Preliminary Information for ENGL2002: British Literature after 1800 (Fall 2014)





Image Credit: August Toulmouche, "Vanity" (1890), at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Toulmouche#mediaviewer/
File:Auguste_toulmouche-vanity.jpg		 August Toulmoche, "Vanity" (1890)




In this section of English 2002, we will survey literature published in the British Isles after 1800, paying attention to significant literary movements (such as Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites and Modernism) as well as authors who fall outside of those rubrics. Formal developments as well as texts' engagement with intellectual, literary, and political histories will be part of our discussion.  English 2002 is part of a suite of required courses in the English Department. All of these courses are designed to prepare students for advanced work in English by orienting them in literary history and addressing disciplinary skills including good research and citation practices, essay writing, and formal literary analysis. These aspects of the course will be the particular focus of many tutorials and will be key to all assignments.
 
Instructor:
Julia M. Wright
E-mail: julia.wright@dal.ca
Office Hours: Mondays, 4:00-5:00pm (McCain 2193); Thursdays, 2:30-3:30pm (McCain 3042); or by appointment.

Required texts: Assignments:  Note: Assignments are due at the start of class and are subject to penalties of 3% per day of lateness, including weekends. I reserve the right not to accept assignments more than one week late. See “On Lateness” below, near the end of General Guidelines. If you have to submit your assignment late, you should a) drop it off in my essay drop-off box (see the metal set of drop-off boxes on the first floor of the McCain building); b) e-mail me right away to let me know that it is there, so that I can note the date it was received as soon as possible.
 
 Assignments
Full details, including essay topics and requirements for the Research Assignments, will be provided on the syllabus so that you can, if you wish, work on assignments early.

Essay #1
A short comparative essay.

Essay #2
This is a research paper in which you will build on what you have learned about effective research to develop your own argument about your selected material. As a consequence, the topics are suggestive and broad, so that you can follow your own interests as much as possible within the parameters of the class.

Research Assignments
These assignments are designed to deepen your research skills while only taking a short time to complete and on a moderately flexible schedule. Each assignment will be discussed in a tutorial before it is due.  Grades will be simple: 2.5 if it is done well; 1.5 if there were some errors or misunderstandings evident; .5 if there are significant problems or the assignment was incomplete but it was attempted.  You may submit up to six assignments, and only the best four will count; if you only submit four, all four will count; if you submit less than four, you will get zeroes for missed assignments.  Assignments are due at the start of class on Monday, and no late assignments will be accepted unless documentation indicating serious circumstances affecting you for more than three weeks is provided.
 
1.           Digging for Data
2.           Digging Deeper for Data
3.           Treasure Hunt
4.           Illustrating the Point
5.           RefWorks Doesn’t
6.           Literature is Everywhere

Mid-term
This will cover all material up and including that assigned for class on the date of the midterm.  It will be a combination of short answer, passage identification, and close analysis of individual passages (all passages for identification and/or discussion will be provided on the test sheet), and you will have a choice in all sections of the midterm.  It will also be a rehearsal for the exam.

Final Examination
This will cover all material on the course (including tutorials on research and related subjects).  It will have the same format at the mid-term but with the addition of an essay question.  You will have a choice of questions or passages in all sections of the exam.
 

Reading Schedule
            This schedule is subject to change. I am happy to spend more time on some texts and more on others if class interest so inclines, and there may need to be adjustments because of bad weather or other disruptions.
            You are required to read material before the class in which it will be discussed and come to class with questions and/or comments about the material. If you do not read material before class, expect to have trouble following the conversation: no potted summaries or plot descriptions will be provided.

September 5: tutorials: introduction; review of syllabus
 
Romantic Era
September 8: Blake, “Introduction” to the Songs of Innocence; Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”
September 10:  Sonnets: Wordsworth, “London, 1802”; Smith, “On Being Cautioned . . . ”; Keats, “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear”; Shelley, “Ozymandias”
September 12 (tutorial):  introduction to MLA Style & Bibliography; discussion of another Romantic-era sonnet (selected in tutorial)
 
September 15:  RA #1 due; Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
September 17: Robinson, “The Haunted Beach” 
September 19: tutorial cancelled
 
September 22-24: Godwin, Caleb Williams
September 26 (tutorial):  rare books, online and print
 
September 29:  RA #2 due; Caleb Williams (cont.); P.B. Shelley, “The Mask of Anarchy”
October 1:  Byron, “She Walks in Beauty”; Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “To Richard Woodhouse” (27 October 1818)
October 3 (tutorial): workshop:  first essay
 
Out of Time: War Poetry
October 6-8:  Essay #1 due (October 6th); Hemans, “Casabianca”; Tennyson, “Charge of the Light Brigade”; Wilde, “Ave Imperatrix” (on BbLearn); Brooke, “The Soldier”
October 10 (tutorial):  poetics, ethics, and war
 
October 13: Thanksgiving; no class
 
Victorian Era
October 15: R. Browning, “My Last Duchess”; D. G. Rossetti, “Jenny”
October 17 (tutorial):  nineteenth-century visual culture; aesthetics
 
October 20:  RA #3 due; Tennyson, “Lady of Shalott”
October 22:  Arnold, “Literature and Science”; E. B. Browning, all four selections from Sonnets from the Portuguese; Wilde, “The Harlot’s House”
October 24 (tutorial): preparing for research essay; review of nineteenth-century material
 
October 27: Mid-term
 
Modernism
October 29:  Yeats, “Easter 1916” and “The Second Coming”; Joyce, “The Dead”
October 31 (tutorial): Sorting through Sources I
 
November 3: RA #4 due; Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Hollow Men”
November 5: Forster, “The Machine Stops”
November 7 (tutorial): Sorting through Sources II
 
November 10: Study Day (no classes)
November 12:  Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”; Lawrence, “How Beastly the Bourgeois Is”; Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle”
November 14 (tutorial): essay #2 due; review of modernism
 
After Modernism
November 17-19: RA #5 due (November 17); Mieville, The City and the City
November 21 (tutorial):  Mapping the City:  GIS and other Digital Tools for Humanities Research
 
November 24: Mieville, cont.
November 26: The Country and the Country:  Larkin, “Church Going”; Walcott, “A Far Cry from Africa”; Heaney, “Digging”
November 28 (tutorial):  The Other 1970s
Viewings (less than 15m in total):  Monty Python, “The Undertaker’s Sketch” (tv, 1970; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWWg5shNWR4); Sex Pistols, “God Save the Queen” (music video, 1977: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z2M_hpoPwk); Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall” (music video, 1979: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U).
 
December 1:  review for exam; RA #6 due