English 541-01--Milton--Christopher Hodgkins

Fall 2001

M 6:30-9:20, McIver 139A

Office: McIver 116

Office Hours: M 6-6:30; T Th 1:45-2:30 and by appointment

Office Phone: 334-4691; Home Phone: 316-0463; e-mail: cthodgki@uncg.edu

Required Texts: Merritt Y. Hughes, ed. John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose

Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 5^th edn.

Nativity; On Shakespeare

Music; Ad Patrem

for Smectymnuus

Establish a Free Commonwealth; Sonnets XV-XIX, XXII-XXIII

(11/30) Papers due Friday, 4 pm

All students--undergraduate and graduate--successfully completing this course

1. will acquire a thorough reading knowledge of all the works on the syllabus.

2. will recognize and understand the genres and subgenres in which Milton wrote during his long career-- lyric poetry (particularly ode, sonnet, and elegy), polemical prose, dramatic poetry (masque, tragedy), and especially epic poetry (both long and brief).

3. will know the main facts of Miltons life, particularly about the three major periods in his artistic development: the early poetic apprenticeship; the middle years as a revolutionary pamphleteer and then government spokesman; and the last years of blindness, defeat, and poetic fruition.

4. will know the salient contextual facts--particularly historical, political, and theological--of the "century of revolution" through the heart of which Milton lived.

5. will recognize Miltons continuing place in the cultural canon and something of the controversies surrounding his poetic, political, and religious legacies.

6. will demonstrate their abilities in research and in interpretive, analytical, and critical writing, as well as in oral presentation--papers and oral reports will be clearly composed, factually accurate, persuasive, and (where called for) well-researched.

6A. In addition, graduate students successfully completing this course will demonstrate, in both their papers and oral presentations, a higher degree of engagement with the ongoing critical conversation (especially as represented in the scholarly books and journals), as well as a higher degree of originality and ambition in their theses.

Attendance: Especially in an advanced course on a one-night-per-week schedule, prompt attendance is crucial, and repeated absences (or early leave-taking without notice) will be viewed as evidence of your indifference to the course and will cause me to drop you. However, if you know that you must be absent, please contact me as far in advance as possible.

Response Papers: Once during the semester (twice for graduate students--by the 7^th and 15^th weeks, respectively), you will hand in a brief (2-3 pages typed, double-spaced) paper responding to one or more of the texts under discussion. Precisely when and to what you will make your response(s) is up to you, a long as you respond to a text being discussed on that particular evening. Your response paper(s) should offer a concise reading of--a way into--the text. In other words, the paper(s) should ask some engaging questions of the poem or prose selection, and give some tentative answers to them. Although this is not an oral report (see below), and requires no research beyond a close reading of the text and notes, I do hope that these response papers will serve as sparks for discussion as you raise questions and hold forth in class about the text. You will hand in your paper(s) at the end of that particular class meeting(s).

Oral Reports: Once during the semester, you will give a 10-minute oral report (15 minutes for graduate students) presenting your research into and conclusions about some Miltonic topic. (You will sign up for report topics and dates on August 27. See list of suggested topics, or see me about one of your own.)Your report should 1) briefly review important scholarship or criticism on the topic; 2) take a position of your own; and 3) be accompanied by a one-page handout photocopied for class distribution; the handout should include a simple outline of your remarks and a selected bibliography. I recommend that you write out your remarks in full and time them, though I will not ask you to turn in the text of your remarks to me.

Final Research Paper: Due 11/30. This 6-8 page essay (12-15 pages for graduate students) will develop an interpretive argument will develop an interpretive argument about one or more of the texts discussed in the course, incorporating primary and/or secondary materials that youve discovered in your library research--perhaps even as an outgrowth of your oral report. By "primary sources" I mean literary or historical texts or evidence which originated in the period(s) under study; by "secondary sources" I mean any later critical, interpretive, or scholarly comment on those primary sources. However, despite the research emphasis here, the key word for this project is still essay. I am most interested in your interpretive ideas, and you should incorporate the fruits of research only as they are relevant to your thesis. Paper format should follow the MLA parenthetical citation style, using a Works Cited bibliography, as specified in the MLA Handbook (a required text for this course).

Especially for the research essay, youll want to come talk with me early in the process about choosing a topic, researching it, and focusing your topic on a thesis. As stated above, the response papers and oral report will serve as good warm-ups for you.

Late Papers: Late papers will drop a full letter grade per week-day. However, if you know that a major difficulty is coming up and youll need more time, come see me well in advance.

Final Exam: This exam will consist of interpretive essays written about a set of representative Miltonic quotations.

Grades will be determined according to the following percentages:

Response paper: 20% (10% each for graduate student response papers)

Oral report: 20%

Final research paper: 40%

Final exam: 20%

Plus or minus considerations of attendance and class participation

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: To enhance communication with undergraduate English majors, the English Department maintains a listserve. Please join the listserve by sending the following message from your e-mail account (whether on campus or at home) that you use most regularly to

listproc@uncg.edu: subscribe English-l firstname lastname (giving, of course, your own first and last names). For example: subscribe English-l Jane Doe. Note that the letter l (L) follows "English," not the number 1 (one).