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E210
| Casuistry, Conduct & Clarissa | Fall 2013
This course, which meets the "coverage requirement" for the 18th century, begins in the 17th with a consideration of casuistry, a case-based method of solving particular moral problems in light of known principles. The process generated by casuistry leads into the mind, revealing it and exposing its subterfuges. "Cases of conscience" involved life and death issues in the mid-17thc. (with unprecedented loyalty oaths, loss of property, and legal status at stake), but they could also concern family issues (e.g, whether a father could command a child to marry). These cases offer a glimpse into a problem-centered way of thinking. We will be interested in the historical development of casuistry and in the ubiquity of case-based thinking during this period. And we will use that interest in order to examine "cases" as fictions in the making. Clarissa's "experience," like that of Moll Flanders, Roxana, and Pamela, is constructed of one case of conscience after another. Casuistry is, in other words, one of the means through which Richardson produces the material of the novel, with its psychological and ideological force. And finally, we will move from the historical importance of casuistry in shaping fictions to questions about the theoretical implications of case-based thinking.
SPOILER ALERT!
No one imagines that Clarissa is a plot-based novel, but if you have never read it, don't let anyone tell you what happens. And paste a piece of paper over the back cover of the Penguin edition. If you have read it, please be courteous and let others read themselves into "what happens." Eighteenth-century readers heard rumors (and one wrote to Richardson begging him to change his mind about the plot), but all had to wait 6 months between each of the 3 parts to find out "what happened".
We will read selected historical materials, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Albert Jonsen & Stephen Toulmin's modern analysis of thinking in cases, and various theoretical and critical articles. Seminar students will write seminar papers. Pro-seminar students will write shorter papers. All students will write annotated bibliographies. It would be useful but not necessary for students to read Richardson's Pamela before the course begins.
Course
Information || Useful Materials || Paper Page || Mail Archive || Messageboard ||
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DATE
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 This course site is under construction!
In
class today
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Supporting
Materials
For your interest
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Wk. #1: Tuesday, 10/1
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Introduction
to course:
Circumstances alter cases.
Thinking through ethical dilemmas.
Why think through casuistry to read Clarissa?
Clarissa
Examples of cases of conscience (from EEBO): Joseph Hall || Jeremy Taylor || Richard Baxter
Historical sketch || 1649-1714||The House of Stuart || Trial of Charles I ||
The Ubiquity of the "case of conscience": from the Engagement Oath to Susanna Wesley's problem with Samuel.
The epistolary style: Pamela and Richardson's Familiar Letters|| Letters CXXXVIII & CXXXIX
Introduction to the Message Board and to EEBO & ECCO
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CHARLES I & CROMWELL STATUES LONDON - Youtube || King Charles I -Youtube || King Charles II - Youtube ||An Act prohibiting the
proclaiming any person to be King|| Declaration of Breda || Clarendon Code || Exclusion Bill || Toleration Act || Act of Settlement || Act for Preventing Occasional Conformity ||
Try looking up case, casuistry, conscience, and other key terms in the OED.
The Oxford DNB will also often be useful.
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Wk. #2. Tuesday, 10/8
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Casuistry cases: Nine cases of conscience occasionally determined by Robert Sanderson. , London : Printed for H. Brome, J. Wright, and C. Wilkinson, 1678.
Keith Thomas, "Cases of Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England"
George Starr, "From Casuistry to Fiction"
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, to p. 403 (end of L. 99) .
For the Message Board: Is the "case of conscience" still an active ethical framework? |
Sanderson's cases
I. Of Marrying with a Recusant 1
II. Of Unlawful Love 11
III. Of a Military Life 40
IV. Of Scandal 75
V. Of a Bond taken in the King's Name 82VI. Of the Engagement 88
VII. Of a Rash Vow 114
VIII. Of the Sabbath 137
IX. Of the Liturgy 157
Bishop Sanderson's Lectures on Conscience and Human Law (Google)
Sanderson in DNB
"Things indifferent": adiaphora ἀδιάφορα
"Things Indifferent" (OLL)
"Locke on Religious Toleration" (by Mark Goldie) in OLL.
