Literature of Travel: ENGL 101
Dr. Greg Clingham
Fall 2002
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Class time: Tues, Thurs,
9.30-11.00 a.m. Classroom: Vaughan Literature 103 Office Hours: M, 1.30-3.30 p.m. T, 11.00 a.m.-12.00 p.m. Thur, 2.00-4.00 p.m. Office: Vaughan Lit 233 Taylor Hall 6 Tel: 577-1188/1552 clingham@bucknell.edu www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/clingham |
Objectives of Course
Everyone travels at some time, and the act of going on a journey is, in some form, one of the fundamental experiences of human life, just as it is a common metaphor for individual human life itself. Journeys are the subject of just about every literary genre in existence.
This course will be organized around the themes of self, culture, history, writing, and travel. Our reading will repeatedly come back to the questions: what do we learn about ourselves in writing about journeys and traveling? What do we learn about other places, people and cultures in those same acts of writing? And what insights do we get into writing itself as we recognize the existence of dynamic, creative relationships among writing, identity, and history?
There are, of course, no simple
answers to such large, complex questions, but there is the possibility of
exploring the issues in a number of different ways so that we increase our
knowledge of the large philosophical questions as well as specific literary
texts. To this end we will consider examples of travel writing from the seventeenth
to the twentieth centuries, taking us to
Texts
Norton Book of Travel, ed. Paul Fussell (Norton, 1987).
Life-Writing by British Women 1660-1815: An Anthology, ed. Carolyn A. Barros and Johanna M. Smith (Northeastern Univ. Press, 2000).
Organization of Course
As far as possible, this will be a collaborative, student-centered course in which everyone plays some part in exploring the issues, questions, and texts pertaining to travel literature. There will be occasional informal lectures from me, providing background and various ways of placing our texts historically and culturally, but the emphasis of our classes will be on our structured discussions, including your oral reports, small group activity, in-class writing, and your own personal travel writing.
We will be watching two films that will aim to extend and complicate our understanding of foreign cultures in relation to our own: “Big Night” and “Babette’s Feast.” Both films are about food.
There will be regular visits to the library, as a means of developing our research skills and to become generally more familiar with the resources of the library.
Since this is a W1 class writing and the discussion about writing will form an important part of our activities. We will undertake various forms of writing, including formally researched critical essays, short in-class responses, and your own more imaginative travel discourses. We will consider the process of writing and work with developing your drafts into a final form. And, not least, we will consider the importance of the use of imitation and models, and the essential importance of reading in developing your writing.
Requirements
- 3 papers.
- 3 informal class responses.
- Class presentation.
- Regular participation.
Grading
The final grade for this course will be structured as follows:
