English 203: Survey of English Literature II

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1 1 English 203: Survey of English Literature II Professor Tabitha Sparks McGill University Winter 2014 Arts 310 (514) Office Hours: WF and by appointment Lectures: Wednesdays 10:30 11:30 in McConnell Engineering 204 Fridays 10:30 11:30 in MacDonald Harrington G-10 Introduction to English 203: This course surveys English literature from the late 18th through the later 20th century, with emphasis on fiction and poetry in an historical context. We will pay particular attention to the developmental story that the assigned works tell, how they collectively comment upon the purposes of literature, and how they form a dynamic canon. Any survey of several hundred years that represents diverse nations and genres necessarily is imperfect. The course assumes that the readings we cover are representative rather than exhaustive. The formation of the canon and its unavoidable gaps and absences will be considered in the lectures, which will often refer to what has been left out, and/or why the material you read was chosen in lieu of something else. The course material and the three first novels broadly represent major periods in British literary history: the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern ages. Like the works that comprise these ages, the periods themselves are subject to controversy and disagreement, but periodization remains a useful method of organization, especially in a course that covers a great deal of material in a short time. Periodization is also an integral part of the history of British literature, and whatever its shortcomings, the concepts of Romanticism, Victorianism, and Modernism have been formative to the canon that we have inherited and continue to develop. By the end of the course, you should be familiar with the outlines of these successive periods, as well as able to comment on the ways that they speak across each other and even call into question the ideological and formal divisions that define them as periods. Academic Integrity and Plagiarism: McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore, all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offenses under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (please see for further information.)to avoid plagiarism, always document the sources of your quotations and ideas carefully. If you have any questions about proper citation, please feel free to ask me or one of the TAs. Required Texts: Available at the University Bookstore. Texts marked with an asterisk: please use the Broadview edition. *The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Vol. B *Austen, Jane. Emma (1815) *Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure (1895) Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse (1927) Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day (1989) *The Broadview Pocket Guide to Citation and Documentation (2013)

2 2 Methods of Instruction and Evaluation: Lecture & weekly conferences. The lectures will not be recorded; you are expected to attend them all, and, in your absence, copy notes from a classmate. Any material covered in lecture can be on the midterm or final exam. Lecture material will not be repeated in office hours by the professor or teaching assistants. All students will enroll, on Minerva, in a weekly conference section. The 20% participation grade for the course will be calculated from your attendance and participation in conference. Breakdown of Grade: Essay (see attached description below) 30% Attendance and Participation (in conference section): 20% Midterm: 20% Final Exam: 30% Schedule: (the schedule is subject to revision, with fair warning.) All readings are to be completed for the day for which they are listed. Week 1: Intro and Romanticism Jan 8 W: course intro. Please join a conference section on Minerva by this week. Jan 10 F: Wordsworth: Advertisement (138) and Preface to Lyrical Ballads ( ); poems from LB: We Are Seven, ( ) Expostulation and Reply (144), The Tables Turned (144-5), The Solitary Reaper (168-9), Tintern Abbey ( ), Resolution and Independence ( ), London, 1802 (168), Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways (183) Week 2: Romanticism; CONFERENCES BEGIN Jan 152 W: Coleridge: Frost at Midnight (283-4), From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ( ), Kubla Khan (307-8), from Biographia Literaria: Ch 4, Mr. Wordsworth s Earlier Poems ( ), and Ch 14, Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads ( ) Jan 17 F: Blake: from Songs of Innocence: The Echoing Green (63), The Lamb (64), The Little Black Boy (64), The Chimney Sweeper (65), Infant Joy (66); from Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday (68), The Chimney Sweeper (68), London (70), Infant Sorrow (71); Barbauld (33-42), Washing Day (33-34), On the Death of Princess Charlotte (40), The Rights of Women (40) Week 3: Romanticism Jan 22 W: Austen, Emma Jan 24 F: Austen, Emma Week 4: Romanticism Jan 29 W: Shelley: To Wordsworth (385), Mont Blanc (395-7), Ozymandias (398), To a Skylark ( ), Song to the Men of England (412-13), England in 1819 (413), from A Defense of Poetry ( )

3 3 Jan 31 F: Keats: On First Looking into Chapman s Homer (434), On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (440), On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again (440), Ode to a Nightingale (452-3), Ode on a Grecian Urn (453-4); To Autumn (456) Week 5: The Victorians Feb 5 W: Carlyle: From Past and Present ( ); Ure, from The Philosophy of Manufacturers (574-6); Engels, from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (582-6) Dickens, From Hard Times (590-1) Feb 7 F: Tennyson: Mariana (645-6), The Lady of Shallot (651-3); The Lotus-Eaters (653-6), Ulysses (656-7), Locksley Hall ( ), The Charge of the Light Brigade (702) Week 6: The Victorians Feb 12 W: Mill, Chapter 1, The Subjection of Women ( ); Patmore: The Wife s Tragedy (618), The Foreign Land (618-9); Barrett Browning: To George Sand: A Desire (636), To George Sand: A Recognition (636) Feb 14 F: Browning: Porphyria s Lover (733), My Last Duchess (735), The Last Ride Together (744-5); Arnold, Dover Beach (810), East London (810), West London (811) Week 7: The Victorians Feb 19 W: Barrett Browning, The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim s Point ( ); Kipling, The White Man s Burden (988), Recessional (987), The Widow at Windsor (987); Pringle, Afar in the Desert (997) Feb 21 F: Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (811-19); Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic (791-8) Week 8: The Victorians Feb 26 W: Hardy, Jude the Obscure Feb 28 F: Hardy, Jude the Obscure Week 9: Winter Break Mar 5 W: no class Mar 7 F: no class Week 10: NO CONFERENCES THIS WEEK Mar 12 W: Midterm Mar 14 F: Hardy, Hap (892), Neutral Tones (892), The Darkling Thrush (892), The Convergence of the Twain (894), Channel Firing (894), In Time of The Breaking of Nations (896); Owen,

