Cates Baldridge
Professor of English and American Literatures
Email: baldridg@middlebury.edu
Phone: work802.443.5330
Office Hours: Spring Term: Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:00 -- 12:30
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ARTICLES
"Voyeuristic Rebellion: Lockwood's Dream and the Reader of Wuthering Heights," Studies in the Novel, Fall, 1988.
"The Problems of Worldliness in Pendennis," Nineteenth- Century Literature., December, 1989.
"Alternatives to Bourgeois Individualism in A Tale of Two Cities," Studies in English Literature, Autumn, 1990.
"Observation and Domination in Hardy's The Woodlanders," Victorian Literature and Culture, Spring 1993.
"The Instabilities of Inheritance in Oliver Twist, Studies in the Novel, Summer, 1993.
"Agnes Grey: Brontë's Bildungsroman That Isn't," The Journal of Narrative Tchnique, Winter 1993.
BOOKS
The Dialogics of Dissent in the English Novel, Universtiy Press of New England, 1994.
Graham Greene's Fictions: The Virtues of Extremity, University of Missouri Press, 2000.
Courses
Courses offered in the past four years.
▲ indicates offered in the current term
▹ indicates offered in the upcoming term[s]
CRWR 0560 - Special Project: Writing ▲ ▹
Special Project: Creative Writing
Approval Required.
Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014
CRWR 0701 - Senior Essay: Creative Writing ▲ ▹
Senior Essay: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking one-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. (Formerly ENAM 0701)
Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014
CRWR 0711 - Senior Thesis: Creative Writ. ▲ ▹
Senior Thesis: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking two-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. (Formerly ENAM 0711)
Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014
ENAM 0103 - Reading Literature ▲
Reading Literature
This course seeks to develop skills for the close reading of literature through discussion of and writing about selected poems, plays, and short stories. A basic vocabulary of literary terms and an introductory palette of critical methods will also be covered, and the course's ultimate goal will be to enable students to attain the literary-critical sensibility vital to further course work in the major. At the instructor's discretion, the texts employed in this class may share a particular thematic concern or historical kinship. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Fall 2009, Spring 2012, Fall 2013
ENAM 0204 - Foundations of English Lit.
Foundations of English Literature (I)
Students will study Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Milton's Paradise Lost, as well as other foundational works of English literature that may include Shakespeare, non-Shakespearean Elizabethan drama, the poetry of Donne, and other 16th and 17th century poetry. 3 hrs. lect./dsc.
Spring 2010
ENAM 0205 / CMLT 0205 / LITS 0205 - Intro:Contemporary Lit. Theory
Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory
This course will introduce several major schools of contemporary literary theory. By reading theoretical texts in close conjunction with works of literature, we will illuminate the ways in which these theoretical stances can produce various interpretations of a given poem, novel, or play. The approaches covered will include New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Cultural Criticism, Feminism, and Post-Structuralism. These theories will be applied to works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, The Brontës, Conrad, Joyce, and others. The goal will be to make students critically aware of the fundamental literary, cultural, political, and moral assumptions underlying every act of interpretation they perform. 3 hrs. lect/disc.
Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2013
ENAM 0220 - The Early English Novel
Castaways, Courtesans, and Criminals: The Early English Novel (II)
The novel was a young and scandalous literary genre in the 18th century. The reading public found the novel to be confusing, unpredictable, racy, morally dangerous--and of course very exciting. In this course we will examine the rise of the novel as a controversial literary genre, tracing its development from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders in the early part of the century, through Richardson’s didactic Pamela and Clarissa and Fielding’s lively Tom Jones in mid-century, to Sterne’s wildly experimental Tristram Shandy and the more familiar world of Jane Austen at the century’s end. We will also consider the ways in which this history has shaped the fiction of today by reading a 21st century novel, to be determined by the course participants.
Spring 2010
ENAM 0241 - 19th Century Literature
From Austen to Dracula: The Transformation of 19th Century English Literature (II)
In this course we will trace the development of 19th century literature from the polite and decorous world of Austen in the early decades to the blood-thirsty depravity of Dracula and his kin in the fin de siecle. Far from merely reflecting the society that created it, 19th century literature played an active part in constructing its readers' ideas of gender and sexuality, imperialism and colonialism, class, religion, and technology. We will read novels by Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Stoker; poetry by Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Christina Rossetti; and works by Oscar Wilde and others that defy classification. We will pay special attention to authors' efforts to make literature relevant and revelatory in a time of swift and sometimes frightening social and intellectual innovation. 3 hrs lect./disc.
Fall 2009
ENAM 0247 - Victorian Literature
Victorian Literature
The Victorian Period witnessed the novel's heroic attempts to depict the whole of modern society's complexity as well as poetry's struggle to come to grips with industrialized landscapes and imperial aspirations. In this course we will read works by the era's preeminent novelists-the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy-and those by such major poets as Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Christina Rossetti. We will pay special attention to our various authors' efforts to make literature relevant and revelatory in a time of swift and sometimes frightening social and intellectual innovation. 3 hrs. lect.
