The</strong> novel has been
twice translated in<strong>to</strong> English: see the new trans. by Clay<strong>to</strong>n Koelb (1994). Studies by T.J.
Reed, by Ursula W. Schneider, by Ilsedore B. Jonas, for instance, are useful; but you should
also try <strong>to</strong> make your own discoveries.
<strong>The</strong> essay subject on this would be <strong>to</strong> compare its methods as a novella with those of James,
or <strong>to</strong> relate it <strong>to</strong> <strong>The</strong> Genealogy of Morals, <strong>to</strong> ask about whether it affirms life or feels guilty,
<strong>and</strong> how you think the novella <strong>and</strong> the film compare. Or just try an interpretation of the text.