Masterpieces of English Literature II ENGL 232 Spring 2018 Class time: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 1:10-2:00 Location: The Gold Room Name of Faculty: Dr. Joanne Janssen Contact details: jjanssen@bakeru.edu Office hours: TBA Course Description Studies major works of English literature from 1780 to the present. Includes such authors as Blake, Wordsworth, Dickens, Eliot, Wilde, Lawrence and Woolf. Credit Hour Policy Statement This class meets the federal credit hour policy of: Standard lecture e.g. 1 hour of class with an expected 2 hours of additional student work outside of class each week for approximately 15 weeks for each hour of credit, or a total of 45-75 hours for each credit. General Education Objective This course meets the General Education requirements for Outcome 2: Engagement with Imaginative Expressions of the Human Condition. Learning Objectives Listed below are the Learning Objectives for the course: To become familiar with a wide range of British authors and texts, as well as to the literary conventions and movements that shaped those texts, from 1780 to contemporary times. To learn about historical ways of reading, considering how those processes give us glimpses into nineteenth-century culture and shape readers relationships with texts. To develop creativity and critical-thinking skills as you mimic historical ways of reading in our class s unique major assignments. To gain knowledge of Britain s historical and cultural movements, figures, and events in order to consider connections between individual texts and their broader cultural contexts. To become more sophisticated and confident scholars of English literature, improving upon already acquired research, writing, analysis, and presentation skills. Further Information about the Course This course covers over two hundred years of British literary history! Surveys like this one, while exhilarating, can also be overwhelming because of the sheer bulk of authors and texts that we encounter. In order to keep us grounded in some common themes and issues, this course will focus on the history of reading, tracing Britain s changing reading, writing, and publishing practices. For example, we will learn about (and even mimic) the ways that people read in the nineteenth century, including reading aloud in groups, keeping commonplace books, and reading novels serially. We also will note changes in the ways that authors wrote, paying special attention to the places they found inspiration and the ways in which they experimented formally (as in social-problem fiction, the dramatic monologue, and modernist writing). Finally, we also will consider the literary marketplace, noting which authorship opportunities were available to women and post-colonial writers, for example, or how British audiences broadened due to changes in publishing practices, the reduced cost of printing, and widespread education.
Schedule of topics Weekly Schedule All Contextual Readings will be available as links or scans through Blackboard. All of the poetry in Unit 1 will come from English Romantic Poetry. Similarly, all of the poetry in Unit 2, unless otherwise indicated, will come from English Victorian Poetry. Short stories will either be available on Blackboard or in The World s Greatest Short Stories (abbreviated WGSS). UNIT 1: The Romantics M Tu Th Week 1 (Week of Jan. 8): Introductions Introduction to the course and to each other. Introduction to the Romantic period, the French Revolution, and Romantic attitudes and practices of reading and writing. Contextual Reading: The French Revolution (Norton Anthology) and Contexts: Reading, Writing, Publishing (Broadview Anthology) The Greatest Hits of Romanticism?: William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, pp. 43-44; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan, pp. 105-06; George Gordon Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty, pp. 114-15; Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, pp. 151-53; John Keats, Bright Star, pp. 229-30 M Tu Th F Week 2 (Week of Jan. 15): Literary Collaborations Between Words and Images: Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, pp. 1-9. Please also take a look at the book s engravings: http://www.rarebookroom.org/control/blkin1/index.html Between Authors: Lyrical Ballads. Poems by William Wordsworth: We Are Seven, pp. 23-25; Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, pp. 25-29; Strange fits of passion I have known, pp. 30-31; She dwelt among the untrodden ways, pp. 31-32; A slumber did my spirit seal, p. 32; and Lucy Gray, pp. 33-34 Contextual Reading: Tintern Abbey, Tourism, and Romantic Landscape (Norton Anthology) Between Authors: Lyrical Ballads. