Learning Goals: At the completion of this course, the student will be able
to :
• Identify and understand varied characteristics of literature
• Apply techniques of literary analysis to texts
• Use literary study to develop skills in careful reading and clear writing
• Demonstrate understanding of the diverse social and historical contexts
in which literary texts have been written
Texts: Longman Anthology
of British Literature, Vol. II
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Penguin edition
Handouts
Day/Date: Reading:
T Aug. 16 Introduction to the Course
R Aug. 18 Workshop: Analyzing Texts
Handout: The Elements of Poetry
T Aug. 23 Lecture: Social and Historical Contexts for Romanticism
R Aug. 25 William Blake:
from Songs of Innocence—
The Little Black Boy, The Chimney Sweeper, Holy Thursday;
From Songs of Experience—The Chimney Sweeper, Holy Thursday, The Sick
Rose, The Garden of Love, London, A Poison Tree
T Aug. 30 William Blake:
From Songs of Experience—The Tyger;
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
[handout: on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]
R Sept. 1 William Wordsworth: Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, The world is too much with us, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, London, 1802
T Sept. 6 Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
R Sept. 8 Lord Byron: Manfred [handout: from Paradise Lost]
T Sept. 13 Percy Shelley: To Wordsworth, Mont Blanc, Ozymandias, Sonnet: England
in 1819, from A Defence of Poetry
R Sept. 15 John Keats: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,
Sonnet: When I Have Fears, La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, The Eve of St. Agnes
T Sept. 20 Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Bright Star
[handout: Keatsian terms]
R Sept. 22 Test Preparation: The Romantics Game
T Sept. 27 Test #1: The Romantics
R Sept. 29 Lecture: The Victorians
Thomas Carlyle, from Past and Present
T Oct. 4 Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Lady of Shallot, Ulysses, from In Memorium AHH, Crossing the Bar
R Oct. 6 Robert Browning: Porphyria’s Lover, My Last Duchess, Love Among the Ruins
Response Notebooks Due for Provisional Grading
Fall Break
R Oct.13 John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women [1086-1094]
Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England [1521-1524]
Caroline Norton, from A Letter to the Queen [1529-1531]
T Oct. 18 Christina Rossetti: After Death, In An Artist’s Studio, No Thank You John, Goblin Market, In Progress
R Oct. 20 Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach, The Buried Life, Stanzas from the Grand
Chartreuse
Gerald Manley Hopkins: God’s Grandeur, Pied Beauty
T Oct. 25 Gerald Manley Hopkins: As Kingfishers Catch Fire, I Wake and Feel
the Fell of Dark not Day, Carrion Comfort, Thou Art Indeed Just Lord
Handout: Hopkins’s poetics
Test Preparation: The Victorians
R Oct. 27 Test #2: The Victorians
T Nov. 1 Lecture: The Moderns
Thomas Hardy: Neutral Tones, The Darkling Thrush
War Poetry: Rupert Brooke—The Soldier; Siegfried Sassoon—They,
The Rear Guard, The Generals [handout]
R Nov. 3 Wilfred Owen—Strange Meeting, Dulce Et Decorum Est, Miners [handout] Introduction to Yeats; [handout on Yeats]
T Nov. 8 Yeats: The Lake
Isle of Innisfree, The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, Leda and the
Swan, Crazy
Jane Talks to the Bishop, Lapis Lazuli,
The Circus Animals’ Desertion
James Joyce: The Dead
R Nov. 10 Katherine Mansfield: The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Garden Party [access via internet]
T Nov. 15 D. H. Lawrence: Snake, Bavarian Gentians, Cypresses, Why the Novel Matters [handout], Odour of Chryanthemums, The Horse Dealer’s Daughter
R Nov. 17 D. H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
T Nov. 22 D. H. Lawrence,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, continued
[handout on Lady Chatterley]
Dylan Thomas: The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, Do Not
Go Gentle into That Good Night
Thanksgiving
T Nov. 29 W. H. Auden: Musee des Beaux Arts, Sept. 1 1939, In Memory of W.B.
Yeats, The Shield of Achilles [handout]
Seamus Heaney: Punishment
[handout: from The Bog People]
Film Review Due [reviews can be submitted earlier and will be graded on a first
come/ first served basis as time allows]
R Dec. 1 Final Exam Preparation-- Short Essay Format; Class Chooses Topics;
75% on the Moderns; 25% comprehensive
Response Notebooks Due
Final Exam: 9:30 class Thursday, Dec. 8, 8:00 am
12:30 class Thursday, Dec. 8, Noon
Notes:
Attendance: Each student may miss up to four classes. On the occasion of a fifth absence, the student’s final grade will be lowered by one letter. After eight absences, the student will be dropped from the class.
