Where Do You Want to Go From Here?: Life After English 211
The end of a survey course is the start of your more specialized reading in those works you surveyed which still interest you. We intended to take in a wide range of genres, styles, and literary intentions from "The Battle of Maldon" in 991 CE to 1700 when Dryden died. (OK, OK, Swift's "Modest Proposal" was 1729 and "City Shower" was 1710, and Congreve's The Way of the World continued to be revived after 1700's initial flop, but we had to look forward to satire's triumph and eventual migration into prose as "the novel.") As you prepare for the final exam, try to remember what mattered to you when you read it first, and what still matters to you now. What works' voices can you still hear in your head? Which words can you still see in your mind's eye? What scenes and poetic images still seem fresh and powerful? Go back to find them again and read them with an intellect that benefits from a full semester's efforts to understand early literature, and its patterns of relationship and innovation. Question your taste in literature, and challenge your sense of what you are capable of connecting with. When you are interested in reading further, you always have the option to seek out the authors on your own, but remember that Goucher also offers further courses in which they are studied. See the list below for a preliminary guide. Courses highlighted in blue are hyperlinked to online web sites where you can read their syllabi from a current or previous semester. Courses in red do not yet have a web avatar, but you are free to consult the instructor and to ask for a copy of a previous semester's syllabus.
English 212 ("Pope to Eliot"):
If you have not yet taken English 212 ("Pope to Eliot"), that survey will pick up precisely where 211 left off at about 1700, at the first full century of English literature's development into the cultural mirror and shaping force for a nation's consciousness. Many of the genres you liked from 211 will continue to evolve in 212, and authors you read in 211 will be read by and influence authors you read in 212. If you already have taken 212, now would be a good time to reflect upon where what you have just read was transformed (novels and the popular literary magazines as every literate English reader's measure of literacy, lyric poems in rhyming couplets or that do not rhyme at all, the "short story" and serialized novel as bridge genres between the literary magazines and the novel, and living English authors as celebrities, given noble titles and great wealth for their work and able to move public opinion during their own lifetimes as much as any politician or business tycoon. See me or Jeff or any of the 212 instructors if you wnat to figure more of this out.
Old English/Anglo-Saxon:
Goucher has no Anglo-Saxonist in its English Department, and because Anglo-Saxon is different enough from Middle or Early Modern English to qualify as a completely different language, I have not offered a course in it because my preparation as a scholar is almost entirely in Middle and Early Modern English (with some Old French thrown in for Malory). However, if you are interested in "The Battle of Maldon," "Wife's Lament," Wanderer" or even Beowulf, the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon works, we might be able to arrange an independent study (i.e., English 299).
Middle English:
1) Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (English 330, a seminar, every other year when Jeff Myers is not teaching it as a Renaissance seminar);
2) Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, "Parliament of Foules," "House of Fame," "Book of the Duchess," minor lyrics; the Pearl-Poet's Pearl, Gawain and the Green Knight, St. Erkenwald, Patience, and Cleannesse; Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur; Marie de France's Breton lais; the Middle English Breton lais. (English 240, Medieval Literature [an introductory course] every other year when English 330 is not running as a Middle English seminar, i.e., when Myers has it as a Renaissance seminar).
Early Modern English :
1) Courtly English lyrics by Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare; drama by Marlowe and other non-Shakespearians--English 243: Renaissance Literature. (Jeff Myers)
2) William Shakespeare--English 232: Shakespeare (Jeff Myers); English 350: Seminar in Shakespeare (a seminar when English 330 runs as a Medieval literature seminar); and English 330, a seminar, every other year when Arnie Sanders it not teaching it as a Medieval ;iterature seminar).
3) Amelia Lanyer, Lady Mary Wroth, Anne Finch as lyric poets: English 276: Modern Poetry (Michelle Tokarczyk).
4) Aphra Behn, as an "American" colonial author--English 250, American Literature I (Mary Marchand); English 285: Contemporary Literature from India, Africa, and Australia (Antje Rauwerda).
5) Brooke and Carol Peirce Center Internships and Patricelli Internships in the Goucher Library Rare Book collection this could be an internship or an independent study, depending on your needs and abilities, but it's a way to learn some hands-on scholarly skills with uniquely rare and important early printed books.
6) Book History, including the Book History Minor--English 241 (see below) and English/History 242: From Puritan Diaries to Oprah’s Book Club: Readers and Writers in American History. Matt Hale's course traces the evolution of print book literature from Colonial American literature to the era of Oprah's Book Club and will give you a chance to think about books as a "technology" that has helped shape our culture. Spring 2008 and alternating years.
7) English 241: Archeology of Text: "Archeology of Text" starts with digital texts and archives, and follows the physical traces of their ancestry back through time over the next 900 years to show how the digital text evolved from printed books, and how handpress books evolved from manuscript books. Along the way, students are trained in archival research methods and standards so that their end-of-semester independent research projects allow them to do research in early printed books and manuscripts in the Julia Rogers Library Rare Book Collection. Click the hyperlink for the course web site. Click here for a page with images and links to the Fall 2007 independent research projects. Students who successfully complete the course are eligible to apply for Peirce Center Internships which pay stipends to support research in January or the summer. Fall 2007 and alternating years unless demand increases.
Modern English:
1) Jonathan Swift, and the later satirists and novelists, including Pope, Johnson, and Austen: English 246: English Literature 1660-1800 (Juliette Wells).
2) Poetry in the Modern Era: English 205: Introduction to Poetry Workshop (Beth Spires); English 276: Modern Poetry (Michelle Tokarczyk).
3) The Novel as an outgrowth of travel writers, satirists, and polemicists like Behn, Congreve and the dramatic satirists, and students of the human psychology (science's new language for "soul"): English 260: The Early English Novel (Juliette Wells); English 264: The Later English Novel (Juliette Wells); English 265: History of the English Novel (Juliette Wells); English 285: Contemporary Literature from India, Africa, and Australia (Antje Rauwerda).
And most of the rest of the courses in the major...plus your independent reading, which is your most powerful tool to explore the literature you care about and to do so for your own developing purposes!