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, pp. 63-81 Contextual Reading: Romantic Orientalism (Norton Anthology) Shocking (and Tantalizing) Society: George Gordon, Lord Byron. Stanzas to Augusta, pp. 130-31; So we ll go no more a roving, p. 131; and excerpts from Don Juan, pp. 138-142 Contextual Reading: The Satanic and Byronic Hero (Norton Anthology) Week 3 (Week of Jan. 22): Writing in Community M A New School of Poetry : Poems by John Keats: On First Looking into Chapman s Homer, p. 189; Ode to a Nightingale, pp. 216-18; Ode on a Grecian Urn, pp. 218-19; and La Belle Dame sans Merci, pp. 224-25 Tu A New School of Poetry : Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ozymandias, p. 147; Song to the Men of England, pp. 149-50; To -----, p. 164; and Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, pp. 165-79 Th As an (Anonymous) Novelist: Jane Austen. Lady Susan, pp. 3-22
Week 4 (Week of Jan. 29): Authorship Opportunities for Women M Lady Susan, pp. 22-44 Tu Lady Susan, pp. 44-63 Th Exam: Unit 1 UNIT 2: The Victorians Week 5 (Week of Feb. 5): The Serialized Victorian Novel and Social-Problem Literature M Introduction to the Victorian Era. Contextual Reading: The Age of Reading, pp. 1048-51 (Longman Anthology) Begin Reading Serially: Tess of the D Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, pp. 7-82 Tu Draft of Commonplace Book Project Due. Responses to Industrialization: A Walk in the Workhouse and The Quiet Poor by Charles Dickens, pp. 749-61 (Blackboard), and The Cry of the Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, pp. 632-36 (Blackboard) Contextual Reading: Industrialism: Progress or Decline? (Norton Anthology) Week 6 (Week of Feb. 12): Poetic Innovation M Reading Serially: Tess of the D Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, pp. 82-148 Tu The Dramatic Monologue: Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, pp. 13-14. My Last Duchess, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, and Porphyria s Lover by Robert Browning, pp. 49-54 Th Commonplace Book Project Due. Sprung Rhythm : Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins: God s Grandeur, The Windhover, Pied Beauty, (Carrion Comfort), and No Worst, There Is None pp. 195-99 Week 7 (Week of Feb. 19): An Emerging Role for Women: The Poetess M Reading Serially: Tess of the D Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, pp. 148-229. (The part ends one third through Ch. 35 with the paragraph beginning The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was illused. ) Tu Women as Writers of Sonnet Sequences: Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, pp. 94-98, as well as To George Sand: A Desire and To George Sand: A Recognition, p. 99 Th One of the Most Perfect Poets of the Age : Christina Rossetti and her poetry, pp. 155-60 Week 8 (Week of Feb. 26): Narratives of Historical Change M Reading Serially: Tess of the D Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, pp. 229-324 W Gender and the Gothic: The Old Nurse s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell, pp. 2102-2117 (Blackboard) Contextual Reading: The Woman Question (Norton Anthology) Th The British Empire: The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling, pp. 85-112 (WGSS) Contextual Reading: Victorian Imperialism (Norton Anthology)
Week 9 (Week of March 5): Reading as Victorians M Workshop Day: Preparing for Reading Aloud Experience Tu Student Presentations: Reading Aloud Experience. (Transcripts of your reading due.) Th Reading Serially: Tess of the D Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, pp. 324-398 UNIT 3: The Fin de Siècle and the Twentieth Century Week 10 (Week of March 12): The Divided Self M Due: Reflection on Reading Aloud Experience. Introduction to the Fin de Siècle. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, pp. 1-26 Tu The Strange Case by Stevenson, pp. 27-54 Th The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Act 1, pp. 1-19 F The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde, Act 2, pp. 21-42 Week 11 (Week of March 19): The Divided Self, continued M The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde, Act 3, pp. 43-54 Tu Exam: The Victorian Period and the Fin de Siecle M Tu Th Week 12 (Week of March 26): War and Revolution Introduction to the Twentieth Century. World War I poetry by Wilfred Owen, pp. 646-50, and Siegfried Sassoon, pp. 613-14 (Blackboard). Excerpt from Regeneration by Pat Barker, pp. 3-9 (Blackboard). Contextual Reading: Representing the Great War (Norton Anthology) The Prussian Officer by D.H. Lawrence, pp. 