Survey of English Literature 2: 1800 - Present ENGLIT 0056 4010 28213 MW 3:00-4:20 Biddle 253 Dr. Ann Rea Spring 2018 Syllabus and Course Description anr12@pitt.edu Office hours: MW2:00and TTH 12:30-2:00 and by appointment Office Biddle 223C Phone ext. 7166 This survey course will give you a sense of the broad sweep of literature during two centuries in Britain. Later courses will allow you to engage in more detailed study of each period, but this class will seek to establish your understanding of how literature develops in accordance with historical changes and the changing culture. To make a long period of time easier to conceptualize we will think of four periods: Romanticism, the Victorians, Moderns and late Twentieth-century, and will group the readings under concepts which were important at each time, which will in turn help us to understand the prevailing preoccupations of each period. So when reading the Romantics we will focus on Revolution, Freedom, and Rights and the Individual in Relation to Society, including changing ideas about women, in particular their education. When we begin reading the novel, Jane Austen s Pride and Prejudice, we will continue to think about women s education and attitudes towards marriage, and will continue to think about these concepts as well as gender and sexuality as we read Victorian poetry. When we read texts from the nineteenth century we will be aware of the British Empire and religion. As we begin reading modern writers of the first half of the twentieth century, we will also begin to think about the changing sense of form and difficulties in representing experience that led to the literary movement of modernism. Then in looking at the late twentieth century, we will think about the dissolving empire with the challenges to social authority and the changing role of women that writers express both within England and in the former colonies with the accompanying sense of social dislocation in contemporary society. The required texts for this class can be bought in two forms, either the three volume version or in the concise, one-volume edition that you will find at the bookstore. In either case you must buy the second edition. It contains introductory material that I will assign that you will not have if you buy the earlier edition.
So you should buy either The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume B, (Second Edition) OR The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volumes 4 (The Age of Romanticism), 5 (The Victorian Era), and 6 (The Twentieth Century and Beyond) (Second editions). Please also buy Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Penguin (2002 edition). You must own copies of these texts and should aim to mark them up and make them your own, lived-in copies. Please try to avoid using Kindle or another e-reading devices. After a few students have used them in my classes I have found that it is too difficult to find a specific page or passage quickly enough for them to work well in the classroom and it is difficult to use them effectively in open-book exams. This class requires your active participation in a way in which your other classes may not, since it is not a lecture class but one where you will engage with ideas in conversation. You must prepare for class by reading the assigned literature thoughtfully. This may take more time than you would at first anticipate, and this is particularly true where I have assigned poetry. To understand poetry well you will need to spend time re-reading and thinking about what you read. A quick runthrough will not allow you to engage closely enough with the reading to understand it. I suggest that you begin your reading well in advance of class time and be prepared to return to the readings and think about them carefully. You should also be aware of the time it takes to read the novel. While Hardy s novel is accessible and enjoyable, you still need to read beyond the plot and think about the significance of what you are reading so you can come to class prepared to be involved in active discussion. Be warned that you may sometimes read texts which we will not have time to discuss in class. I believe that I need to expose you to certain readings so that you get a good sense of the period even if we do not fully explore them together. There will be regular unannounced reading quizzes which make an important contribution to your grade. Please make the effort to be reflective about your part in class discussion. If you tend to talk a lot you might need to check that you do not dominate the discussion. If you are shy and tend to leave the talking to others you might need to push yourself to speak. It is extremely important that we behave respectfully towards others in the discussions. Class participation will contribute to your grade.
