ENGL1040: Rewriting and Writing Back

Thursdays, 10.30am-12.20pm, Room CPD-3.01

Dr Haewon Hwang, School of English
Office 7.48, Run Run Shaw Tower
haewonh@mac.com

Course Schedule, First Semester 2017-2018

7 September: Welcome, Syllabus, Terms of Engagement

14 September: The Art of Imitation:

Nikolai Gogol, ‘Diary of a Madman’ and Lu Xun, ‘Diary of a Madman’
Short assignment topic given out.

18 September: ***Short Assignment due by 5pm***. Please submit a hardcopy to the

department office and upload a copy on Turnitin.

21 September The Novel:

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Excerpt)
Optional Secondary Reading: Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic
(Excerpt)
Recommended film adaptation: Jane Eyre (2011) Dir. Cary Fukunaga

28 September: The Prequel:

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

5 October: HOLIDAY: DAY AFTER MID-AUTUMN (NO CLASS)

12 October: Spaces of Protest:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

16-21 October: READING WEEK

(Please keep reading forward in the syllabus, especially Camus)

26 October: IN-CLASS EXAM (2 hrs)

2 November: Re-appropriating the Underground:

Richard Wright, ‘The Man Who Lived Underground’

9 November: Existential Crisis: Albert Camus, The Outsider

16 November: Rewriting the Classic:

The Outsider (cont’d) and Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation
Final essay question handed out.

20 November: ***Revised in-class essay due with the original essay attached.*** Please
submit the hardcopy of both to the department office and upload only
the revised version on Turnitin.

23 November: Postcolonial Parody or Pastiche?:

Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation
(Sign up for Consultations)
30 November: Final Re-Visions:
SETL Course Evaluations, finish discussion of The Meursault Investigation.
Strategies on the final essay, begin consultations.

14 December: FINAL ESSAYS DUE: Please upload a copy on Turnitin and submit a
hard copy to the department office by 5pm.

Course Objectives:
In this introductory course, we will study and explore the ways in which literary creativity and the practice
of writing are motivated and shaped by the reading of other texts. With close attention to texts from different
times and places, we will identify some of the major acts of rewriting by which authors have sought to
distinguish themselves ever since Virgil chose Homer as his model. Distinguishing between different modes
of rewriting such as allusion, imitation, parody, and deconstruction, we will examine their role in specific
contexts of literary production. Apart from considering the importance of rewriting in the formation and
critique of a literary canon, we will also link the ideas of intertextuality to larger ideas of modernism, post-
colonialism, and post-modernism in our readings.

Topics
 Influence and forms of rewriting
 Tradition and innovation
 Genre and text
 Intertextuality
 Textuality and action
 Authorship, ownership and community

Objectives
This course aims to expose and explore reading and writing as historical activities and the role of their
interplay in the shaping of traditions. It will provide students with a critical vocabulary for the analysis and
discussion of different forms of rewriting and offer them opportunities to explore intertextualites across a
wide variety of genres and literatures.

Organization
There will be two contact hours per week. Formal lectures will be supplemented by smaller group
discussions and presentations.

Assessments:
100 % coursework, consisting of:
1. In-class exam (20%)
2. One short assignment and revision of in-class essay (20%)
3. Final essay of 1200-1500 words (40%)
4. Class attendance, participation, presentations (20%)

Please note: Any assignments and papers that are late will be marked down 1/3 of a grade for each day
that it is late. For example, an A paper one day late will be an A-, two days late a B+, three days late a B,
etc. If there are any extenuating circumstances, please contact me as soon as possible. PLEASE MANAGE
YOUR DEADLINES. For your formal essays, one copy must be submitted electronically on Turnitin, AND
a hard copy must be submitted in class or in my box. You are responsible for both copies, and I cannot
accept any technological failure for late submission. If the Turnitin report states that more that 30% of your
essay is comprised of other sources, I would suggest that you go back to the essay and remove some quotes
or paraphrase some of your sources in your own words, while still footnoting them and attributing them to
their proper sources.

