English C120
Charles Knight
Wheatley 6030
Office hrs: M,W,F: 12:30-1:30; M: 5:00-6:00
Telephone: 287-6723
E-mail: charles.knight@umb.edu
Core C120: Controversy: Salman Rushdie and The
Satanic Verses
Texts:
Thomas W. Lippman, Understanding Islam (Meridian)
Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (Granta,
1992) [Cited as IH]
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (Owl [Holt])
The Rushdie File, ed. Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland (Syracuse,
1990) [Cited as File]
Xeroxed packet of readings (available at the Wheatley copy store; cited as
Packet).
Websites:
A general website on Rushdie, with useful links (some outdated) is http://www.crl.com/~subir/rushdie.html
An excellent set of notes on The Satanic Verses, with many interesting
links, is http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/
I. Rushdie as Indian and British Writer
The purpose of this section is to introduce Rushdie as a public literary figure concerned with issues that will emerge as crucial both in The Satanic Verses and in the reactions it brought on: the relationship between colonial and colonized cultures, especially as reflected in the immigrant experience; the function of literature to explore the tensions between these cultures; the political nature and implications of literature; the relative significance of the word (Rushdie's novel) and human life (the fatwa); and Rushdie's 1991 reflections on his own experience.
Monday, January 29. Introductions.
Wednesday, January 31. “Imaginary Homelands” (IH, 9-21); “‘Commonwealth Literature’ does not Exist” (IH 61-70)
Friday, February 2. “The New Empire within Britain” (IH, 129-38); “Outside the Whale” (IH, 87-101).
II. The Islamic Background
Islam is a long and complicated tradition that cannot be adequately studied in a single course, much less a few classes. But it is important to encounter it sympathetically and on its own terms before seeing Rushdie's treatment of it and the various claims made for it by supporters and opponents of the fatwa.
Monday, February 5. Thomas W. Lippman, Understanding Islam, ch. 1. Paper 1 due (on Rushdie as Anglo-Indian writer).
Wednesday, February 7. Lippman, ch. 2. Conferences on Paper 1 (February 7-14)
Friday, Febraury 9. Lippman, ch. 3.
Monday, February 12. Lippman, ch. 4.
Wednesday, February 14. Lippman, chs. 5, 7.
III. The Satanic Verses: A Novel of Conflict and Controversy
Rushdie's novel is long (561 pp.) and complicated, and it needs to be seen initially in its own terms. It seeks to intertwine a number of themes--the tension between doubt and faith, the conflict of religious literalism with the figurations of art, the distortions of the immigrant experience, as seen from various points of view, the unstable nature of human identity; and the relationships among one's country, one’s religion (or lack of it), one's family, and one's sexuality. It presents a difficult and variegated surface, written in a variety of accents and dialects; it is often quite funny but often repulsive and often opaque. It is about immigrants encountering a foreign culture, in terms of which they must rethink their own. But for many of us, to read The Satanic Verses is itself to encounter a foreign culture. What connections are there between the novel and reading the novel? Study questions on the novel will form the basis for discussion.
Friday, February 16. The Satanic Verses. I. The Angel Gibreel (pp. 3-10): Reading The Satanic Verses. Study Questions 1.
Monday, February 19. Holiday,
Wednesday, February 21. I. The Angel Gibreel (11-32).
Friday, February 23. I. The Angel Gibreel (33-89).
Monday, February 26. II. Mahound (93-129). Study Questions 2. Paper 2 due (on Section I).
Wednesday, February 28. III. Ellowen Deeowen (133-61). Study Questions 3.
Friday, March 2. III. Ellowen Deeowen (162-208)
Monday, March 5. IV. Ayesha (211-247). Study Questions 4.
Wednesday, March 7. Discussion of The Satanic Verses I-IV. Paper 3 due (on Section II or III).
Friday March 9. V. A City Visible but Unseen (251-279). Study Questions 5.
Monday, March 12. V. A City Visible but Unseen (279-304).
Wednesday, March 14. V. A City Visible but Unseen (305-30)
Friday, March 16. V. A City Visible but Unseen (330-67)
Monday, March 26. VI. Return to Jahilia (371-407). Study Questions 6. Paper 4 due (on Section IV or V).
Wednesday, March 28. VII. The Angel Azreel (411-451). Study Questions 7.
Friday, March 30. VII. The Angel Azreel (451-84)
Monday, April 2. VIII. The Parting of the Red Sea (pp. 487-521). Study Questions 8. Paper 5 due (on Section VI or VII).