Grades Your grade for this class will break down as follows: Mid-term Examination - 20% Paper One 20% Paper Two 20% Final Examination 20% Class Contribution and Quizzes - 20% Policies and Rules Please ensure that your cell phone is turned OFF before class do not just turn off the ringer. That means that you will not check for text messages. I will count you as absent if I catch you texting. Please do not use a lap-top computer in class. Attendance is required. More than three absences and you risk having your grade lowered. If you need to schedule appointments make sure that they do not take place during class time. Be punctual at the beginning of class, and do not make plans to leave before class ends: to do otherwise will result in an absence being recorded. Plagiarism is an extremely serious offence and will not be excused. Be sure that you see the distinction between collaboration with and the kind of help with writing which involves someone else doing work for you. To present the language or ideas of others as if they are your own is plagiarism and this applies as much to internet sources as to any others. If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you should contact Counselling Services, G10 Student Union, (814) 269-7119(voice)/(814) 269-7186 as early as possible in the term. The Office of Health & Wellness Services will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course. Monday, 8 th January Introduction Wednesday, 10 th January Read the introductory section to the Broadview Anthology entitled The Age of Romanticism, pages 1-30 (XXV-LXIV in the three volume edition). Monday, 15 th January No Classes Martin Luther-King Day
Wednesday, 17 th January Thomas Paine, pages 52-56 (also on Courseweb). Edmund Burke, From Reflections on the Revolution in France (Courseweb) Monday 22 nd January The Romantics Read Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads, 1798, page 138 (page 214 in the three-volume edition), The Thorn, and Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. Read also Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads pages 311-318 (448-454 in the three-volume edition). Wednesday, 24 th January Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight, The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Eolian Harp. Monday 29 th January Read Introductory Contexts to The Natural, the Human, the Supernatural, and the Sublime, pages 357-359, (227-229 in the threevolume edition) and the excerpt from Edmund Burke s A Philosophical Enquiry in the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, page 365-366 (235-238) and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Please also look at the illustrations that follow this section of the anthology pages 256-264 (386-394). Wednesday, 31 st January Read John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, and Eve of St. Agnes. Monday, 5 th February Read Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice to page 83, end of Chapter 16, Volume I, Chapter xvi. Wednesday, 7 th February Mid-Term Examination In-class Monday, 12 th February Read Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice to page 156, to the end of Chapter 28, Volume II Chapter v. Wednesday, 14 th February Read Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice to page 207, end of Chapter 37, Volume II, Chapter xiv.
Monday, 19 th February Read Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice to page 259, end of Chapter 45, Volume III, Chapter iii. Wednesday, 21 st February Read Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice to page 311, end of Chapter 52, Volume III Chapter x. Monday, 26 th February Finish Pride and Prejudice Wednesday, 28 th February The Victorians: from now on bring Volume 2 if you are using the three volume edition Read The Victorian Era, pages 498-541 (XXXIX-LXXXII in the threevolume edition). Monday, 5 th March Wednesday 7 th March - No classes Spring Break Victorian Portrayals of Women Monday, 12 th March Paper One due Read Robert Browning, Porphyria s Lover, My Last Duchess, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, and Tennyson, Mariana, and Lady of Shalott, Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jenny. Victorian Ghost Stories Wednesday, 14 th March Elizabeth Gaskell, The Nurse s Story and Charles Dickens, The Signalman (Courseweb). Religion and Doubt Monday, 19 th March Read Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, Emily Bronte, No Coward Soul Mine, Gerard Manley Hopkins, God s Grandeur, Pied Beauty, I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day, and Christina Rosseti, The Convent Threshold (xerox).
Wednesday, 21 st March The Modern Era: from now on bring Volume 6 if you have the three-volume edition. Read Britain, Empire, and a Wider World and The Early Twentieth Century: From 1900 to Mid-Century page XXV-LXIV: some great pictures! Monday, 26 th March Read Katherine Mansfield, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, The Garden Party, and excerpts from Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (xerox). Modernism Wednesday, 28 th March T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and The Hollow Men, and "Burnt Norton. Monday, 2 nd April W. B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Inishfree, When You Are Old, No Second Troy, Easter 1916, The Wild Swans at Coole, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, Leda and the Swan, The Second Coming, and Sailing to Byzantium. Wednesday, 4 th April Late Modernism W. H Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts, In Memory of W.B. Yeats, September 1, 1939. Contemporary Britain and Ireland Monday, 9 th April Philip Larkin, "Church Going," The Old Fools, Chinua Achebe, from An Image of Africa, and Zadie Smith, The Waiter s Wife. Wednesday, 11 th April Seamus Heaney, "Digging," (in the anthology) "The Forge," "Markings," "Wheels Within Wheels, "St. Kevin and the Blackbird," and The Basket of Chestnuts. Monday, 16 th April Reading to be announced Wednesday, 18 th April Final Examination during scheduled exam time Paper Two due on day of exam.