Daniel Brayton

Reading Literature
Please refer to each section for specific course descriptions.

Encounters With the Wild: Nature, Culture, Poetry (I) (Pre-1800)
Civilization is often defined against wilderness. The two ideas are not exclusive but mutually constitutive, for wilderness and the wild turn out to be central to notions of the civil and the civilized. Poets have long been preoccupied by the boundaries and connections between these ideas. The word "poetry" itself comes from a Greek word for "craft" or "shaping"; thus, poetry implies the shaping of natural elements into an artful whole. In this course we will examine the literary history of this ongoing dialectic by reading and discussing masterpieces of Western literature, from ancient epics to modern poetry and folklore. As we do so we will rethink the craft of poetry, and the role of the poet, in mapping the wild. Readings will include Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, sections of The Bible and Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and poems by Wyatt, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, Marvell, Pope, and Thompson. (This course counts toward the ENVS Literature focus and the ENVS Environmental Non-Fiction Focus) lect./disc.

Maritime Literature and Culture
Writers have long found the sea to be a cause of wonder and reflection. A mirror for some and a desert for others, the sea has influenced the imaginations of writers throughout history in vastly different ways. In this course we will read a variety of literary works, both fiction and non-fiction, in which the sea acts as the setting, a body of symbolism, an epistemological challenge, and a reason to reflect on the human relationship to nature. Readings will be drawn from the Bible, Homer's Odyssey, Old English Poetry, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Kipling, Conrad, Melville, Hemingway, Walcott, O'Brian, and others. 3 hrs. lect./disc.

Nature Poetry
Can a poem reframe the relationship between humans and nature? Poets have posed this and similar questions for centuries. Scholars of literature and the environment, or “ecocritics,” ask it anew with reference to ongoing disasters such as global climate change, mass extinction, and new pandemics. In this course we will develop our ecocritical skills by exploring how poems about the human relationship to the biophysical environment can inspire us to rethink our place in the universe. We will read works by such poets as Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Elisabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Lucia Perillo, and Jorie Graham. (at least one course each in ENAM and ENVS) 3 hrs. sem.

Recent Novels of Environmental Justice
In recent years the global Anglophone novel has emerged as a literary forum for negotiating issues of Environmental Justice in what has been called The Global South. Novelists from Sri Lanka to the United States, South Africa, South Asia, Britain, and Canada have recently explored such issues as hunger, land access, migration, environmental toxicity, indigeneity versus national identity, and diminishing resources in novels that explore the lives of some of the globe’s most vulnerable populations. The books we read and discuss are set in far-flung regions, from South Africa, India, and Oceania to what some have called “third-world North America.” Our task will be to theorize and interpret the way these novels represent environmental inequality, injustice, and exploitation and to consider what Environmental Justice might look like in these places 3 hrs. sem. (Diversity) (Rec)

Special Project: Literature
Approval Required.

Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical thesis writers also take the Senior Thesis Workshop (ENAM 700Z) in either Fall or Spring Term.

Poetry and the Marine Environment
In this course we will read and discuss Anglophone poetry about the sea, from the Old English poem The Seafarer to Derek Walcott’s The Sea is History. Our two main goals will be to investigate how poets imagine the marine environment and to bring multiple interpretive approaches to bear on literary texts from different regions and traditions. These approaches will include formal, contextual, and theoretical methods of inquiry. We will read poems by a diversity of poets, including John Masefield, Rudyard Kipling, Adrienne Rich, Derek Walcott, and Mary Oliver.