Fall 2010
ENAM 0250 - The Romantic Revolution
The Romantic Revolution (II)
he generation of British poets and novelists known collectively as the Romantics decisively rebelled against earlier conceptions of what literature could speak about, how it could best describe a rapidly changing world, and who was fit to be its reader. Arguably the first environmentalists, the Romantics also initiated our modern discussions of gender, class, race, and nationalism. To encounter the Romantics is to witness intellectual courage taking up arms against habit, prejudice, and tyranny. We will trace their genius and daring (and follow their personal attachments for, and rivalries with, each other) through the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and the novels of Mary Shelley and Emily Brönte. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Fall 2011, Fall 2012
ENAM 0285 - Magical Realism(s)
Magical Realism(s)
Novels that juxtapose the marvelous with the everyday have shadowed (and mocked) mainstream realism for the better part of two centuries, and have proliferated in recent years to the point where they may constitute the predominant genre of our globalized culture. Why should such strange mélanges of the quotidian and the supernatural strike so many authors as the perfect vehicle to express 20th and 21st century anxieties and possibilities? We will explore examples of these boundary-defying fictions across several decades and various national literatures. Authors to be studied will include Woolf, Kafka, Calvino, Morrison, Pynchon, Rushdie, and Garcia-Marquez.
Spring 2012
ENAM 0402 - The Modernist Moment ▲
The Modernist Moment
High Modernism can be defined as the unlikely attempt to faithfully depict the fragmentation and randomness of modernity while remaining committed to the notion that art can construct a vision of coherence and beauty that might explain, reconcile, and even heal. Does this enterprise result in a dramatic break with traditional realism, or merely refine and interiorize it? Does its fine-grained psychology mark a retreat from engagement with political issues, or mount a daring challenge to the powers that be? We will press Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, T. S, Eliot, and others for answers to these defining questions.
Fall 2013
ENAM 0426 - Genius and Madness
Genius and Madness in the Novel
Perhaps because the authors of literary works have often been described as suffering from the “divine madness” of inspiration, literature has often depicted the borderline between productive genius and dangerous insanity as a thin and porous one. Through an encounter with such novels as Frankenstein, The Bell Jar, The Hours, and Lolita, as well as works by James, DeLillo, and Calvino, we will investigate why and how our society insists that those capacities which allow the mind to create triumphantly are also feared as the selfsame ones that may alienate it from happiness and a healthy grasp of reality.
Spring 2011
ENAM 0443 - Literature's Body
Writing in Blood: Literature’s Body
To what extent is our condition defined and our destiny determined by the physical bodies that envelop us? In this seminar we will accompany poets, playwrights, and novelists as they investigate the ecstasies, agonies, ambiguities, and transformations that flesh imposes upon our daily lives. Simultaneously, we will consider their various attempts to transcend our bodily limitations, whether by means of religion, imagination, sexuality, or pharmaceuticals. Along the way, we will collaborate with our writers as they scrutinize the human form as a biological fact, social segregator, philosophical conundrum, and undiscovered country. Authors will include Dickinson, Yeats, Shakespeare, Beckett, Ondaatje, and Coetzee. 3 hrs. sem.
Spring 2013
ENAM 0500 - Special Project: Lit ▲
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required.
Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013
ENAM 0560 - Special Project: Writing
Special Project: Creative Writing
(Approval Required)
Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2011
ENAM 0700 - Senior Essay: Critical Writing ▲
Senior Essay: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical essay writers also take the essay workshop (ENAM 700Z) in either Fall or Spring Term.
Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013
ENAM 0701 - Senior Essay: Creative Writing
Senior Essay: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking one-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2011
ENAM 0710 - Senior Thesis: Critical Writ. ▲ ▹
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking two-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical thesis writers also take the thesis workshop (ENAM 710z) in both Fall and Spring terms.
Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Winter 2012, Spring 2012, Winter 2013, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014
ENAM 0711 - Senior Thesis: Creative Writ.
Senior Thesis: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking two-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2011
ENAM 1001 - Fictional Fictions
Fictional Fictions
In this course we will engage with novels whose primary focus is the novel itself—how the genre is imagined, structured, written, sold, read, celebrated, and denounced. Our chosen meta-fictions will variously focus on the psychology of artistic production, on the philosophical issues surrounding the telling of “true lies,” on the social function of novels in our culture, and on what is at stake in the supposedly private act of reading. Our texts will include works such as Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, MeEwan’s Atonement, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, Cuningham’s The Hours, and DeLillo’s Mao II. This course counts as an ENAM elective.
Winter 2010, Winter 2012
FYSE 1202 - Criminal Heroes
Criminal Heroes
Literature possesses the ability to make us sympathize with and even champion characters whose actions we would abhor in real life, and some have declared this power to be socially dangerous. In this seminar we will read novels, poems, and plays that attempt to depict genuine criminals—not the falsely accused or the merely misunderstood, but honest-to-God rotters—as their heroes. While doing so, we will attempt to understand what aspects of our everyday morality these authors are asking us to reconsider, reject, or re-commit to. Readings will include Disgrace, Lolita, Brighton Rock, and poems by Byron and Browning. 3 hrs. sem.
Fall 2010
FYSE 1366 - Literature's Seven Deadly Sins
Literature's Seven Deadly Sins
Because sin is the indispensable engine of most stories worth telling, this seminar will introduce students to the critical analysis of poetry, drama, and fiction through an encounter with literary representations of each of the Seven Deadly Sins. While our main business will be to investigate how literature invites us to understand—and perhaps even love—the sinner, we will also take time to consider both the traditional (religious, moral, philosophical) and modern (psychological, political) understanding of these moral lapses, and to speculate about why different observers perceive one or the other of them as being especially heinous or, conversely and perversely, a virtue in disguise. Readings will include Dickinson, Yeats, Shakespeare, Pinter, Coetzee, and Dickens.
Fall 2012