ENGL 202 A: Introduction to the Study of English Language and Literature

Spring 2021
Meeting:
MWF 10:30am - 11:20am / * *
SLN:
14028
Section Type:
Lecture
Instructor:
ADD CODE FROM INSTRUCTOR PD 3 OFFERED VIA REMOTE LEARNING
Syllabus Description (from Canvas):

This course is a general introduction to the study of English literature in the context of modern history (roughly 1600-1900).  We will focus on some key texts from the English Renaissance, Romanticism, and the modern period.

We will start with what I consider to be the pivotal period in modern history, around 1800, when European civilization (note: this includes the U.S.) began its final, fateful movement toward the world as we know it today.  Science, industrialization, globalization, urbanization, democratic revolution, skepticism about Christianity: all of these forces are gathering around 1800.  We will approach our discussion of these large historical forces through the spiritual and literary reaction to them that is called Romanticism. We will study a few paragraphs of prose and a few poems by the English poet Wordsworth (1770-1850) as a sample of the most fundamental concerns of the Romantics. 

Then we will go back in time to the English Renaissance (around 1600).  I’m not starting with this period, even though it’s earlier, because I want you to have the Romantic texts already in mind as something with which to compare and contrast the Renaissance texts.

Poetry, even when it looks simple, requires very slow, very careful reading, and then multiple re-readings.  Otherwise you retain practically nothing from it. Thus we will devote a lot of attention to a small number of poems in the first half of the course. 

Important you should bring to class whatever text we’re studying, and you should follow along in your own text when I read from it.  Most students find it helpful to mark the passages being discussed, and to make marginal notes.  When you speak in class about a text, and especially when you write about one, you will be expected to make frequent, precise reference to the exact wording of that text as the basis for your remarks or questions.  Vagueness is your worst enemy, and mine.

 

All the readings for the first few weeks of the course are contained in the course packet, which is available at EZ Copy, 4336 University Way ("the Ave"), print@ezcopy.net, 206-632-2553.

We will also read Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.  These texts are available at the University Book Store.  You are encouraged to get the editions I have ordered; the Shakespeare and the Conrad are Norton Critical Editions that contain critical essays that you will need to read for this class.  The Achebe volume does not contain such additional readings, but if you don’t have the same edition you will not be able to follow along in class when I discuss specific passages.  (You might be able to find used copies of these same editions online.)

Your grade:

The exams will each count for 30 per cent of your grade.  The other 40 per cent will come from five 2 page papers that you will write for your discussion section. I will give you precise instructions on the writing of each of these papers as it comes up, every two weeks. 

Lecture and reading schedule:

March 29, 31: Romanticism.  Reading: selections from Wordsworth’s “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads, discussion of Wordsworth’s “Lucy” poems (in course packet). 

April 2, 5: Romanticism continued. Discussion of “Tintern Abbey.”  (Note: this is a long and quite difficult poem; you will need to work especially hard on this one.)

April 7, 9: Romanticism continued.  Focus on “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal.”  Reading:  in the course packet, immediately following “Tintern Abbey,” there are 3 pages of typescript.  These are my remarks on the Brooks and Bateson readings of “A Slumber.”  Read the poem a couple of times, then the brief selections from Brooks and Bateson, then read my remarks, then study “A Slumber” very carefully and figure out which reading of the poem, Brooks’s or Bateson’s, you think is the better one, and why.

April 12, 14: Brief introduction to anti-Romantic or “formalist” theory of literary criticism.  Reading: Selections from “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” (date: about 1920) by T. S. Eliot; Barthes, “Death of the Author” (1967).

April 16, 19: Introduction to Shakespeare and the Renaissance (date: about 1600).  Reading: Shakespeare, selected sonnets.  I will send you guides to reading these poems. Formalist literary theory once again, now with a focus on Shakespeare’s sonnets.  Reading:  Frye, “How True a Twain.”

April 21: Introduction to the contemporary “ethico-political” interpretation of literary texts. Reading: Sedgwick, “Swan in Love: The Example of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”

April 23: Introduction to the historical contextualization of literary texts.  Reading: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I.

April 16, 18: Merchant of Venice continued, roughly one act per day

April 30: Mid-term exam, in class.

May 3, 5, 7: Merchant of Venice, continued. Critical readings on “Merchant”: Derek Cohen, “Shylock and the Idea of the Jew” (in the Norton Critical Edition that you should have.) René Girard, “To Entrap the Wisest” (in your course packet)

May 10, 12, 14, 17, 19: Heart of Darkness and critical readings in your Norton Edition. 

May 21, 24, 26, 28:  Things Fall Apart

May 31: No class, Memorial Day Holiday

June 2: Things Fall Apart 

June 4: Final exam in regular lecture session

 

 

 

Your grade:

 

 

The exams will each count for 30 per cent of your grade.  The other 40 per cent will come from five 2 page papers that you will write for your discussion section. I will give you precise instructions on the writing of each of these papers as it comes up, every two weeks.  

 

Catalog Description:
Gateway course designed for English pre-majors and majors. Introduces critical, historical, and theoretical frameworks important to studying the literature, language, and cultures of English.
GE Requirements Met:
Arts and Humanities (A&H)
Credits:
5.0
Status:
Active
Last updated:
October 8, 2024 - 1:35 am