ENGL 291: The American Novel Since 1945
Lecture 15 - Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping. Professor Hungerford situates Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping (1980) in a tradition of American writing about the individual's relationship to nature that includes the powerful influences of the Bible, Herman Melville, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The loss of identity that Emerson describes as becoming a "transparent eyeball" in the woods, Robinson brings into the realm of the home, the built environment. The individual voice and its guiding consciousness are all mixed up in the material substance of the world, giving them a concurrent fixity and fragility that it is Robinson's talent, and our challenge, to explore. (from oyc.yale.edu)
| Lecture 15 - Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping |
| Time | Lecture Chapters |
| [00:00:00] | 1. Names and Introductions: My Name is Ruth |
| [00:10:09] | 2. Crafting Social Worlds: The Communal and the Singular |
| [00:20:14] | 3. Permeable Identity: Anonymity and Ghostliness |
| [00:31:03] | 4. The "Soul All Unaccompanied": Matching Language to Consciousness |
| References |
| Lecture 15 - Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping Instructor: Professor Amy Hungerford. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
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