Spring 2002	Mr. Pauley
English 212 -01: TuTh, 11:00-12:15, King 243 -02: TuTh, 3:00-4:15, King 323	Rice 8, (440) 775-8661, Office hours: Tuesday, 4:15-5:15, Wednesday, 9:00-10:00, and Thursday, 10:00-11:00
	E-mail: Ben.Pauley@oberlin.edu

 

London in Eighteenth-Century Literature

 

"Sir," said Samuel Johnson to James Boswell in 1777, "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."  By the eighteenth century, London was the largest city by far in Great Britain and was, indeed, the largest city in all of Europe.  Unique among European cities as the center both of British government and trade, London was also the center of the nation's literary, cultural, and fashionable life.  By turns wondered at and reviled, London was, for the British, a place of infinite variety and possibility, but also a place of temptation, danger, and loneliness. 

 

This course examines depictions of and reflections on London life in representative works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction prose during the "long" eighteenth century (from roughly 1660 through 1805).  Through careful reading and discussion of the literary and quasi-literary works on the syllabus, we will seek to develop a sense of the place London occupied in the geography of the eighteenth-century British imagination. 

 

The class will be conducted as a seminar-style discussion.  In addition to two formal seven-page interpretive/argumentative papers, students will write two briefer (2-3 page), more speculative assignments thinking through the relationship between the texts we have read and important cultural "contexts," such as crime, chocolate, nightlife, prostitution, and gin.

 

Required Texts (available at the Oberlin College Bookstore)

Other readings are posted on Blackboard

Office Hours

Course Policies

Your final grade for the course will be no lower than the grade arrived at using this formula:

Attendance and Participation: 30%

Paper 1:                                               25%

Paper 2:                                               25%

Brief Assignments:                              20%

In calculating grades, I use the grade point scale published in the College's 2001-02 catalogue (i.e. A+ = 4.33; A = 4.0; A- = 3.67; B+ = 3.33; B = 3.0; B- = 2.67; C+ = 2.33; C = 2.0; C- = 1.67).  In some cases, an assignment may receive a "slashed" grade, which will be interpreted as falling midway between the two grades on the grade point scale (e.g. "B-/B" would equal 2.835).

 

Attendance and Participation

Because this is a discussion-based course, your active participation is a constitutive part of the class: if you're not discussing, then we can't properly be said to be having a class at all.  You're not expected to have fully-formed interpretations of the texts we read coming into each class.  You should be prepared, however, based on your reading, to pose provisional questions, advance tentative hypotheses, etc., and to discuss questions and hypotheses posed by your classmates.

 

I understand that emergencies arise, but if at all possible, please let me know ahead of time if you will be. 

 

Ø    More than two unexcused absences will begin to erode the participation portion of your grade. 

Ø    If you have more than six unexcused absences, you have forfeited any consideration of attendance and participation in your final grade (i.e., you lose out on that 30%).

 

Written Work

All written work for the course should be word-processed or typed, using standard margins (i.e. one inch on all sides) and reasonable typefaces or fonts (i.e. 10-12 point).

 

Ø    All written work must be handed in in class the day it is due. 

Ø    Any requests for extensions must be made at least 48 hours in advance. 

Ø    Late papers, if no extension has been arranged, will be received for reduced credit (lowered one full letter grade, e.g. from B to C). 

Ø    If a paper is more than one week late, I will return it graded but without comments.

 

Important Proviso: I would much rather have you present and contributing in class than typing frantically in your room or the computer lab.  For this reason, I will not lower the grade on an assignment that is turned in within 24 hours of its due date'even if you have not previously asked for an extension-- provided that you come to the class at which the assignment is due.  After that first 24 hours, the regular penalty for late papers applies.  Papers turned in in this manner should be submitted to the "Dropbox" on Blackboard.