SYLLABUS VIEW, English 211.001, Fall 2007
Weekly Schedule and Assignments
Boldface black type indicates terms of art, concepts, and essential literary reference points which you should be able to define and explain 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 Seventh Edition (2000) of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1.
Week 1
Wednesday, 8/29: Course introduction; Bede 24-26--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? As you read this syllabus, or the excerpt from Bede in the 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? Terms of art: literacy, orality, performance of the text, interpretation of the text, social functions of literature, aesthetics.
Friday, 8/31: two elegies and excerpts from two epic songs: Wanderer (99-102), "The Wife's Lament" (102-3), 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).
Week 2
Monday 9/3: LABOR DAY HOLIDAY--consider the fact that, during the period when Old English or Anglo-Saxon was spoken in England, labor was not usually considered a commodity that could be sold on the open market, but was expected daily of all non-nobles and many of the clergy as essential to their identities as adults. They would no sooner stop working than stop breathing. See Genesis I:4:17-19 for the text underlying this general cultural assumption, which was widely shared by medieval people but rare among Americans in the 21st century. Especially consider this when reading Chaucer's General Prologue portrait of the Prioress and the Monk (I:118-62 and 165-207). Otherwise you might miss the irony of "Chaucer-the-Pilgrim"'s apparently favorable representation of their behaviors and attitudes. 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.
Wednesday 9/5: Into Middle English--Chaucer intro. and Canterbury Tales "General Prologue" (210-35), and "Truth" (315) 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. 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.
Friday 9/7: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Miller's Prologue and Tale" (235-52). 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 9/10: Chaucer, Canterbury
Tales, "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" (253-81). 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 9/12: Everyman (445-67). Terms of art: personification allegory, moralities and mysteries (as dramatic genres), dramatic irony
Friday 9/14: Julian of Norwich (355-66) and Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (366-79). Terms of art: mysticism, literacy, book (pre-printing definition--see the Oxford English Dictionary for its German origin), anchoress
Week 4
Monday 9/17: "Sixteenth
Century" background (469-98) and Sir
Thomas More, Utopia (503-23). Terms
of art:
utopia/utopian,
dystopia/dystopian,
speculative fiction,
travel narrative
Wednesday 9/19: Sir Thomas Hoby & Baldassari Castiglioni, The Courtier (577-93). Terms of art: Neoplatonism, Rensaissance "self-fashioning" (also a book title), Renaissance, Machiavelli's The Prince
Friday 9/21: Literature in Early Modern English--Sir Thomas Wyatt & Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (525-37 and 569-77). 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 9/24: [National
Punctuation Day!] Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil
and Stella (916-31) Terms
of art:
stanzaic narrative,
irony,
stoicism,
"English" sonnet,
quatrain,
couplet,
anti-Petrarchanism
Wednesday 9/26: Edmund Spenser, Amoretti and "Epithalamion" (863-78). Terms of art: Spenserian sonnet, "concatenated" or chained rhyme, epithalamion, prothalamion
Friday 9/28: Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (essay on Marlowe, 970-71, essay on the play, prologue and scenes 1-5, 990-1008). Terms of art: dramatic tragedy, act/scene, subplot, blank verse, psychomachia, metadrama
Week
6
Monday 10/1: Christopher Marlowe, The
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (scenes 6-13, 1008-23). Terms
of art:
despair
(Christian sin), the Seven Deadly Sins,
apostrophe (rhetorical, not punctuation mark never
used properly anymore), soliloquy,
time compression
Wednesday 10/3: William Shakespeare, King Lear (essay and Acts 1 & 2, 1106-47. 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
Friday 10/5: William Shakespeare, King Lear (Acts 3, 4, & 5, 1147-91) 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.
Week 7
Monday 10/8: William Shakespeare,
Sonnets (1026-7 & 1028-43). Terms
of art:
Shakespearian
sonnet, "ruins of time" motif,
hyperbole
Web page.
Monday 10/8 (afternoon) or Tuesday 10/9: Midterm Exam Review Session(s), time and number depending on your availability and interest. Click here for some study tips. Note the midterm is on Monday following Mid-Semester Break. If you cannot take it on that day, please see me to work out an alternative.
