ajor British Writers II

This course has two closely related purposes. The first is to introduce you to some interesting works of British poetry (and one novel) written since 1800. The second is to enhance your ability to read, interpret, and write about literary works. We will spend most of our time in class collectively performing “close readings” of literary language. Because a deeper understanding of the contexts from which these works emerge enables a fuller understanding of them, the course also devotes some attention to social and cultural movements.

Attendance is mandatory. I do not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences. Every absence after the third one will lower your grade one “notch” (e.g., from B+ to B). If you arrive after class has begun, I will count it as a half-class absence. You are responsible for keeping track of the number of classes you have missed and for information covered and assignments due.

I expect to be able to reach you through the college email account that you have been issued.

For essay assignments and short email exercises, click links on the schedule below.

Essays. The course requires three short essays. I will consider requests for extensions submitted by the class preceding the due date. Late essays will receive a lower grade. Essay grades will reflect my evaluation of the extent to which your work: 1) Follows the assignment as described, 2) Uses quotations effectively to support claims, 3)Provides a thorough and specific analysis of literary language, 4) Reflects a considered use of the dictionary when appropriate, and 5) Is generally well written and carefully edited and follows the rules established on the (attached) sheet entitled “Grammar, Punctuation, and Citation Rules.”

Participation. Please come to class, with your text, prepared to discuss assigned reading. I may give unannounced quizzes to test your comprehension of assigned reading. You must also complete a series of short exercises that are listed on the schedule below. (You have to access the assignments themselves from the online version of this syllabus that appears on my website.)

This is not a research class. The anthology we use in class provides succinct background information, which you are required to read. But assignments are designed to help you develop your ability to interpret literary language. In this class, I am only interested in your ideas, not in ideas published by a professional literary critic or discovered on some web site.

Essay #1= 15%; Essay #2=20%; Essay #3=20%; Midterm = 10%; Final = 20%; Participation = 15%

The Norton Anthology of English Literature. (Either vols. D, E, and F or Vol. 2. Old editions are fine).

T Aug 24	Course Introduction. Blake.
R Aug 26	Email exercise #1 due by the beginning of class. Blake. “The Romantic Period” (1-22) All selections from Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Familiarize yourself with the appendix on literary terminology, particularly the sections on diction and figures of speech and thought (A37-41).
T Aug 31	Wordsworth. Preface to Lyrical Ballads; Simon Lee; We Are Seven; Lines Written in Early Spring
R Sept 2	Wordsworth. Expostulation and Reply; The Tables Turned; “Tintern Abbey”
T Sept 7	Email exercise #2 due by the beginning of class. Coleridge. Eolian Harp
R Sept 9	Read “Integrating Evidence” Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan
T Sept 14	Essay #1 due Begin reading Frankenstein
R Sept 16	Shelley, P. B.. Ozymandias; A Song: Men of England; England in 1819; To Sidmouth and Castlereagh; Hymn to Intellectual Beauty; Ode to the West Wind
T Sept 21	Shelley, P. B. Continue reading Frankenstein
R Sept 23	Potential quiz on vol. 1 of Frankenstein (1-68) Keats. First two letters (940-3); The Eve of St. Agnes
T Sept 28	Keats. Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn; To Autumn
R Sept 30	Mid-Term Exam
T Oct 5	Shelley Try to complete Frankenstein by this class. Read at least through Vol. 2 (128)
R Oct 7	Shelley
R Oct 14	Email exercise #3 due by the beginning of class. Tennyson. “The Victorian Age” (979-99). Mariana; The Lady of Shalott; The Lotos-Eaters; Ulysses
T Oct 19	Tennyson.
R Oct 21	Essay #2 due Arnold. Isolation. To Marguerite; To Marguerite--Continued; The Buried Life; Dover Beach
T Oct 26	Browning. Porphyria’s Lover; Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister; My Last Duchess
R Oct 28	Browning. The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church
T Nov 2	C. Rossetti. Goblin Market
R Nov 4	Hopkins. God’s Grandeur; Spring; The Windhover; Pied Beauty; Carrion Comfort; I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day
T Nov 9	Hardy. “The Twentieth Century and After” (1827-47); Hap; Neutral Tones; Drummer Hodge; The Darkling Thrush
R Nov 11	Hardy. Channel Firing; The Convergence of the Twain; The Voice; In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”
T Nov 16	Essay #3 due Yeats. The Rose of the World; No Second Troy; The Wild Swans at Coole; September 1913; Easter 1916; The Second Coming
R Nov 18	Yeats. The Lake Isle of Innisfree; Sailing to Byzantium
T Nov 23	Rupert Brooke. The Soldier Siegfried Sassoon. They; The Rear-Guard; Glory of Women; On Passing New Menin Gate Wilfred Owen. Anthem for Doomed Youth; Miners; Dulce et Decorum Est; Strange Meeting; Disabled
T Nov 30	Eliot. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
R Dec 2	Auden. On This Island; Spain 1937; Musée des Beaux Arts; Lullaby; In Memory of W. B. Yeats
R Dec 9	Final Exam. 8:00-11:00

The office is on the ground floor of the Robert Scott Small building. The best entrance to use is on the back side of the building across from the Wellness Center. Enter the building by pushing the automatic door control at left. Proceed down the ramp, through an interior door and past the campus police office at left. Turn right and proceed down a long hallway until you reach room 115, a suite of offices in which my office, room 120, is located. If you reach a big open space full of discarded furniture and stagnant water, you have gone too far.