Gustavus Adolphus
College |
Minnesota Board of Teaching
Program Approval 2006 |
ENG 116 - British Literature II |
English 116 British Literature II Joyce Sutphen 309 Vickner Hall Phone: 933-6083 Office Hours 1:00-2:00, Tuesdays and Thursdays and by appointment
The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The persons in whom this power resides, may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. . . .They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations, for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspirations, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present, the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire: the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Percy Bysshe Shelley, From A Defense of Poetry
Required Texts: Abrams, M. H. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2 (or Volumes 2A, 2B, 2C). Seventh Edition. New York: Norton, 2000.
Supplementary Texts: Abrams, M. H. ed. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Seventh Edition. New York: Holt, 2000. Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed. London: Oxford UP, 1985. Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Rev. ed. New York: Random, 1979. Gibaldi, Joseph. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 4th ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 1995.
Course Description: A semester’s survey of British Literature from the end of the Eighteenth Century up to the Twenty-First Century must, of necessity, be selective and swift of pace, especially since one of the goals of this course is that you acquire an overall view of the many kinds of texts that have been traditionally thought of as principal works in English Literature, while at the same time inviting you to see how changing and fluid is the term “English Literature.” The 7th Version of the Norton Anthology of English Literature includes more writing by women than ever before (sixty women are represented rather than the six in the 1st Edition!), and our time span is especially reflective of the realization that English Literature is not only written in England, Scotland and Wales, but also in Ireland, South Africa, India, Canada, and the West Indies. Most of our attention this semester will be on poems and prose fictions, but it is important to realize that the concept of “literary” has been expanding to include essays, memoirs, and other texts not traditionally included; it is also hoped that besides getting a good sense of the individual writers (from Blake and Wollstonecraft to Rushdie and Munro), you will get a sense of how particular texts “talk” to one another (within d beyond a particular era) on subjects such as political freedom, religious belief, the rights of women and minorities, and world peace.
Course Work: You will be responsible for careful daily readings. Occasionally, I will give informal quizzes or ask you to respond to the day’s assignment in writing, but most often I will call on you to respond to the readings within the class discussion. Short papers (3-4) will be assigned, and we will work on the composition process together and in conferences. I plan on giving two exams. Participation, presentations, and quizzes: 30% Papers: 35% Exams 35%
Grading Policies: You must complete all major assignments, including the final exam, in order to pass the course. Absences will affect your grade; your final grade will be lowered by one third for every hour missed over three. Incompletes will be given only in genuine emergencies, and must be arranged before the last day of class.
Discussion Schedule: * Read all General Introductions and introductions to assigned writers and works.
T Feb. 8: Introductions. Th Feb. 10: The Romantic Period, 1785-1830 (1-23). The French Revolution and the “Spirit of the Age” (117-137). Barbauld, “The Rights of Woman,” “To a Little Visible Being . . . ,” “Washing Day” Smith, “Written at the Close of Spring,” “To Night”
T Feb. 15: Blake, From Songs of Innocence and Experience (all selections); The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Two Letters on Sight and Vision” Explication assignment. Th Feb. 17: Blake (in-class explication) Wollstonecraft, From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
T Feb 22: Burns, “To a Mouse,” “Tam o’ Shanter: A Tale,” “Afton Water,” “Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn” [Scots, Wha Hae], “Song: For a’ that and a’ that,” “A Red, Red Rose.” Th Feb 24: Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” “Simon Lee,” “We Are Seven,” “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “A slumber did my spirit seal,” “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” “My heart leaps up,” “The World is too much with us.”