162-79 (WGSS) Reading Group Guide Proposal Due. Poetry by William Butler Yeats (Blackboard) Contextual Reading: Imagining Ireland (Norton Anthology) Week 13 (Week of April 2): Fractured Experience and Modernist Experimentation M In Poetry: Poetry by T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden (Blackboard) Contextual Reading: Modernist Experiment (Norton Anthology) Tu In Fiction: Araby by James Joyce, pp. 180-84 (WGSS), and The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf, pp. 192-97 (WGSS) Th Annotated Bibliography Due. In Drama: Krapp s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett (https://msu.edu/~sullivan/beckettkrapp.html; also on Blackboard) M Tu Th Week 14 (Week of April 9): The Move from English Literature to World Literature A Village After Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro (b. Japan) (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/05/21/a-village-after-dark; also on Blackboard) Joy by Zadie Smith, pp. 1568-77 (Blackboard) and The Sacrificial Egg by Chinua Achebe (b. Nigeria), pp. 226-29 (WGSS) Draft of Reading Group Guide Due. Course wrap-up. Reading Group Guide Due in final exam period (TBA)
Teaching Methods Key Text(s): Jane Austen Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon. Penguin, 1975. ISBN: 978-0140431025 4.99 Applebaum (ed.) English Romantic Poetry. Dover Thrift, 1996. ISBN: 978-0-486-29282-3 3.99 Negri English Victorian Poetry. Dover Thrift, 1999. ISBN: 978-0-486-40425-7 2.99 Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Penguin, 2003. ISBN: 978-0141439594 6.99 Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest. Dover Thrift, 1990. ISBN: 978-0486264783 1.99 R.L. Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dover Thrift, 1991. ISBN: 978-0486266886 1.99 James Daley (ed.) The World s Greatest Short Stories. Dover Thrift, 2006. ISBN: 978-0486447162 2.99 Note: All textbooks available for purchase on arrival at Harlaxton at the listed prices. Field Trips: There are many opportunities to visit literary sites associated with the readings in this course. I will provide a handout listing popular and lesser-known literary sites throughout Great Britain that students can consult as they consider some of their travel opportunities. While I realize that cost plays a role in decision-making (we can t go everywhere!), and that there will be interests other than literary ones that will guide some travel decisions, I hope that students in this class will be able to visit at least some significant literary sites. (As part of the course, you will be required to reflect upon your experience at one such site.) Experiencing the same places as authors or characters can truly bring the literature alive! This class is strongly encouraged to visit the free exhibit at the British Library called Treasures of the British Library during Harlaxton s scheduled London weekend trip from January 11-14. There are many additional literary sites in or near London: Keats House, Charles Dickens Museum, Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey (Dickens, Robert Browning, Tennyson, Hardy, and Kipling are buried here, among others), and many museums with links to literature. I also encourage you to take advantage of other weekend trips organized by Harlaxton (or to take an independent travel weekend to the location). Notable sites with literary connections include: Ireland Trip from February 7-11: On this trip you would have an opportunity to visit the Dublin Writer s Museum (featuring Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett, all of whom are on the syllabus!), as well as the Oscar Wilde House. Scotland Trip from February 7-11: Edinburgh has The Writer s Museum, which features Robert Louis Stevenson, among several other writers. And, although Stevenson ostensibly set The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in London, scholars agree that he based the book s setting on Edinburgh. Bath and Stonehenge from February 23-25: This trip will allow you to visit the Jane Austen Centre in Bath (which is also an important setting within Austen s works) and to experience Hardy s countryside and Stonehenge, which plays an important role in his novel, Tess of the D Urbervilles. Lake District from March 8-11: The stunning nature in the Lake District inspired the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth s home, Dove Cottage, is a popular literary destination. Feel free to consider other options as well. For example, the D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum and Newstead Abbey (ancestral home of Lord Byron) are both in Nottinghamshire, which are close to Harlaxton.