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Wk#3. Tuesday,
10/15
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Camille Slights, "The Tradition" & "Method as Form" in The Casuistical Tradition in Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and Milton
Albert R. Jonsen & Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry
Part I: Background
Part II: The Precursors
Clarissa, to p. 500 (end of letter 142).
AJVS: presentation of paper topic possibilities
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Reviews of The Abuse of Casuistry
New Athenian Oracle Index Page
Christopher Hill, "Clarissa Harlowe and her Times"
"Casuistry." From the internet archive: Dictionary of the History of Ideas.Originally from http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-35.
"Clarissa Harlowe and Her Times"--1) ajvs notes for annotated bibliography entry 2) ajvs sample entries, one still a little too long. |
Wk#4. Tuesday,
10/22
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The Abuse of Casuistry
Part III: High Casuistry
Part IV: Three Samples of Casuistry
Part V: The Crisis. "Casuistry Confounded: Pascal's Critique"
Clarissa: Just keep reading.
Think about Paper Topics and Annotated Bibliographies |
Who will volunteer for one of the parts of The Abuse of Casuistry? You will be responsible for a presentation to others who have not read the material.
As for Clarissa, just keep reading, and we will register our progress in class. You can omit Letters 166, 171-2, 174, 176, 178-182, 184, 186 (more to follow)
Also you may omit all letters about Belton and his Thomasine, though those letters could become a source of a paper topic.
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Wk. 5. Tuesday,
10/29
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JUST Clarissa |
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Wk#6. Tuesday,
11/5
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Josephine Donovan, "Circumstances Alter Cases: Women, Casuistry, and the Novel" from Women and the Rise of the Novel, 1405-1726.
Tom Keymer, "Reading epistolary fiction"
Tom Keymer, "Casuistry in Clarissa: The first installment, December 1747,"
(ch. 1 & 2 from Keymer's Richardson's Clarissa and the Eighteenth-Century Reader.
Start reading Fleetwood, William. The relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, consider'd in sixteen sermons: with three more upon the ... London, MDCCV. [1705].
Continuing Clarissa, |
Historical sketch || 1714-1760 ||House of Hanover
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Wk. #7. Tuesday,
11/12
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Clarissa,.
Your job is to keep reading Clarissa, work on annotated bibliography entries, and think about papers.
AJVS review of Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage in ECF.
AJVS presentation on William Fleetwood’s The relative duties
AJVS presesntation on articles by social historian Keith Wrightson.
Michael McKeon, "Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the Rise of the Novel," Cultural Critique No 1 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 159-181. URL" (AJVS report and sample annotated bibliography entry.) |
18th-c. Responses to Clarissa
Remarks on Clarissa, Addressed to the Author. Occasioned by some critical Conversations on the Characters and Conduct of that Work. 1749.
"The Reception of Clarissa; Richardson and Fielding, 1748-50", Ch. XII of Samuel Richardson, A Biography, by T.C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel (Oxford, 1971).
Florian Stuber and Margaret Anne Doody, "The Clarissa Project and Clarissa's Reception," Text, Vol. 12 (1999), pp. 123-141.
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Wk. #8. Tuesday,
11/19
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Annotated bibliography entries due in class and on Message Board
Presentation and discussion of annotated bibliographies |
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| Wk. #9. Tuesday,
11/26
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Drafts of papers due
Continuing discussion of annotated bibliographies
Samuel Johnson's Rambler #4 ||
Discussion of literary theory as inherited and modernized by 18th c.
The nature of the developing "case"
Further discussion of the Abuse of Casuistry |
BONUS: Johnson's Rambler #134 (on procrastination) || Click here for other material on procrastination.
D. W. Robertson, Jr., "A Note on the Classical Origin of 'Circumstances' in the Medieval Confessional", Studies in Philology43:1 Jan., 1946): 6-14. |
Wk. # 10. Tuesday,
12/3
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Panel presentations of papers
Return of drafts both by AJVS and by peer readers
You may invite friends and relatives to panel presentations if you'd like.
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Thursday, Dec. 12, noon |
Pro-seminar and Seminar students' papers due |
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The website banner color was taken from this hibiscus photo |
Papers returned the first week of Winter.
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