Eng 222 Syllabus

Course Rationale:

222 surveys British literature from the early 19th century through the late 20th century. While we cannot possibly do an exhaustive job of treating the three major literary genres (we do some justice to the novel and poetry but very little to drama), we will be discussing at least some representative works from each of the major movements and periods. Because this is a survey course, it makes no pretense to thematic unity. Rather, some lectures will touch on the broad spectrum of literary, historical, and intellectual issues out of which this literature emerged; others will zoom in on the literary works under discussion for the week.



Requirements:

There are two major requirements comprising 80% of your grade: one 5-7 page critical essay (40%), due at the middle of the term, and another 5-7 page critical essay (40%), which is due on the final day of class. You will have the option to revise the first paper to improve your grade. In addition, I will give occasional quizzes on the novels and a grade for class participation (cumulative 20%). Topics for the critical papers will be distributed in class (and made available on this website) 2 weeks before the paper is due. Attendance at all lectures and active participation in class discussions are absolutely essential to success in this course. Please take comprehensive notes on your reading and have all reading assignments completed by the day on which they are due to be discussed.

One of the purposes of this online syllabus is to point you toward websites which provide additional information about writers, about writing essays, and about literary theory. I also encourage you to email me with questions about paper topics. If you have questions about getting started on a paper, you can help me help you by providing me with a thesis paragraph and asking me to respond to it. General grading guidelines for the critical papers can be found here.

N.B. I expect that your papers will conform to ASU guidelines on academic honesty. That is, I expect that all work is your own except for that which you have explicitly cited on your "Works Cited" page. This means you must cite ideas and words borrowed from online sources as well as from books and articles found in the library. If you have further questions about this policy, see the statement issued by the Women's Studies Program here. It provides a succinct summary of the policy in effect in this class.

Sources of Information:

If you are interested in a readable introduction to basic theoretical issues, start by taking a look at John Lye's Literary Theory: An Introduction and the Glossary of Literary Theory. For links to sites that offer help with rhetorical terms or with mythological background, see Starting Point for Literary Research. Essays written for this class should conform to the conventions set out in the MLA Format and Citation Guide. You may find it useful to consult a writing handbook. The following three are currently available on the Web: Elements of Style, Online English Grammar, and Able Writer: A Rhetoric and Handbook. You should also make use of a dictionary such as the WWWebster Dictionary.

You should be familiar with the website for ASU's Hayden Library. For useful general sources of information about literary topics consult the following: Literary Resources Page, Encyclopedia Britannica (ASU only), and Voice of the Shuttle. For online literary texts try these sites: Modern English Collection, The Online Books Page, and Literature Online (Chadwyck-Healey; ASU only). The latter database is also useful for keyword, phrase, and line searches of British and American poetry, British drama, and some fiction (the online fiction collection of this database is presently rather small). You may also find the British History Timeline a useful source of historical background information as well as the Encyclopedia of British History, 1700-1930. While there is not much online literary criticism currently available, you may find the IPL Online Literary Criticism site, Literary Criticism on the Web, and Project MUSE useful (the latter has full-text articles from such important literary journals as New Literary History, ELH, and Modern Fiction Studies). For a more extensive list of useful online sources, see the "links" frame on my home page.


Book for the course:

Damrosch et al., The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vol. 2. (Longman).

This book is now available at the ASU Bookstore.

Required readings in the schedule below come from the Longman Anthology. The links in brackets will take you to websites that provide further information on specific topics. For a list of paper topics for the first critical paper, go here. For a list of paper topics for the second critical paper, go here.
The Romantic Period


Wordsworth and Coleridge

T, 6/1: Introduction: Romantic Period overview

W, 6/2: Romantics and the Problem of Origins: Preface to Lyrical Ballads (332-6);"Ode. Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Early Childhood" (434),"We Are Seven," (317); "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (328); "Resolution and Independence" (430-2)

{Romantic Resources on the Web; John Locke
Michael Gamer's List of Romantic Links
William Wordsworth, Wordsworth Images
Romantic Chronology, The Romantic Period, 1785-1830
Preface to Lyrical Ballads}

Th, 6/3: Romantics and the Problem of Origins: Inventing Childhood (Wordsworth)

F, 6/4: Romantics and the Problem of Origins: Self as Source (Coleridge): "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (484-498); "Dejection: An Ode" (519); Kubla Khan" (501)

{Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. Vol. I
David Hume; Kant's Prolegomena; A Coleridge Companion}

M, 6/7: Wordsworth and Coleridge discussion continued

T, 6/8: Natural Supernaturalism and the Familial Ideology: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus

W, 6/9: Hating What You Make: Frankenstein continued

Th, 6/10: continued

{Resources for the Study of Frankenstein; Byron's Manfred; P.B. Shelley's Prometheus Unbound; John Milton,Paradise Lost (ASU only); A Review of Frankenstein by Sir Walter Scott; The Victorian Web on "The Sublime"}

F, 6/11: Shelley cont.

{Prometheus Library}

The Victorian Period

Aestheticism Versus the Victorian Notion of Duty

M, 6/14: The Pleasures of Pain: John Keats

"Ode on Melancholy" (778), "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (775), "Ode to a Nightingale" (773)

{Edmund Burke, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" (excerpts); Aristotle,Poetics}

T, 6/15: Evangelical Reform and the Evolution of "Victorian" Manners

{Landow on Religion, Landow and "The Doctrines of Evangelical Protestantism"; Browse Landow's Victorian Web}

W, 6/16: Tennysonian Melancholy: "Mariana," "The Lady of Shalott" (1189), "The Lotos-Eaters" (1194), "Ulysses" (1198), "Locksley Hall" (1204)

First Critical Paper Due

Topics

Th, 6/17: Tennyson cont.

F, 6/18: George Eliot, "Brother Jacob"

M, 6/21: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Aestheticism and the Decadents

Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Hymn to Proserpine" (1752), "The Triumph of Time" (1750), "The Garden of Proserpine" (1517), "Ave Atque Vale" (1519)

{Epicurus;Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; The Baudrillard Project; Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"; Victor Margolin, "The Politics of the Artificial"}

T, 6/22: Walter Horatio Pater, "The Child in the House" (1765), "Conclusion" to The Renaissance (1763)

W, 6/23: Aestheticism and Decadence continued: Rossetti, "Goblin Market" (1712); 'Michael Field,' "La Gioconda" (1946), "A Pen-Drawing of Leda" (1946), "A Girl" (1946)

{Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus; The 1885 Criminal Law Amendment; Rictor Norton's Essays on Gay History and Literature; John Addington Symonds, "A Problem in Greek Ethics"; Michel Foucault Links}

Th, 6/24: Aestheticism and Decadence cont.

F, 6/25: Conrad, Heart of Darkness

M, 6/28: Conrad cont.

T, 6/29: Conrad cont.

The Modern Period

W, 6/30: Modernism and Culture (Modernity)

William Butler Yeats, "Easter, 1916" (2310); "The Second Coming" (2312); "Sailing to Byzantium" (2315); "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,"(2326); "Under Ben Bulben" (2329)

T.S. Eliot: "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (2447) and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (2420)

{An Index of Sites on Modernism}

Th, 7/1: Modernism cont.

F, 7/2: Modernism cont.

Second Critical Paper Due

Topics

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