SYLLABUS VIEW, English 211.001, Fall 2011 [Last Revised: 30 November, 2011 01:20:40 PM]
Weekly Schedule and Assignments and Link to In-Class Performance Schedule
Boldface black type indicates "terms of art," words that professional literary scholars use and that cannot be paraphrased because they describe basic literary concepts and formal features of literary works that are essential to the profession. Using our terms of art correctly is one way to signal that you belong to this subculture of academia. You should be able to define and explain the terms of art for the day on which they're scheduled because they are relevant to understanding the reading. Most definitions are to be found in Abrams' Glossary (required for English majors and on Course Reserve at the library). I also have hyperlinked each term to a short definition with examples. To see the entire glossary, click here. All page numbers correspond to the Eighth Edition (2000) of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1.
Week 1
Monday, 8/29: Before class, read the course home page, the "required graded work" page, "Why does the English major require a survey course?," "why you should care about this course," and (if you have time and want to dig deeper into the history of English as a discipline) Sean Shesgreen, "Canonizing the Canonizer: A Short History of The Norton Anthology of English Literature," Critical Inquiry Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 293-318. (Available online at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596644) Introduction of how the course works within the major; how the syllabus and other web pages should be used each week with the Norton Anthology; and the daily class routine including unannounced quizzes and student in-class performances and interpretations of individual works. What you do with the course web site and what you can find there depends upon what level of engagement with English literature you want/need, but it helps if you understand how a survey course works (see "rationale" link above). If we have time, we will discuss what makes Pre-Modern English literature different from Early Modern or even Modern English literature. What kind of "technology" is literacy, and what are the rules for reading very old literature? You could do worse than take an inventory of your current "normal literacy rules." As you read this syllabus online, or the next class's assignments in the printed Norton Anthology, pay attention to the "metaliterate" skills you use to tell you how to operate the text. For instance, do you know what the underscoring in the following "terms of art" means? When you open the Norton, what do you expect to find in the front of the book and how do you know where the Bede excerpt will be found? Those elements of books' "apparatus" did not exist in the earliest printed books or in earlier manuscript books for the simple reason that readers did not require them. Why do you need those things now? Quiz #0. Here is the actual plan of St. Gall Abbey, a structure which still survives.
Wednesday, 8/31: one history with an embedded lyric poem, and two lyric elegies--Wanderer (111-13), "The Wife's Lament" (113-14), Bede 24-26--Bede is writing in two different languages, Latin and Middle English, and his discussion of translation will be important to your understanding of what you see in the Norton's text of Wanderer and "Wife's Lament." For those of you who have taken English 215, what would the New Critics say was "the text, itself," for each of these three "works"? Click here for a one-paragraph introduction to Old English or Anglo-Saxon and that language's relations to the Middle English of Chaucer's era. Terms of art: literacy, orality, performance of the text, interpretation of the text, social functions of literature, aesthetics.
Friday, 9/2: excerpts from two epic songs: the "Battle of Maldon" (Click here for Jonathan A. Glenn's ModE translation of the poem, which was cut from the Norton 8th edition.), Beowulf, 36-49, 92-99 (“The Hero Comes to Heorot,” “Feast at Heorot,” “The Fight with Grendel,” and “Beowulf’s Funeral"). Terms of art: poetic stress vs. poetic meter, alliterative verse, kenning, elegy, epic, "scop" (OE, <"skop">bard, singer). Click here for some ideas to help you make sense of this earliest literature's relationship to the rest of the course. Here is an artist's attempt to recreate the Anglo-Saxon mead hall (i.e., Heorot, Hrothgar's hall).
Week 2
Monday 9/5: LABOR DAY HOLIDAY--time to earn some English major points by reading crucial excerpts from the Christian Bible that almost all medieval Europeans would have known by heart, if not letter-perfect because so few of them were Latin literate. Genesis 1-9 (Creation, Adam and Eve, the Fall; Cain & Abel; Noah's Flood). When you are finished reading, take the "Bible literacy quiz" on the GoucherLearn site for English 211. Although GoucherLearn insists on scoring it, the grade will not count against your final grade. It's to help you learn and remember an oft-unread foundation text that's important to the literature we're reading this week and for the rest of the semester.
