English 212W: Major British Authors, Romantic to Modern

H. Hodgkins MWF 9-9:50, MCVR 325 Office hours: MWF

hhhodgki@uncg.edu 10-10:45 & by appt.

(h) 316-0463 MCVR 136-D, #4-5837

Course description: This course surveys British literature from 1790 to the modernist era, by focusing on major authors from the Romantic, Victorian, and high-modernist periods. In little more than 100 years, enormous changes took place in British genres, rhetorics, and aesthetic values. As we consider these changes, we will focus especially on literature as self-portraiture, from the romantic lyric through the Victorian monologue to modernist poetics and fiction. Two themes will constantly recur in these literary portraits: efforts to objectify political and national identities, and the finally inevitable collision between aesthetics and religion.

As a writing-intensive course, this class requires frequent writing and a willingness to share one’s ideas, written and spoken, with other class members. We will spend ample class time planning and preparing papers; reading assignments throughout the course will be exemplary rather than exhaustive.

The student who successfully completes this course will learn to identify and explain the varied characteristics of British literature from the Romantic through the high-modern periods. He or she also will be able to clearly communicate, in writing, an understanding of the literary tenets and the historical contexts that helped shape these texts.

Course goals: The student successfully completing this course will be able to:

--Read the texts carefully and discuss them in terms of their literary characteristics;

--Analyze the texts in an educated fashion and demonstrate his or her understanding in clear writing;

--Examine these texts in light of their cultural, historical, and intellectual contexts;

--Enjoy some of the most wonderful literature ever written.

Texts: Do not try to substitute other editions of these books.

Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2, 7^th edition (please note: I have ordered this for you in three separate volumes, The Romantic Period, The Victorian Age, and The Twentieth Century).

Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Dover)

Your responsibilities:

To come to class with text in hand, prepared to discuss and write about the day’s assignment;

To write two 5-7 page papers and turn them in on time;

To turn in typed paragraphs as required;

To take three examinations on the days scheduled.

Your grades:

Typed paragraphs and participation 10%

Scheduled reading quizzes 10%

Two 5-7 page papers (15% each) 30%

Three examinations 50%

100%

Extra credit for high-quality class participation.

Your attendance: Your grade will be reduced after three absences and you will be dropped from the class after missing four classes. This rule does apply to students who have added late. Frequent tardies and early leave-takings will be regarded as evidence of indifference and they will affect your participation grade.

Your paragraphs: Typed paragraphs on the reading will be a regular feature of this class. Ordinarily, a topic or question will be given in the previous class period; your paragraph will use the reading assignment to thoughtfully respond to a significant issue. You are expected to turn in one paragraph each week. Except under extraordinary circumstances, late paragraphs will not be accepted. Paragraphs must be typed, well-developed, and carefully-written. Unless otherwise directed, you should incorporate at least two quotations from the text. You are encouraged to focus on texts and themes that particularly interest you and that may be expanded upon in your essays.

Your essays: You will prepare two thoughtful and carefully-written papers by researching, rewriting, and expanding your test essays from September 18 and November 1. These papers will be due on October 11 and November 25. You may write a third, extra-credit essay, on a modernist text specified by me, to be turned in by December 9. In order to receive extra credit, the third essay must attain a grade of B- or higher. This optional essay is to depend upon your own critical reading of the text and your close attention in class.

Your honor: All work in this class should be governed by the UNCG Academic Honor Policy. I consider the use of Cliffs Notes or any crib resource a violation of this policy. Any work submitted as your own will receive an F if I find that you have used others’ ideas. A second violation will result in an F for the course and subject you to University disciplinary procedures.

Note for English majors: From the computer you receive email on, send the following message to listproc@uncg.edu: “Subscribe English-l yourfirstnameyourlastname” (with the lower case L, not the number 1 following English).

Schedule of readings (subject to revision):

*Please note: You are expected to read the appropriate introduction for each author.

8/19 Intro: Romantics; paragraph writing

8/21 Read Introduction to Romantic period; Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience; “And did those feet.”

8/23 Blake cont.; Q

8/26 “Poetic Forms and Literary Terminology,” A61-A70; Wordsworth: “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”; Preface to Lyrical Ballads; “Strange fits of passion”; “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”; “I wandered lonely as a cloud”; “My heard leaps up.”

