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Fall 2001 | |
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English 317(4284) |
Rice 108, (440) 775-8582 |
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TuTh, 3:00-4:15 King
237 |
Office hours: Tu
& Th, 4:30-5:30 |
Aims of the Course:
Our aim in this course is to become more alert and responsive readers of the novels and romances written in nineteenth-century England. We will place the novels in biographical, social and cultural context, paying particular attention to the demands and opportunities of parts publication, the function of illustration in the novels, and the evolving debates about male and female authorship. Lectures will provide contextual information and tentative readings. but each participant will forge individual readings in the weekly journals and in class discussion The ultimate aim of the course is to provide you with a reading list for the rest of your lives and the skills to be subtle and emotionally involved readers.
Course policies and requirements:
Since we meet only twice a week and have a great deal of material to cover, it is essential that you not miss classes. I don't believe in checking up on adults, but I do know from experience that people who miss classes write uninformed and unsatisfactory journals, receive poor grades and are generally, as the Victorians would say, bound for the gutter.
On one issue I am more than usually censorious. People who come late to class will earn my moral disapproval and the hatred and baleful regard of their colleagues. I will try desperately not to let my personal feelings on this issue intrude into my evaluation of the work, but so far I've been unable to do this.
Each Tuesday you will give me a two- to five-page journal, typed, proof-read and elegantly expressed in full (in all senses of the word) sentences. Each journal will discuss the book assigned for that week and reflect back on the discussions of the previous week. The implication of these assignments is that you will have done all of the reading for that week before you come to the Tuesday class, and that you will have attended to and reflected on the discussions of the previous week. The discipline of the weekly paper is hard to get used to at first, but most participants in the course adapt quickly to the format and enjoy having a course where writing and reading are spread evenly over the entire semester. Late journals will be downgraded.
Class Schedule:
Week of
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September 3
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Tennyson, "Locksley Hall" (handout) "One grand compact of harmony and joy" "In training for a heroine" "Unquiet slumbers" |
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October 1 October 8
October 22 October 29 |
Wuthering Heights The madwoman on the main floor Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre reconsidered FALL BREAK The world made from within |
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November 5 November 12
November 26 |
Vanity Fair "These pages must show" David Copperfield "Intellectual Lightning" |
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December 3 December 10 |
Middlemarch, IV, V, VI Middlemarch, VII, VIII |