Schedule of Assignments The deadlines for assignments are included in the schedule of topics above. Assessment and Grading Criteria Course Requirements: Participation: 10% Cornell Reading and Class Notes: 10% Land and Literature Reflection: 5% Exam over Unit 1: 10% Exam over Unit 2: 10% Commonplace Book Project: 15% Reading Aloud Experience: 15% Reading Group Guide: 25% (20% for the guide and 5% for annotated bibliography) Participation: In order to maximize our learning experience, it is important that this class becomes a vibrant, thoughtful, and respectful community of readers and thinkers. To create this community, your presence and participation is crucial; the classroom dynamic will suffer without you. Please come to class prepared and on time, ready to participate. I recognize and value different personalities, so I will notice more than the frequency and duration of your contributions to the discussion (although a good rule of thumb is to aim to speak up at least once per class period). I will also consider your preparation for class, your willingness to ask difficult questions, your demonstration of critical thinking, and your readiness to respond thoughtfully and considerately to ideas presented by your peers. This portion of your grade will also be influenced by exercises and activities we do in class; if you are not here, you will not be able to receive credit for them. Note: Since we have the pleasure of studying English literature while in England, I will generally assume your full engagement. However, if I suspect a pattern of a lack of preparation, I will begin to incorporate quizzes, and those scores will contribute to this portion of your grade. Cornell Reading and Class Notes: Note-taking is a revered part of the college education tradition, and recent studies have demonstrated the great learning-retention benefit of taking notes by hand. To that end, 10% of the grade in the course will be based on detailed Cornell-style notes over the readings and our class meetings, both lecture and discussion portions. Students should come to class each day having made a concise summary of the reading in their notes, along with 2-3 questions for clarification or discussion (roughly a page of notebook paper). The focus in the notes should be on complete, telegraphic sentences that capture ideas with clarity and precision. I will provide further information about the Cornell method. Land and Literature Reflection: This class offers a wealth of opportunities to study the British literature while also experiencing related literary sites. Under Field Trips (above), I have indicated several possibilities for sites to visit that have significant connections to the literature we will be studying. For this assignment, I would like you to write a reflection over your experience of visiting a significant literary site that corresponds in some way with an author or text that we are studying this semester. You will address what the site was like, what you learned, and how visiting how the site illuminated your reading of the author/text. One of these reflections is required in the course, and you may complete a second one for extra credit.