Wednesday 10/10: Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesie (933-54). Terms of art: literary theory, aristotelianism, Horace' Ars poetica, Puritan/"Precisionist," vates, maker
Thursday, 10/11: FIRST PAPER DUE by 5 PM in an email as an attached Word or RTF file--MAXIMUM LENGTH, 3 PAGES OF TEXT EXCLUDING NOTES AND "WORKS CITED" SECTION. Is 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 10/12: MID-SEMESTER BREAK [10/12-14]
Week 8
Monday 10/15: Midterm Exam--Medieval to Early Renaissance Literature. Click here for some study tips.
Wednesday 10/17: "Early Seventeenth Century" (1209-32), Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," (989-90); Ralegh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," "The Lie" and "The discovery of...Guiana" (879-82 and 885-87). Terms of art: satire, propaganda, colonialism/imperialism, pastoral poetry.
Friday 10/19: Ben Jonson, Volpone, Acts I & II (1303-38). Terms of art: aube/aubade, parasite/patron, type-character, Old Comedy vs. New Comedy
Week 9
Monday 10/22: Ben Jonson, Volpone,
Acts III, IV, V (1338-93).
Terms
of art:
moral center,
farce,
the Grand
Tour
Wednesday 10/24: Robert Herrick (1643-55). Terms of art: the Sons of Ben, "wild civility," paradox, carpe diem
Friday 10/26: Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke (957-64), and Queen Elizabeth I (593-600). [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
Monday 10.29: Lady Mary Wroth (1422-32), Amelia Lanyer, "Eve's Apology in Defense of Women" and "The Description of Cooke-ham" (1281-92), 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 Astell 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.
Wednesday 10/31: John Donne, Songs and Sonnets (1233-57), Holy Sonnets (1268-76). tetrameter, trimeter, dimeter, monometer, metaphysical poetry 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.
Friday 11/2: George Herbert (1595-1615) 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 11/5: John Milton, Paradise Lost, Books I and II (1815-58). Terms of art: metaphysical conceit, Cavalier poets, : miltonic syntax, epic simile, "anxiety of influence" (also book title), epic tradition, epic.
Wednesday 11/7: John Milton, Paradise Lost, Books IV, IX, and XII (1874-95, 1961-86, 2030-44).
Friday 11/9: Andrew Marvell (1684-1724). metaphysical conceit, Cavalier poets.
Week 12
Monday 11/12: Literature in Modern English--Lady Anne Halkett, The Memoirs (1730-34);
Lucy Hutchinson, "Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson" (1726-29). Terms
of art: memoir. "Restoration and Eighteenth Century"
background (2045-70). Note that you have a long reading due Wednesday and
Friday, so if you have time you should read ahead.
Wednesday 11/14: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (2165-2191, to the arrival in Surinam). Terms of art: novel, autobiography, biography, polemic, genre-bending. narrative fiction before the novel
Friday 11/16: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (2191-2215). Terms of art: novel, biography, polemic, genre-bending, narrative fiction before the novel+a medieval surprise
Week 13
Monday 11/19: Mary Astell, Some Reflections Upon Marriage (2280-84), Terms of art: essay, gender roles, foundation narratives Click here for an explanation of my intentions in clustering together the readings for this Friday and next Friday.
Wednesday 11/21 through Sunday 11/25--THANKSGIVING VACATION.
Week 14
Monday 11/26:
Anne
Finch, countess of Winchilsea (2291-4);
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (2579-83);
Matthew Prior (2294-97) Note that each has
her/his own web page! Terms of art:
vers de societe, nocturne, silencing
Wednesday 11/28: John Dryden, Mac Flecnoe (2099-2105), from "Annus Mirabilis" (2073-4) and criticism selections (2114-22). Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal" and "Description of a City Shower" (2473-79 and 2298-2301). John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester (2162-65). 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." Terms of art: verse satire, prescriptive criticism, classicism, straw man, the "Irish problem," Gresham's law; pornography, obscenity, materialism, skepticism, atheism, deism
Friday 11/30: William Congreve, The Way of the World (Acts I, II, and III--2215-54). Terms of art: Restoration drama, rake, city man/woman
Week 15
Monday 12/3: William Congreve, The Way of the World (Acts IV and V--2254-80). Terms of art: stichomythia, low norm satire
Wednesday 12/5: LAST CLASS--course evaluation, 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.
Friday, 12/7: 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.)