consider the fact that, during the period when Old English or Anglo-Saxon
Wednesday 9/7: Into Middle English--Chaucer intro. and Canterbury Tales "General Prologue" (213-37), and "Truth" (317) Click here for information about Chaucer's life, especially his relationship to the royal family of England. The "GP" is a complex work of literature masquerading as a trivial introduction. To improve your understanding of how it works, read the whole prologue once straight through, and then reread one of the pilgrim portraits carefully, so that you become a specialist in that pilgrim as the narrator describes her/him. For an explanation of why I usually refer to the GP speaker "Chaucer-the-Pilgrim" and not Geoffrey Chaucer, see the critical term glossary entries for persona/ae and implied narrator. To access sound files you can use to teach yourself Middle English, click here for Larry D. Benson's Harvard University Chaucer Seminar site. Click here for a short written description of how to pronounce Middle English vowels and consonants: M.E. phonology. Terms of art: stanza, rhyming couplet, rhyme scheme, balade, estates satire, frame narrative, implied narrator, persona/ae Especially pay attention to the concepts of rhyme scheme and stanza structure--most of the later poetry in English 211 will make use of them. Web page for today's class.
Friday 9/9: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, KT summary and "Miller's Prologue and Tale" (238-55). Terms of art: fabliau, parody, plot, flat and round characters
By this Friday, you should be prepared to sign up for an in-class performance and analysis of a portion of one class's reading.
Week 3
Monday 9/12: Chaucer, Canterbury
Tales, "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" (256-84). Terms
of art:
romance,
autobiography,
anti-feminism,
realism To see the Wife of
Bath's tale's illustration from the Ellesmere Manuscript, stored in a
nitrogen-filled case at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, click here.
Wednesday 9/14: Everyman (463-84). Terms of art: personification allegory, moralities and mysteries (as dramatic genres), dramatic irony
Friday 9/16: Julian of Norwich (371-82) and Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (383-97). Terms of art: mysticism, literacy, book (pre-printing definition--see the Oxford English Dictionary for its German origin), anchoress Web page with some issues for today's discussion.
Week 4
First Stage of the "Getting to
Know Some Old Things Very Well" Project--optional extra credit work in Special
Collections: MS to Print, Editing Chaucer, from Medieval (1478) to Renaissance
(1598) to Modern (1721)
Monday 9/19: "Sixteenth
Century" background (485-513) and Sir
Thomas More, Utopia (518-90). Terms
of art:
utopia/utopian,
dystopia/dystopian,
speculative fiction,
travel narrative
Web page with some issues for
today's discussion.
Wednesday 9/21: Sir Thomas Hoby (English translator) & Baldassari Castiglioni (Italian author), The Courtier or Il Cortegiano (645-61). Terms of art: Neoplatonism, Rensaissance "self-fashioning" (also a book title), Renaissance, Machiavelli's The Prince
Friday 9/23: [National Punctuation Day (9/24)!] Start of literature originally written in Early Modern English--Please read this web page for guidance for the rest of the course readings! Sir Thomas Wyatt & Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (592-606 and 607-615). Terms of art: translation, imitation, sonnet, iambic pentameter, octave & sestet, "Italian" sonnet, verse epistle and epistolary satire, Petrarchan conceit If rhyming poetry is something you never have studied formally before, click here for some basic rules for how to read a poem.
Week 5
Monday 9/26: Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil
and Stella (975-92) Terms
of art:
stanzaic narrative,
irony,
stoicism,
"English" sonnet,
quatrain,
couplet,
anti-Petrarchanism
Wednesday 9/28: Edmund Spenser, Amoretti and "Epithalamion" (902-16). Terms of art: Spenserian sonnet, "concatenated" or chained rhyme, epithalamion, prothalamion
Friday 9/30: Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (essay on Marlowe, 1002-4, essay on the play, prologue and scenes 1-5, 1022-41). Terms of art: dramatic tragedy, act/scene, subplot, blank verse, psychomachia, metadrama
Week
6
Monday 10/3: Christopher Marlowe, The
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (scenes 6-13, 1041-57). Terms
of art:
despair
(Christian sin), the Seven Deadly Sins,
apostrophe (rhetorical, not punctuation mark never
used properly anymore), soliloquy,
time compression
Click here for a general observation on
Marlowe's style and special concerns as a dramatist.
Wednesday 10/5: William Shakespeare, King Lear (essay and Acts 1 & 2, 1139-1180. Note--clicking on any day's assignment for King Lear will take you to the same web page.) For the "quarto" version of Lear (printed in 1608, probably pirated) click here. For the "folio" edition of Lear (i.e., from the "First Folio," printed in 1623 by Shakespeare's friends) click here. Both are printed in facsimile from surviving volumes, but the text is transcribed in the frame at the center top of your screen, and you can go directly to individual scenes, or to pages in the volume, using the left frame navigation aid. You also can compare the quarto and folio versions at any given act/scene. To watch a twelve-minute Real Audio clip of Peter Brook's 1960 black and white version of IV.7.12-85 and V.2.257-end, click here. Note that the video quality is poor, but the sound gives you a good sense of how a "realist" 1960s production would see its "Lear," outdoors, plain-spoken, without rhetorical flourishes. To watch a ten-minute Real Audio clip of Sir Laurence Olivier playing the same portions of Lear in a 1988 version, click here. In addition to being shot on a set, in color, it also harks back to more formal performance of the dialogue's verse. For the call numbers and descriptions of the library's two video versions (including the Olivier "Lear") and Kurosawa's 1985 Japanese adaptation (Ran), click here. Terms of art: thematic repetition, Machiavel, stage whisper, man/microcosm
MID-SEMESTER BREAK [Friday, 10/7-Sunday 10/9]
Week 7
Monday 10/10: William Shakespeare, King Lear
(Acts 3, 4, & 5, 1180-1227) Also, by this
Friday, if you are not taking or have not already taken English 200, you must make an appointment with Randy Smith of the library to receive
some one-on-one or small group instruction in the use of the MLA Bibliography
and LION databases.
Click here to learn
more about this requirement. If you never have written literary
analysis before, read
"The
Dream of the Text" and talk to me.
Click here for some issues
related to the early performances of King Lear and our perception of
comedy or tragedy.
Wednesday 10/12: William Shakespeare, Biographical essay and Sonnets (1058-77). Terms of art: Shakespearian sonnet, "ruins of time" motif, hyperbole Web page. Review the notion of poetic "persona" in lyrics and drama, and think about what this means for biographical readings of the sonnets as Shakespeare's personal beliefs and feelings.
Wednesday 10/12 (afternoon) or Friday 10/14 (morning): Midterm Exam Review Session(s), time and number depending on your availability and interest. Click here for some study tips. Click here for a short overview of the practice of canon formation and the critique of canon formation, which the exam ultimately is designed to enable you to describe and understand. If you cannot take the exam on the day it scheduled, please see me to work out an alternative.
Thursday, 10/13: FIRST PAPER DUE by 5 PM in an email to me as an attached Word or RTF file--MAXIMUM LENGTH, 3 PAGES OF TEXT EXCLUDING NOTES AND "WORKS CITED" SECTION. The paper's primary source must be a work we read before the midterm exam. See the "Required Graded Work" page linked to the home page menu. If this your first attempt to write a college-level literary analysis paper? If this is your first, be aware that this genre of writing differs enormously from what usually is taught in high school as a "research paper" or "book report." Avoid common errors such as mistaking plot summary for analysis, or assembling previous scholarly opinion rather than writing about original thinking that uses research to solve problems. Make sure you create a document that works like and looks like a college-level literary analysis. Read these linked tip sheets for first-time writers and ask me if you have questions. You also can read examples of successful midterm papers in my office. Click here for a description of the Introduction, Body, and Conclusion of a typical literary analysis based on typical questions academic readers ask in the order in which they typically ask them. Click here for the criteria I will use to evaluate the midterm papers, and click here for a checklist of obvious things you should look for when proofreading the final draft. Click here for the English 211 Style Sheet, including a shorter version of the MLA format for Works Cited citations. I welcome preliminary drafts or emails about your thesis.
Friday 10/14: Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesie (953-74). Terms of art: literary theory, aristotelianism, Horace' Ars poetica, Puritan/"Precisionist," vates, maker
October 16, 2011-January 1, 2012 "Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes," a manuscript exhibit opens at The Walters Art Museum in downtown Baltimore. Please consider visiting this exhibit in the context of our study of early literature. The artifact in question is an unique "palimpsest" containing hitherto unknown writings of the Greek mathematician, Archimedes, as well as orations by the fourth century B.C.E. orator, Hyperides. The exhibit will show how the manuscript was taken apart for analysis using advanced techniques, including multi-spectrum imaging, X-Ray fluorescence imaging, and optical character recognition.
Week 8
Monday 10/17: Midterm Exam--Medieval to Early Renaissance Literature. Click here for some study tips. The examination will be held in our regularly scheduled classroom at the regularly scheduled time.
Wednesday 10/19: "Early Seventeenth Century English Literature and Cultual Change" (1235-59), Literature assignments: Two lyrics and a prose sales pitch from a nobleman to his queen/banker--Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," (1022); Ralegh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," "The Lie" and "The discovery of...Guiana" (917-18, 919-21, and 923-26),; an early printed "blog" attacking Charles I's decision to attack France instead of preparing for a Spanish attack--The spyte of Spaine, OR A thankefull remembrance of GODS Mercie in Britanes [d]eliuerie from the Spanish Armado. 1588. (Anonymous, Edinburgh: The Heirs of Andro Hart, 1628). (Note: The most complete surviving copy of Spyte is in Goucher's James W. Bright Collection in Rare Books [4th floor, Athenaeum]. The web link connects to a "diplomatic transcription" that preserves the Early Modern spelling. In 1622, Nathaniel Butter had begun publishing the first London "news paper," and Spyte appears to be an early Edinburgh response to the public's appetite for political opinion on the hottest news of the day. Click here to view the broadsheet [single page] copy of the 24 January 1688 issue of the London Gazette.) Terms of art: satire, propaganda, colonialism/imperialism, pastoral poetry.
Friday 10/21: Ben Jonson, Volpone, Acts I & II (1334-70). Terms of art: aube/aubade, parasite/patron, type-character, Old Comedy vs. New Comedy
Week 9
Monday 10/24: Ben Jonson, Volpone,
Acts III, IV, V (1370-1427).
Terms
of art:
moral center,
farce,
the Grand
Tour
Wednesday 10/26 Robert Herrick (1653-66). Terms of art: the Sons of Ben, "wild civility," paradox, carpe diem
Friday 10/28: Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke (993-97), and Queen Elizabeth I (688-703, especially the works indicated on her web page). [NOTE: Each author has her own web page!] Terms of art: poulter's measure, dramatic interlude, copia, Ramist rhetoric, the Armada Year Click here for a modern critical perspective on reading early women writers' work.
Week 10 Second Stage of the "Getting to Know Some Old Things Very Well" Project--optional extra credit work in Special Collections: Medieval to Renaissance receptions of Chaucer and English legendary history
Monday 10/31: Lady Mary Wroth (1451-61), Amelia Lanyer, "Eve's Apology in Defense of Women" and "The Description of Cooke-ham" (1313-24), Terms of art: "immasculation" and "the Resisting Reader" (Judith Fetterly), gender roles, foundation narratives. Wroth and Lanyer are the first poets we have read who fit the formal description of “feminist poets” in that they both address an audience of female readers, and they specifically write about women’s position in life and in literature. Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath” is hedged about with potential and actual satire of her positions, but neither Lanyer nor Wroth is less than passionately direct about her assertions. Lanyer, in particular, attempts a particularly daring reinterpretation of the foundation narrative in Genesis in a manner that should remind us of Margery Kempe’s reading of Luke’s “woman in the crowd” passage and of Julian of Norwich’s interpretation of God as having a nurturing female aspect. Wroth and Lanyer are contemporaries of Shakespeare and Jonson, and both publish their works, under their own names (!). Keep them in mind when reading that later, male poet’s reinterpretation of Genesis, which he called Paradise Lost.
All Saint's Day (November 1), and its predecessor, All Hallowes Eve (October 31), are commonly associated with supernatural phenomena in the English literary tradition. For an image to inspire your Halloween reading, click here.
Wednesday 11/2: John Donne, Songs and Sonnets (1260-95), Holy Sonnets and other sacred poetry and prose (1295-1309). tetrameter, trimeter, dimeter, monometer, metaphysical poetry
Thursday, 11/3: This year's Schroedl Lecture on material culture by Will Noel, Walters Art Museum curator of rare books and manuscripts, and Abigail Quandt, Senior Conservator of Books and Manuscripts. (Kelley Lecture Hall, 6:30-8:00) Their topic will be the restoration, recovery, and interpretation of an unique medieval manuscript book that contains previously undiscovered mathematical theorems by Archimedes and orations by the Athenian, Hyperides.
Friday 11/4: George Herbert (1605-25) shaped poems, baroque style Note that you have a long reading due for Monday and Wednesday of next week, so if you have time you should read ahead. Herbert is dealing with religious subjects, like Milton, but Milton's style and ambitions stand in stark contrast with his. Can you describe and explain what kinds of issues Herbert treats with lyric poems and the subjects of Milton's epic? This is an excellent opportunity to experience the importance of "genre" or poetic form as it sets readers' expectations for what "a work of literature" should be and do.
Week 11
Monday 11/7: John Milton, Paradise Lost, opening biographical essay and Books I and II (1785-9, 1830-73). Terms of art: metaphysical conceit, Cavalier poets, : miltonic syntax, epic simile, "anxiety of influence" (also book title), epic tradition, epic.