General:
One session a week on Thursdays from 10.30-12.20pm in Room CPD-3.01. The first hour of the session will
be a lecture, and the second hour will be for presentations and group readings.
Please do the pre-requisite reading as per schedule above. Additional secondary reading will also be
uploaded on Moodle. Students will also be assigned to do a small presentation in front of the class.

Readings:
As there is a long reading list, I encourage you to start reading the texts as soon as possible. Most materials
that are ‘Selections’ or ‘Excerpts’ will be available on Moodle, while the following texts are available at the
bookstore: PLEASE PURCHASE OR ORDER THESE COPIES AND EDITIONS IN ADVANCE AS
THE BOOKSTORE TENDS TO RUN OUT. Please try to use the same editions to facilitate discussions
in class, as having a different translation would make it difficult to follow pagination, quotations, etc. Please
obtain hard copies of the texts, as I do not allow technology in the classroom and tablets cannot be used for
your in-class exam on 26 October.

1. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin)

2. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Vintage)
3. Albert Camus, The Outsider (Penguin)
4. Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation (Other Press)

Expectations:
As with all your courses at HKU, I expect you to come to classes, prepared, and on time. I will take
attendance at every class, if only to get to know your names and faces more personally, but attendance is
quite important. Please let me know if you will be absent for a class for a particular reason and append a
medical note when necessary. Furthermore, I have a few personal requests. If you are more than 20
minutes late for a class, I strongly recommend you do not come into class, as it interrupts the flow of
discussion. You can re-join the discussion during the second hour after the break.

Finally, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING YOUR LAPTOPS, tablets, mobile phones or other
technological devices in my class especially during lecture, as I would rather look into your eyes, rather
than watch you check your emails and social media. There will be a short break between lecture and
discussion, when you can check your devices.

Presentations:
Although you can bring a short list of bullet points, please do not READ ALOUD from your paper. This is
more about interacting with the panel and the audience, so a more spontaneous discussion of your topic is
preferred. Ideally, you would only bring up your primary text with a few pages marked to discuss a passage
or two to support your ideas. Each presenter will be asked to come up with a discussion question to present
to the class the night before their presentation, which will be included in the handout for that day. The class
will have a chance to discuss your question and answer it, after which you will respond back to them and
also discuss your major points. You should aim for an interesting, thought-provoking question that is on a
specific topic or a theme that could elicit multiple responses.

Details:
Dr Haewon Hwang
Available for Consulations: Wednesdays and Thursdays by appointment only.
Office: Run Run Shaw Tower, Room 7.48; email: haewonh@mac.com
(Please use this email address for communication, as I do not frequently check the HKU email
address)

***Please be judicious with the use of email. If there is a question that another student can answer,
please have a partner in the class who is your first point of contact. Note that I will not respond
immediately to emails unless of an urgent nature.

Reading List:

Primary:
Nikolai Gogol, ‘Diary of a Madman’ (1835)
Lu Xun, 'Diary of a Madman’ (1918)
Excerpts from Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground (1864)
Richard Wright, ‘The Man who Lived Underground (1961)
Albert Camus, The Outsider (1942)
Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation (2013)

Recommended Secondary:
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial
Literatures. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973
-----. A Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford UP, 1975.
Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard
Howard. London: Vintage, 1988
Ricks, Christopher B. Allusion to the Poets. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Graham, Allen. Intertextuality. London: Routledge, 2000.
Linda Hutcheon, ‘Parody without Ridicule: Observations on Modern Literary Parody’ in Canadian Review
of Comparative Literature, 5 (1978), pp. 201-211.
Orr, Mary. Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts. Cambridge: Polity, 2003.
Madsen, Deborah. Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1994.
Knox, Bernard. Backing into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1994.
Cousins, A.D., and Peter Howarth, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
Burke, Sean, ed. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1995.
Eisner, Caroline, and Martha Vicinus, eds. Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2008.
Posner, Richard A. The Little Book on Plagiarism. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007.
Rose, Margaret A., Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-modern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993.