4 4 Arms and the Boy (1146), Dulce et Decorum Est (1147), Anthem for Doomed Youth (1146), Strange Meeting (1145) Week 11: Modernism Mar 19 W: Yeats, Easter 1916 (1171-2), Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen (1175-6), No Second Troy (1171), A Prayer for my Daughter (1177), The Second Coming (1178), An Irish Airman Foresees his Death (1178), The Circus Animals Desertion (1183) Mar 21 F: Woolf, Modern Fiction ( ); Mansfield, The Garden Party ( ), Joyce, Araby ( ) Week 12: Modernism Mar 26 W: Woolf, To the Lighthouse Mar 28 F: Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ( ), Preludes (1313-4), Gerontion (1315-6), Journey of the Magi (1327-8), Marina (1328), Tradition and the Individual Talent (1331-5) Week 13: Modernism Apr 2 W: Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1401-2), Spain, 1937 (1397-9), - September 1, 1939 (1402-4), [Lullaby] ( ), [At last the secret is out] (1397) Apr 4 F: Orwell, From The Road to Wigan Pier (1283-5), Politics and the English Language ( ), Shooting an Elephant (1383-7) Week 14: Modernism and Postmodernism Apr 9 W: Smith, Not Waving but Drowning (1372), The New Age (1372), The Blue from Heaven (1373-4); Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (1426), A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London (1426); Hughes, The Thought-Fox (1435), Pike (1435-6) Apr 11 F: Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day Final Exam: date/time TBA

5 5 ENGL 203 Essay Assignment Winter 2014 The essay for ENGL 203 is due any time between January 15 and March 28. It should be submitted to your TA in weekly conference or to Professor Sparks before or after a lecture. Given the flexibility of the due date, late papers will not be accepted. Format Requirements: -5-7 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt font; margins between 1 and 1.5 inches; spell-checked; titled; stapled; -Use MLA guidelines for citation style as defined in The Broadview Pocket Guide to Citation and Documentation; -At the top of the first page, list your full name (I don t need student numbers), the course number, and the date that you are handing it in. On the subsequent, numbered pages, list your last name at the top right side of the page (before the page number). Content Requirements: Whatever topic you chose to write about, please make sure to quote from the text(s) under consideration, using MLA style, and please make sure to cite any information about the text(s) or periods that is not original. The writing of the essay should be academic (no jargon or colloquialisms; references to popular culture are probably not helpful) and carefully revised for typos/grammatical flaws before submitted. All of the essay topics are comparative, working with at least two authors and at least two texts. Make sure your essay has a clearly defined thesis an argument that exceeds translation or summary of the works, and that moves beyond a similar but different claim. Possible Topics: 1. Discuss how two works of different genres discuss any of the following topics: Industrialism; the position of women in society; the concept of Englishness or nationalism; the role of art (including literature) in society. Compare/contrast the two works, making a definite argument about them, rather than just listing similar features or ideas that they share. 2. Discuss one or more of the Romantic poets in reference to Wordsworth s or Coleridge s ideas about poetry and politics in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth) or Biographia Literaria (Coleridge). Your essay must cover at least two poets, so if you are writing about Wordsworth s Preface, the poetry you discuss cannot be written by Wordsworth; the same is true about Coleridge s Biographia Literaria and his poetry. 3. Explicate two poems that we have not discussed in class, by two poets that we have discussed in class. Avoid a straightforward translation of the poems, and instead explore their stylistic features (voice, figurative language, diction) and/or their ideas in reference to the time period of their creation. Compare/contrast the two poems, making a clear argument about their meaning and/or exposition. 4. Choose two poems from two of our eras (Romantic, Victorian, or Modern) and make a case as to why these can be treated as companion pieces, despite the differences in their style that reflect their different literary ages. That is, across the divide of their historical moments, compare the poems and find similarities in their style and composition, or their topical discussions. (Note: if both poems, for instance, are about war or nature, you must go beyond this thematic similarity in your argument, and explicate a more subtle point of comparison).

6 5. Make an argument that considers how John Stuart Mill, as he articulates his views in The Subjection of Women, might reflect upon the social and political position of Austen s Emma or Hardy s Sue Bridehead. 6. Pair one of the class novels (not Remains of the Day) with a poem written within a decade of the novel s publication, and discuss how these works reflect upon and enhance the meaning of each other. 7. Make an argument that compares/contrasts the aesthetic theories of two of the following writers: Wordsworth (especially Preface to Lyrical Ballads), Coleridge (especially Biographia Literaria), Ruskin, Arnold, or Orwell, and the point of view reflected by Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. 6

Course Policies and Requirements for British Literature II

Course Policies and Requirements for British Literature II Professor: Course: Jack Peters English 3440, Section 002 209 Language 10:00-10:50 a.m. MWF Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature,