ENGL W3840x - "Military Literature and the Poetics of the Warrior“."

Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die...

Ladies and gentlemen:

Please be advised that Professor Marianne Giordani will be offering a seminar on military literature in Fall 2011. The course should meet the English and Comparative Literature requirements for British poetry before 1800. Prof. Giordani is especially interested in the potential classroom contributions of current student veterans. Besides teaching at Columbia, she is also an instructor at John Jay College, where she serves as faculty advisor for the John Jay Veterans Association (JJVA).

Early registration begins in a couple of weeks, and instructions about applying for the instructor’s permission to enroll are posted on the English and Comparative Literature webpage. The course will be capped at 25 students, so if you wish to participate, please be advised that you should contact Prof. Giordani early.

Below follows the course description:

MILITARY LITERATURE: POETICS OF THE WARRIOR 

FALL 2011

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

ENGL W3840x:  Military Literature: Poetics of the Warrior

SEMINAR, 4 POINTS

WEDS, 6:10-8PM

PROF. MARIANNE GIORDANI (mg2644@columbia.edu)

     This is a course of distinguished literature about military warfare and warriors. Its premise goes to the intersecting criteria, literary and military, where in poetry, oratory, and history of the disciplines of war and of discourse converge, compete, and vie together for excellence—imaginatively, affectively, formally, and consequentially—in mutual contest against annihilation and despair.  Homer’s Iliad heads the list of seminal and exemplary works selected largely from Greek, Anglo-Saxon, English mediaeval and early modern sources, and a few by eminent18^th- and 19^th - century military historians and memoirists, mostly American and British. Except for gems of martial clarity by such literary-minded commanders as Patton, and but for another possible exception mentioned below, 20^th-century and current subjects shall not be included, if only to avoid the thinness of a too broadly hammered theme, and because our inquiry, hopefully, shall lay a groundwork for subsequent courses covering those periods.

     Even so, the readings are historically broad enough to prove the range of virtues, precepts, codes and rules of military character, engagement, and performance—likewise the compass of mythic and practical registers for depiction. Thereby our aesthetic and rhetorical analysis shall decipher a framework of poetical and pragmatic tensions, of how in literature the practical perspective of soldiering is yet informed by and in turn complements the aesthetically enhanced ideas of literary warfare and the cultivated warrior, with their broader social, moral, and religious appeal, such as conceived in the ideals of Greek arête, Christian chivalry, and the European-influenced bushidō of Japan—broader despite the manifestly elite warrior class they typify.

     Yet the visionary, affective, and virtuosic discourse on warfare also excels in ways quite apart from the cultivation of such ideals, so that questions addressed to the closeness or disparity of the practical soldier and the poetic one, and to what extent the latter indeed elevates and inspires the former’s conception of himself in times of war and peace, are questions that differ in kind from those that address the immediate and sublime effects of both the conventional and the ingenious accomplishments of  literary form and style in treating military subjects.  Hence, we might ask, for instance, how the poet’s aesthetically controlled narration of battle—aptly depicted, in Milton’s rendering of the origin of epic poetry, as heroic tales sung in Pandemonium by the defeated angel-warriors whose poetically conceived “harmony suspended hell”—regains the field of conflict, if only internally, with coherent images of chaos, restoring to the military mind its vision of united purpose, preparation, and execution, which yet might be turned externally into action.

       Additionally, because the historical range covered encompasses the conflicting perspectives of natural and revealed religion (a conflict hinted at in Milton’s conception of the heroic referred to above), as conveyed in the opposed military outlooks, antique and modern, heroic and knightly, this course shall no doubt raise questions about which we can only speculate for answers, in surmising about the dual heritage at the root of our own contemporary disagreements over the proper and effective way to organize, select, and cultivate soldiers for war, the significant political and ideological variants that influence both military culture and  arguments about what constitutes just and effective warfare, jus ad bellum and jus in bello.   

     Finally, though also from the contemporary perspective we bring to traditional texts, I expect we shall derive from our canonical sources topics and categories of inquiry that can be translated into effective criteria for an expanded range of readings, hence to raise questions that shall lay grounds for a comprehensive curriculum of military-literary study, including contemporary works. For that reason, it would be desirable, time permitting, to conclude this study with a popular work of military fiction, memoir, or reportage from our own time, and to read it against the backdrop of our traditional sources. Though I shall have a list of suggestions to fall back upon for that, students should compile a list of their own and prepare to argue premises for selecting a title.

     Given my own limitations and gaps in knowledge, especially at this stage of envisioning the range of possibilities for military literature as a discipline of study,  and given my wish for students to participate fully in conceiving those possibilities, this course welcomes not only the novice whose interest is avid but the student already knowledgeable about military topics in both literature and history, as well as the student, who, having served in the armed forces, can bring to the seminar table a contemporary military perspective and the fruits of practical wisdom.

Very best,

Matthew Bishop
Vice President