T March 1: Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tinturn Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798” Dorothy Wordsworth, From the Journals (385-397). Write you own Gustavus entries (2 or 3 days; 2 pages double-spaced) Assign Paper #2
Th March 3: Coleridge, “From Biographia Literaria” (“The Discipline of His Taste at School,” “Mr. Wordsworth’s Earlier Poems,” “On the Imagination, or Esemplastic Power”), Poems: “The Eolian Harp” “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
T March 8: Byron, “She walks in beauty,” “When we two parted,” From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”(Canto 1; 3.1-16, 68-75; 4.1-4, 175-186), From Don Juan (Canto 1-33 and—if you get hooked—more!) Th March 10: Shelley, “Ozymandias,” “A Song: ‘Men of England,’” “Ode to the West Wind,” “To a Sky-Lark” John Clare, “Mouse’s Nest,” “I Am” Felicia Dorothea Hemans: “Casabianca,” “The Homes of England” PAPER #2 Draft, Peer Responses
T March 15: Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” “When I have fears that I may cease to be,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn” “To Autumn” Letters Th March 17: No Class
T March 22: Midterm Th March 24: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
March 25—April 3, Easter Recess
T April 5: Paper #3 due. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein. Th April 7: The Victorian Age. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Cry of the Children,” From Sonnets from the Portuguese, From Aurora Leigh.
T April 12: Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” “My Last Duchess,” “Home-Thoughts, from Abroad,” “A Tocacata of Galuppi’s,” “Memorabilia” Th April 14: Tennyson, “The Lady of Shallott,” “Ulysses,” From In Memoriam (7, 27, 54), “The Charge of the Light Brigade, “ “The Passing of Arthur”
T April 19: Emily Brontë, “Remembrance,” “No Coward Soul Is Mine.” Matthew Arnold, “Lines Written in Kensington Gardens,” “Dover Beach,” “Preface to Poems (1853)” From Culture and Anarchy: “Sweetness and Light” Th April 21: Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris DGR: From The House of Life, CR: Goblin Market WM: “The Defense of Guenevere”
T April 26: Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” “Pied Beauty,” “Binsey Poplars,” “Spring and Fall” “[Carrion Comfort]” “No Worst, There is None,” “I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day,” “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord” PAPER #4 Peer responses Th April 28: Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, W.S. Gilbert. EL: “Limerick,” “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear,” “The Jumblies,” LC: “Jabberwocky, From The Hunting of the Snark. Limerick or drawing.
T May 3: The Twentieth Century (Intro) Thomas Hardy “Hap,” “The Darkling Thrush,” “Channel Firing” “The Convergence of the Twain,” A. E. Housman “Loviliest of Trees,” “When I was One-and-Twenty,” “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier,” Wilfred Owen “Dulce Et Decorum Est” Henry Reed, From Lessons of the War, “Naming of Parts,” “Judging Distances” Th May 5: W. B. Yeats Choose poem to present.
T May 10: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. Th May 12: T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” The Waste Land W. H. Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” “Lullaby,” “In Memory of W. B. Yeats, Louis MacNeice, “The Sunlight on the Garden,” “Star-Gazer” Stevie Smith, “Our Bog is Dead,” “Not Waving But Drowning,” Philip Larkin, “Talking in Bed,” “High Windows,” Ted Hughes, “Examination at the Womb-Door,” “Theology.” Dylan Thomas, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Seamus Heaney, “Digging,” “”Casualty,”
T May 17: Alice Munro, “Walker Brothers Cowboy,” Salman Rushdie “The Prophet’s Hair” Last Day of class. Final Friday, May 20: 10:30-12:30 Classroom
Expectations: *I expect you to be in class. More than three unexcused absences will affect your grade, lowering it by a half grade for each additional absence. *I expect you to come to class prepared to participate in discussions. Don’t be surprised if I give a quiz without warning. *I expect your writing assignments to be typed and formatted according to MLA style. If you have questions, refer to the MLA Handbook available in the library and the Writing Center. *Writing assignments are due on the date indicated on the syllabus. 10% of what the paper would have earned will be deducted for each day the paper is late. *Plagiarism and academic dishonesty will not be tolerated and will be reported to the Dean. I reserve the right to flunk you for the entire course.
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