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N.B.  This is a sample syllabus for the English 222 course I taught in the Spring of 1998.  The actual syllabus for English 222 in Spring of 1999 will be somewhat different. The main text for the course in Spring 1999 will be the Longman Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2--DB

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English 222 British Literature, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Spring 1998 Dan Bivona

Class meets:  M, W from 9:40-10:30 in LL C57    Dan Bivona's Office Hours  M, W 1-3 and by appointment   Office:  LL-C339   Phone:  5-7748      Friday discussion sections:    Section number TA Class meets Office Hours Office   15406    Jeremy Meyer LL C157 MW 10:30-12;  F 10:30-11:30 LL B338  24128 John Tierney LL B146 M 11:30-1:30;  WF 11:30-12:30 LL B345   79720    Tiffany Chen  LL B138 MW 8:35-9:35;  10:35-11:35 LL C316  You may make an appointment to see any of these instructors at another time if these hours are not convenient. Phone number of the TAs: 5-3853.

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.

 

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Requirements:

 

There are four major requirements comprising 90% of your grade:  a midterm essay exam (25%), two 5-7 page critical essays (20% each), and a final essay exam (25%).  The due dates for these are marked in the syllabus below.  Topics for the critical papers will be distributed in class 2 weeks before the paper is due.  In addition to these, 10% of your final grade will come from your participation during class discussions and from your grades on the quizzes, which will be given randomly and without advance notice.  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.

 

The purpose of this online syllabus is to point you toward Web sites which provide additional information about writers, about writing essays, and about literary theory. You may also email any of your instructors with questions about paper topics and tests. If you have questions about getting started on a paper, you can help us help you by providing us with a thesis paragraph and asking us to respond to it. General grading guidelines for the critical papers can be found here.

 

N.B. We expect that your papers will conform to ASU guidelines on academic honesty. That is, we 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.

 

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.

 

To start, see ASU's Hayden Library.  For useful general sources of information 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 information.  While there is not much online literary criticism currently available, you may find the  IPL Online Literary Criticism site and Project MUSE useful.

 

 

Books (Required Reading):    Abrams et al. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2, 6th ed.  (Norton).    Shelley, Mary.  Frankenstein.  (NAL).    Brontë, Charlotte.  Jane Eyre.  (Norton).    Wilde, Oscar.  The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Oxford).    Forster, E. M. Passage to India.  (HBJ).    These books are now available at the ASU Bookstore.

 

Required readings in the schedule below come from the 5 books ordered for the course.  Page numbers refer to pages in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2.  The other links 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.

 

Romanticism

 

Wordsworth and Coleridge (W, 1/21 to F, 1/30)

W, 1/21:   Introduction:  Romantic Period overview  F, 1/23: "Ode. Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Early Childhood" (187), "We Are Seven," (132) "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (136)  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  M, 1/26 Romantics and the Problem of Origins:  Inventing Childhood (Wordsworth)  W, 1/28: Romantics and the Problem of Origins:  Self as Source (Coleridge): "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (330)  Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. Vol. I   David Hume; Kant's Prolegomena  [On the Coleridgean "Imagination," see also "Dejection:  An Ode," "This Lime-tree Bower My Prison and Kubla Khan."]  F, 1/30: Wordsworth and Coleridge discussion continued

Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus

F, 2/6: continued; Resources for the Study of Frankenstein; Byron's Manfred; P.B. Shelley's Prometheus

Unbound

John Milton,Paradise Lost (ASU only)

Prometheus Library

"Ode on Melancholy" (794), "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (792), "Ode to a Nightingale" (790)

Edmund Burke, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and

Beautiful" (excerpts); Aristotle, Poetics

F, 2/13:  Keats, cont.  **First critical paper due.**  Grading guidelines for the critical papers. Topics

M, 2/16: Evangelical Reform and the Evolution of "Victorian" Manners

Landow on Religion, Landow and "The Doctrines of Evangelical Protestantism"

Browse Landow's Victorian Web

Expectations, Aurora Leigh, and Waterland," Suzanne Hader)

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte)

 Liberalism and Cultural Shock in the Victorian Age; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

F, 2/20: Jane Eyre continued

The Gothic, From the "Dictionary of Sensibility" see: sympathy, The Sublime, fear/terror/horror, compassion/pity, character

W, 2/25: Jane Eyre continued

F, 2/27:  Jane Eyre continue

M, 3/2:  **Midterm Exam**

W, 3/4:  Natural and Unnatural Selection
 

Darwin (1571); Gosse (1578); ; Alfred Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam" (1084); Thomas Hardy's "Hap" (1694); Hardy's "The Impercipient" (1694), "Nature's Questioning," "Self-Unconscious"    The Darwinian Homepage    Evolution    The Tennyson Page    Tennyson and Victorianism    Thomas Hardy    The Thomas Hardy WebSite

M, 3/9:  Tennyson continued

W, 3/11: Hardy

F, 3/13:  Hardy/Tennyson continued

M, 3/16-F, 3/20: Spring Recess

M, 3/23: The Explanatory Power of "Gender":  the Victorian "Woman Question"

Wollstonecraft (98-125), Stickney Ellis,Coventry Patmore, Martineau, Mulock, Florence Nightingale, Annie Besant (1595-1611), Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market" (1479)

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Full Text)

Victorian Women Writers Project

Victorian Women's History

Victorian Gender and Sexuality

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

W, 3/25: Gender continued

Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women [1854]

F, 3/27:  "Goblin Market" continued

Josephine Butler, "Social Purity" [1879]

The Emancipation of Women: 1860 to 1920

M, 3/30: Loving Oneself as Work of Art: Aestheticism and the Decadents

Epicurus

Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Hymn to Proserpine" (1514), "The Garden of Proserpine" (1517), "Ave Atque Vale" (1519)

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience

Oscariana, The Wild Wilde Web, Sex, Scandal and the Novel

M, 4/6:  **Second Critical Paper due** Topics

Paideia and Pederasty: Dorian Gray continued

Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus

Gay History and Literature

John Addington Symonds, "A Problem in Greek Ethics"

Michel Foucault Links

F, 4/10: Dorian Gray continued

M, 4/13: Modernism and Culture (Modernity)

William Butler Yeats, "Easter, 1916," "The Second Coming," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop," "Under Ben Bulben" (1878, 1880, 1883, 1890, 1894)

T.S. Eliot: "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (2170) and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (2140)

F, 4/17: continued

M, 4/20: Imperialism, Racial Ideology, British Nationalism

Rudyard Kipling, "Danny Deever" (1674), "The Widow at Windsor" (1675), "Recessional" (1677), "The White Man's Burden"

Felicia Dorothea Hemans, "England's Dead" (882); "Casabianca" (884)

Forster, Passage to India

Never the Twain? Indo-British Relations

F, 4/24: continued

M, 4/27: Imperialism and the Problem of Language: Passage to India

Dr. Godbole's India: The Notion of Time in India: An Introduction; The Relation Between Sanskrit and Indian Conceptions of Time; Dr. Aziz's India: Mourning Past Glories, Colonialism, and Indian Fiction; Conceptions of Time and Classical Indian Historiography

F, 5/1: continued

M, 5/4: "No postmodernism, please; we're British"

Harold Pinter, The Dumb Waiter (2362)

Postmodernism and drama; What is Postmodernism? (Mary Klages); Postmodern Culture (online journal); Postmodernism (Swirl)

**Final Exam** Monday, May 11, 7:40-9:30. Here is a sample final exam.

N.B. Please bring a bluebook or two to the exam on Monday.

Victorian Animated GIFs