Wednesday 11/9: John Milton, Paradise Lost, Books IV, IX, and XII (1887-1908, 1973-98, 2041-55). Click here for an important corrective passage from Book III which just might prevent you from mistaking Satan for Milton's hero.
Friday 11/11: Andrew Marvell (1684-1724). metaphysical conceit, Cavalier poets.
Week 12
Monday 11/14: Literature in Modern English--Lady Anne Halkett, The Memoirs (1764-67);
Lucy Hutchinson, "Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson" (1757-60). Terms
of art: memoir. "Restoration and Eighteenth Century"
background (2045-70).
Parliamentarians vs.
Royalists: Testing Literary Style for Traces of Social and Political Beliefs
Note that you have a long reading due Wednesday and
Friday, so if you have time you should read ahead. Want a more challenging
context for this week's readings? Try reading the stories in an edition of
the "broadsheet" (single-page) London newspaper of this era: the
London Gazette, 24 January 1688
Wednesday 11/16: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (2178-80, and 2183-2203, to the arrival in Surinam). Terms of art: novel, autobiography, biography, polemic, genre-bending. narrative fiction before the novel
Friday 11/18: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (2203-2226). Terms of art: novel, biography, polemic, genre-bending, narrative fiction before the novel+a medieval surprise
Week 13
Monday 11/21: Mary Astell, Some Reflections Upon Marriage (2284-88), Terms of art: essay, gender roles, foundation narratives Click here for an explanation of my intentions in clustering together the next two sets of readings.
Tuesday, 11/22--arthroscopic rotator cuff repair, decompression, subscapularis repair, with interscalene nerve block and sedation (wheee!). Don't expect any email or phone contact until Monday, 11/28, or later.
Wednesday 11/23 through Sunday 11/27--THANKSGIVING VACATION.
Week 14
Monday 11/28:
Anne
Finch, countess of Winchilsea (2294-8);
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (2584-89);
Matthew Prior (2298-2301) Note that each has
her/his own web page! Terms of art:
vers de societe, nocturne, silencing
Wednesday 11/30: John Dryden, Mac Flecnoe (2111-17), excerpt from "Annus Mirabilis" (2085-6) and criticism selections (2125-33). Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal" and "Description of a City Shower" (2462-68 and 2301-3). John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester (2167-78). For Anniina Jokinen's Luminarium.org transcription of a selection of Rochester's other poetry, including the great "Satyre Against Reason and Mankynd" and his translation of "A Passage from Seneca," click here. As Chaucer said of the Miller, however, Rochester tells "a churles tale" in his shorter lyrics, so "be avised and put me out of blame if that ye choose amiss." Click here for a way to see both literary satire and literary criticism as subspecies of the same social art, discering judgment practice in literature. Terms of art: verse satire, prescriptive criticism, classicism, straw man, the "Irish problem," Gresham's law; pornography, obscenity, materialism, skepticism, atheism, deism
Friday 12/2: William Congreve, The Way of the World (introductory essay and Acts I, II, and III). Terms of art: Restoration drama, rake, city man/woman
Week 15
Monday 12/5: William Congreve, The Way of the World (Acts IV and V--2248-84). Terms of art: stichomythia, low norm satire
Wednesday 12/7: LAST CLASS--end of semester retrospective discussion of course and its relation to "Pope to Eliot" (English 212), "Critical Methods" (English 215), "Medieval Literature" (English 240 in Spring 2004), and the Chaucer seminar (English 330 in Spring 2003). Click here for a Final Exam Review Study Aid to group authors by genres and by issues. Click here for a Final Exam Review Study Aid that lists authors and works by order of the authors' birth year.
Please remember to fill out the online English 211 course evaluation form. Thanks!
Monday 12/12: SECOND PAPER DUE by 5 PM in my Inbox as an attached MS-Word or Rich Text Format (.rft) document. Click here for the English 211 Style Sheet, including a shorter version of the MLA format for Works Cited citations. If you learn well from examples, remember that I have copies of successful English 211 final papers available for reading in my office. Click here for the Final Paper requirements.
Chronological View (Note that the order in which we read these texts is only roughly chronological. Sometimes I have violated chronology to give you more time to read a large work over the weekend, or to cluster together smaller works by authors whose views are relevant to each other's work. The "Chronological View" of the syllabus will help you see when these works were written with respect to each other and their authors' lives, which can be a great help when preparing the final paper.)