8/28 Wordsworth cont.: “The Solitary Reaper”; Sonnets. Q

8/30 Coleridge: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; “Kubla Khan.” Q

9/2 Labor Day

9/4 Byron: “She walks in beauty”; “Stanzas for music”; “When a man hath no freedom”; Excerpts from Don Juan, Canto 1. Q

9/6 Shelley: “Ozymandias”; “England in 1819”; “Ode to the West Wind”; “To a Sky-Lark”; Excerpt from “A Defense of Poetry.” Using quotations.

9/9 Shelley cont. Q

9/11 Keats: “When I have fears that I may cease to be”; “The Eve of St. Agnes”; “Ode to a Nightingale”; “Ode on a Grecian Urn”; “Ode on Melancholy”; “To Autumn.”Q

9/13 Keats cont.; review for test.

9/16 Exam #1: The Romantic Period: Day One.

9/18 Day Two: In-Class Essay.

9/20 Intro to “The Victorian Age.” Q

9/23 Tennyson: “The Lady of Shalott”; “Ulysses”; “Break, Break, Break”; “The Eagle”; “The Splendor Falls”; “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Q

9/25 Tennyson cont.: Excerpts from In Memoriam (to be assigned). Essay writing: thesis and argument.

9/27 Arnold: “Isolation: To Marguerite”; “To Marguerite—Continued”; “Dover Beach”; Excerpt from The Study of Poetry. Q

9/30 Robert Browning: “Porphyria’s Lover”; “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”; “My Last Duchess”; “Love Among the Ruins”; “The Last Ride Together”; “An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician”; “Caliban upon Setebos.”

10/2 Browning cont. Q

10/4 Christina Rosetti: “In an Artist’s Studio”; “A Birthday”; “An Apple-Gathering”; “Winter: My Secret”; “Up-Hill”; “Goblin Market.” Q

10/7 Hopkins: “God’s Grandeur”; “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”; “Spring”; “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child”; “[Carrion Comfort]”; “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire.”

10/9 Hopkins cont. Q

10/11 Essay #1 due, 5 p.m., Mcvr. 136-D

10/14 Fall break

10/16 Aesthetes & Decadents: D. G. Rosetti: “The Blessed Damozel”; Morris: “The Haystack in the Floods”; Swinburne: “Hymn to Proserpine”; Dowson: “Cynara.” Q

10/18 Wilde: “E Tenebris,” “The Harlot’s House,” excerpt from “The Critic as Artist” (1752-60).

10/21 Wilde, Dorian Gray (all). Q

10/23 DG cont.

10/25 DG cont.; “The Rise and Fall of Empire” (2017-2018 in The Twentieth Century); Kipling: “Danny Deever”; “The Widow at Windsor.”

10/28 Kipling: “The Man Who Would Be King”; Q; review for test.

10/30 Exam #2: The Victorian Age: Part One.

11/1 Part Two: In-class essay.

11/4 Intro to “The Twentieth Century”; Conrad: Heart of Darkness (Part 1)

11/6 Heart of Darkness (Parts 2-3). Q

11/8 Hardy: “Neutral Tones”; “Drummer Hodge”; “The Darkling Thrush”; “The Ruined Maid”; “Channel Firing”; “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?”; “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’.” Q

11/11 Housman: “To an Athlete Dying Young”; “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff”; War poets: Brooke: “The Soldier”; Sassoon: “’They’”; “The General”; “Everyone Sang”; Owen: “Anthem for Doomed Youth”; “Dulce et Decorum Est”; “Disabled.”

11/13 War poets cont. Q

11/15 Yeats: “Down by the Salley Gardens”; “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”; “The Sorrow of Love”; “The Second Coming”; “Sailing to Byzantium”; “Among School Children.”

11/18 Yeats cont.: “Easter 1916”; “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop”; “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.”Q

11/20 Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; “The Hollow Men”; “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”

11/22 Eliot cont.: “Journey of the Magi”; “Marina”; “Little Gidding”; Q

11/25 Essay #2 due, 5 pm, Mcvr. 136-D.

11/27 & 29 Thanksgiving break

12/2 Joyce: “Araby”; Excerpt from “Proteus” in Ulysses (2269-2283). Q

12/4 Lawrence: “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”; Woolf: “The Mark on the Wall.” Q

12/6 Auden: “MusJe des Beaux Arts”; “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”; “The Shield of Achilles.” Q

12/9 Thomas: “The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower”; “Fern Hill”; Graves: “Down, Wanton, Down!”; “The Cool Web”; Smith: “Our Bog Is Dood”; “Not Waving But Drowning.”

Exam #3: The Modern Period: Wed., Dec. 11, 8:00-11:00 a.m.