Reading: Reading should be completed by the day on which it appears on the syllabus.
Required Materials: Texts; 1 flat, three clasp binder for responses
Grading:
Class Participation -- Student contributes to class discussion, Student participates in group work -- 10%
Film Review -- Student writes a typed, double spaced, two page paper on a film from the list provided; paper reflects on how the film relates to or embodies themes discussed in class -- 10%
Response Notebook -- Students respond to class readings or to prompts by the instructor-- Some class group work will also count as a response and should be inserted in notebook unless otherwise indicated -- 30%
Tests 1 and 2 -- Test on each subsection of class -- 15% each
Final Exam -- 75% on last section of class; 25% cumulative -- 20%
Approved Film Review Films: [students may suggest other films to professor]
Wuthering Heights Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche
Chocolat Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche
Jude the Obscure Kate Winslet and Christopher Eccleston
A Room with a View Helena Bonham-Carter and Daniel Day-Lewis
Don Juan de Marco Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando
Gosford Park Clive Owen and Helen Mirren
Kinsey Liam Neeson and Laura Linney
The English Patient Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Thomas
Edward Scissorhands Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder
Response Notebook: Elements of a good response—
Approximately one page typed [double spaced] or one page handwritten [single
spaced]
Includes:
• At least one quotation to illustrate a point
• Short summary of the work you are responding to
• Analysis of the text, or a specific part of the text
• Personal reaction- options include: describe your personal reaction to
the text, read an internet piece about the work and critically respond to it,
make
connections between the text and your life or contemporary culture
Sample Student Response: [response is longer than required but does contain all elements of a successful entry]
Response to Robert Browning’s “Love
Among the Ruins”
There are contrasting elements b/w the speaker and this ancient city. The
speaker is musing on the sunset, the dying light, and he is tending his sheep.
When
he mentions the girl he loves and when, at the end, he says “love is
best,” he seems to advocate nonviolence. The city, on the other hand,
he describes as a violent, warlike, boastful society. It has “a thousand
chariots. . . gold of course.” He seems to be saying that peace and
love are the best courses of action because they are lasting, whereas violence
is not because the city that wages war does not stand for long, even for
all its riches.
However, because of Browning’s history, I don’t know whether to
believe the speaker’s argument or not: “love is best.” It
seems ironic anyway because two people in love are going to die just like the
city. Love is not lasting. I love the title—“Love Among the Ruins”—but
it suggests that love can withstand the pressing matters of time, but just
like everything else the lovers die too. I’m led to believe that Browning,
even though he verges on Romantic ideals and beliefs, doesn’t really
think that “Love Among the Ruins” will last any longer than the
city/palace did. I think he meant the poem to be ironic in that sense.
Time and decay aside, with the time we have on earth I think it wise to spend
it loving others rather than being boastful and violent and wealthy, which
is part of the speaker’s argument as well.
I don’t like the three syllable line Browning uses. It brings unnecessary
emphasis to those words when they aren’t really special or separate from
the rest of the text in any way. As it is, perhaps this suggests the unnecessary
emphasis the city gives to itself when people are really people [words are
words] but they try to put themselves in an attractive shell of gold and wealth.
I really like the lines “ere we extinguish sight and speech/ Each on
each.” This is such a humble and modest way to describe a powerful act
of love. He’s not blatant but subtle, thus giving it more power.
Sample Film Review Introductions:
#1 The film _________________
follows the life of a boy named _________. The story focuses on a movie theater
where
the boy grew up and it chronicles the
growth of a small Italian town and the eventual destruction of the town cinema.
__________’s childhood had many connections to the themes we have studied
in class. One is the censorship of sex by the religious clergy. Another is
the theme of self determination and leaving one’s home that is expressed
through __________’s departure from the town and his long awaited return.
The last theme is of yearning and wishing for a time and place that has disappeared
or is fading out because of modernization.
[the student then relates Blake, “The Garden of Love,” Tennyson, “Ulysses,” and
Lawrence, “Cypresses” to scenes in the film in order to illustrate
the thematic connections]
#2 I never saw it coming,
but the movie __________ starring ____________ and ___________ raises a striking
number of arguments that echo those made by many
Romantic and Victorian poets. These arguments include: the coldness of formalized
worship, the problems that arise from man’s disconnect with nature, and
even the traditional basis of marriage.
[this student uses Blake, “The Little Vagabond,” Wordsworth, “The
World is Too Much With Us,” and Hardy’s Jude the Obscure to highlight
some of his points]
Other approaches:
Other papers confined themselves to a more extended explanation of one theme;
for example, some students dealt with the idea of gender and the characteristics
of the Romantic hero in their treatment of one film from the list; several
other students discussed class structure and class conflict in turn of the
century England in relation to another film on the list.