Exams over Units 1 and 2: As we complete Units 1 and 2, you will complete an exam on the material covered. As each exam nears, I will give you ideas of what and how to study effectively. You will also complete three major assignments: Commonplace Book Project: In the nineteenth century (and earlier), people kept what are called commonplace books, in which reading and writing were intertwined activities. As they read, they wrote down quotations and extracts that were significant to them under appropriate headings. As a result, they could notice patterns within and across the texts they were reading. In literary terms, these commonplace books allowed people to track themes. For this assignment, you will create a creative commonplace book page of your own (I will show you some historical examples), which will begin with a thematic heading. The rest of the page will include other details or quotations, all of which illuminate the theme at the top of the page. You can feel free to include illustrations, quotations from other texts in the course, words cut from magazines, or any other element that you see as in conversation with that key quote and theme. To accompany your collage page, you will write a five-six page paper in which you explain your choices and analyze what the elements together reveal about the theme, about the key quote, about the texts we have read together, and about yourself as a reader. Reading Aloud Experience: As we learn about the reading practices in the periods in which we will study, we also will occasionally mimic some of them. In the nineteenth century, reading aloud as part of a group was a common experience, because published books were still quite expensive (and perhaps because people simply enjoyed it). We will recreate this experience together, with each of you contributing. In teams, you will prepare about 8-10 minutes of texts and commentary to share with our class. You will want to select your texts carefully (from works we read together, as well as others that were not part of the course requirements). You will also want to say a few words before and after each selection for your listeners, in order to provide context, to explain confusing concepts or passages, to guide them in their listening, or to otherwise enlighten them. Your grade will be based on your reading performance (make sure to practice and work to engage your audience!); the thoughtfulness, accuracy, and depth of your comments; and on a brief reflection you will write about the experience after the fact. Reading Group Guide: As we complete the last unit in the course, our class will continue to mimic historical ways of reading. To accompany our exploration of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, each student will create a document that will support a particularly contemporary form of reading: the book club. While most book clubs involve friends and acquaintances discussing a common selection in an intimate environment, these clubs have existed in broadcast or virtual forms (think Oprah s book club) and sometimes involve larger communities (such as when universities or towns develop a common reading program). For this assignment, you will create a Reading Group Guide for a work (or works) of British literature. This guide will include an Introduction to the Text, Author Information, and Discussion Questions, and it will require substantial library research. Grading Scale: A = 93-100% B+ = 88-89% C+ = 78-79% D+ = 68-69% A- = 90-92% B = 83-87% C = 73-77% D = 63-67% B- = 80-82% C- = 70-72% D- = 60-62%
Attendance Policy Harlaxton College operates a mandatory attendance policy that is binding on all faculty and students. The number of unexcused absences that are allowed before incurring a penalty is related to the number of times a class meets during a week. This means that for courses which meet three times a week students are allowed a maximum of three unexcused absences during the semester without attracting penalty points, for courses meeting twice a week two such absences are permitted and for courses meeting just once a week a single absence is allowed. Additional unexcused absences will attract a grade penalty of losing three percentage points from the student s final grade. Chronic tardiness also will add up to absences, as will tardiness of more than 10 minutes. Students are responsible for the academic consequences of their failure to attend class. If any assessment (e.g. in-class test, exam, paper, presentation, etc.) is missed, there is no expectation or requirement that a faculty member will accept the work after it is due, provide an extension to a deadline, or offer an alternative assessment opportunity for a student with an unexcused absence. Drop/Add and Withdrawal Policy There is normally about a 10 day period at the beginning of semester when a student may drop and class and/or add a class. The deadline date is published in the Semester Guidance handbook. Drop/Add forms are available from the library and completed forms should be returned to the same place. Faculty signatures are required for all classes being added. Students may withdraw from a class, with the exception of British Studies, for a longer period of time. Again the deadline date is published in the Semester Guidance handbook. Forms are available from the College Secretary, to whom completed forms should be returned. Forms must be signed by the faculty member of the class being withdrawn from and the Principal. All students must register for, and be continuously enrolled in, 12 credit hours of study to be eligible to study at Harlaxton and remain in the United Kingdom. Disability Policy It is the policy of the University of Evansville (Harlaxton College) to make reasonable accommodations for students with properly documented disabilities. University of Evansville students should contact the Office of Counselling and Health Education to seek help with this. Students from Partner Universities/Colleges should contact their own relevant student support office. For assistance whilst at Harlaxton students should contact the College Secretary whose office is located adjacent to the Principal s office. Written notification to faculty from the College Secretary is required for academic accommodations to be implemented.
Honor Code All students at the University of Evansville (Harlaxton College) agree to and are bound by the principles and practice of the honor code: I understand that any work I submit for course credit will imply that I have adhered to this Academic Honor Code: I will neither give nor receive unauthorized aid, nor will I tolerate an environment that condones the use of unauthorized aid. The full Honor Code is available online: https://www.evansville.edu/offices/deanstudents/downloads/honorcode.pdf