Wednesday, April 4. IX. The Wonderful Lamp (pp. 525-61). Study Questions 9.
Friday April 6. Concluding discussion of The Satanic Verses.
IV. Critical Responses
We may read reviews and articles about a recent text to decide whether to read it, but we also read them to check our reactions against those of more expert readers. The readings combine efforts to interpret the novel with early expressions of appreciation or hostility.
Monday, April 9. Initial Reviews and Hostile Reactions.
Nisha
Puri, “Magnificent Puzzle” (File 8-9);
D.J.
Enright, “So, and not so” (File 10-15);
Robert
Irwin, “Original Parables,” Times Literary Supplement (September 30,
1988):
106
(Packet);
Syed
Ali Ashraf, “Nihilistic, negative, satanic” (File 18-21).
Paper
6 due (on Section VIII or IX).
Wednesday, April 11
Salman
Rushdie, Interview, Bandung File (File 21-25);
Salman
Rushdie, “An open letter to the Indian prime minister” (File 34-36);
Syed
Shahabuddin, “You did this with satanic forethought, Mr. Rushdie” (File
37-41).
Conference on Papers 2-6
(April 11-18).
Friday April 13. Reactions in Britain: The Bradford Burning.
U.K.
Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (File 46-48);
M.H.
Faruqi, “Publishing sacrilege is not acceptable” (File 48-49);
"Furious
Muslims to stage mass protest" (File 53-54)
Aziz
al-Azmeh (File 57-61)
Islamic
Defense Council, “Memorandum of Request” (File 64-66).
V. Reactions and Evaluations: Framing the Debate
The course ends with an effort to define a series of issues and positions, from the view that Rushdie's blasphemy deserves death, through the attitudes that the death penalty is inappropriate even though the novel is blasphemous, that the novel, by offending many believers, is a betrayal of the causes of multiculturalism and toleration that Rushdie himself supported, that there must be no limitation on free speech and the novel should be published even though many find it offensive, to the claim that the novel is a thoughtful and open, if troubling, exploration not only of religion but of modern culture generally and that it is not essentially hostile to Islam. Students will be asked to explore these (or similar) positions, to see them in relation to other positions, and to develop arguments about them with appropriate references to readings in the course. What makes this exercise hard to do, but what also makes the topic valuable as an instance of controversy, is the impossibility of compromise among the positions, certainly at the extreme ends of the spectrum, and the consequent need of anyone taking a position to make a conscious decision to give certain values priority over others. The situation is also complicated by the possibility that when different issues come into focus, the puzzled viewer is likely to feel sympathetic to different values, so that an individual who values free speech may at the same time be hostile to the mockery of religious beliefs.
Monday, April 16. Patriot’s Day holiday.
Wednesday, April 18. The Charge of Blasphemy.
Shabbir
Akhtar, “Art or Literary Terrorism?” Ch. 2 of Be Careful with Muhammad!
The
Salman Rushdie Affair! (London: Bellow, 1989) (Packet).
Leonard
W. Levy, “The Rushdie Affair: Should All Religions be Protected or None?” in
Blasphemy:
The Verbal Offense against the Sacred from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New
York:
Knopf, 1993) 551-67 (Packet).
Conferences
on Papers 2-6 (April 12-19).
Friday, April 20. No class.
Monday, April 23. The Fatwa. File 68-129.
Wednesday April 25. Defending Rushdie.
Edward
W. Said, File 64-66;
Tzvetan
Todorov, “The Satanic Verses in Paris,” Dissent (Winter 1990):
97-100 (Packet).
Friday, April 27. East and West and
the Sacredness of Texts
Fethi
Benslama, “Rushdie, or the Textual Question,” in For Rushdie: Essays by Arab
and
Muslim
Writers in Defense of Free Speech (New York: George Braziller, 1994) 82-91
(Packet).
Monday, April 30. Rushdie's
Responses (1).
“In
God We Trust,” in Imaginary Homelands 376-92;
“In
Good Faith,” in Imaginary Homelands 393-414.
Wednesday, May 2. Rushdie’s
Responses (2).
“Is
Nothing Sacred?” in Imaginary Homelands 415-29;
“One
Thousand Days in a Balloon” in Imaginary Homelands 430-39.
Paper 7 due (on issues in the
controversy).
Friday, May 4. Sorting Out the Issues. Topics for the Final Paper.
Monday, May 7. The Issue of Free Speech.
File
194-212;
Jeremy
Waldron, “Too Important for Tact,” Times Literary Supplement (March 10,
1989):
248,
260 (Packet);
Peter
Jones, “The Satanic Verses and the Politics of Identity,” in Reading
Rushdie:
Perspectives
on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie, ed. M.D. Fletcher (Amsterdam and Atlanta,
Georgia:
Rodopi, 1994) 321-33 (Packet).
Conferences on the final
paper. (May 7-16)
Wednesday, May 9. Writing the Final Paper: What to do before writing.
Friday, May 11. Writing the Final Paper: Using sources.
Monday, May 14. Coming to Conclusions.
Milan
Kundera, "The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh," in Testaments
Betrayed
(New York: Harper Collins, 1995) 1-33 (Packet).
Bhikhu
Parekh, "The Rushdie Affair and the British Press," in The Salman
Rushdie
Controversy
in Interreligious Perspective, ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok (Lewiston, NY: Edward
Mellen,
1990) 71-95 (Packet).
Wednesday, May 16. What does the Rushdie controversy teach us?
Wednesday, May 23. Final Paper due (on an issue in the controversy).
Papers (in addition to these brief descriptions, I may hand out additional instructions for particular papers):
Paper 1: Write a brief analysis of one of the first four essays we have read. In all of them, Rushdie is concerned with the problems and possibilities of a writer from the former British colony. The issues involve politics, language, race, cultural identity, and perhaps others you will find important. What are the principal issues with which Rushdie is concerned in the essay you are discussing? What is his position on these issues? Your essay should be about 3 pages (750 words). It is due Monday, February 5.
Papers 2-6. Papers 2 through 5 should be short, 2-page (500-word) responses to one of the study questions for the sections of The Satanic Verses. Paper 2 should deal with a question on Section 1 and is due on February 26; Paper 3 should deal with a question on Section 2 or Section 3 and is due on March 7; Paper 4 should deal with a question on Section 4 or Section 5 and is due on March 26; Paper 5 should deal with a question on Section 6 or Section 7 and is due on April 2; Paper 6 should deal with a question on Section 8 or Section 9 and is due on April 9. Grades for these papers will be based on what they have to say about the questions. Feel free to send to papers to me by e-mail (at the address at the top of this syllabus).
Paper 7: Sorting out the issues. A number of controversial issues are involved in the debate over Rushdie's novel. Make a list of at least five issues that might be appropriate as topics for a final paper, and write a few sentences describing each of the issues you list. I will compose a master list based on the topics suggested. Due May 2.
Paper 7: Arguing a position. By the end of the course we should have identified a number of problematic issues, as well as a number of positions attacking, tolerating, defending, or championing The Satanic Verses, its publication, and its author. Identify an issue that seems to you important, showing how and why it is controversial. Argue your own position, taking care to locate it in relationship to the other positions, and citing material read in class where appropriate to your argument. 5-10 pages, due May 23 (in lieu of a final examination).
Comments:
Attendance and participation are important elements of the course. I will take roll for the first third of the course, or until I get to know your names; do not assume I no longer care about your attendance just because I can tell you are absent without reading your name. A particularly useful way of participating is by asking questions about the material. Even questions that may seem dumb to you can be very useful to me in illustrating areas where students may have problems and in raising issues of importance. I value your participation.
Papers are the major measure of your work in the course and the central element of the final grade. The most frequent cause of failure in the course is missing papers. Papers should be typed and handed in when due. I make every effort to hand back papers, with my commentary, within a week after they are due. I cannot promise to hand back late papers promptly. Because the reading of The Satanic Verses involves a series of short papers, the consequences of falling behind can be very serious. I will schedule conferences with each of you after the first paper, after the sequence of papers on sections of The Satanic Verses, and before the final paper. In these conferences we will go over your papers and discuss your progress in the course; most of the teaching of writing in the course will take place in conferences, and, like the paper comments, it will be directed towards my sense of your particular needs. Conferences are also a good occasion for you to raise questions and issues you would rather not discuss in class. But please also use my office hours (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 12:30 to 1::30, and Monday from 5:00 to 6:00) to discuss with me any aspect of the course and your work.
The final grade will be based on roughly the following percentages:
Paper 1 -- 15%
Paper 2 -- 10%
Paper 3 -- 10%
Paper 4 -- 10%
Paper 5 -- 10%
Paper 6 -- 10%
Paper 7 -- 5%
Paper 8 -- 20%
Participation and attendance -- 10%