English 299: Survey of British and American Literature
Professors Alex Block, Michael Drexler, and John Rickard



Spring 2009

Faculty Offices and Office Hours

Alex Block, Vaughan Literature Building 116; Office Hours: M 3:00 - 4:00 pm, F 11:00 - 12:00, and by appointment

Michael Drexler, Vaughan Literature Building 233; Office Hours: TBA

John Rickard, Vaughan Literature Building 231; Office Hours: MW 1:30 - 3:00 pm, and by appointment

 

Description

English 299 explores the historical, generic, and transnational range of literature in English. Since a “complete” survey of English and American literature in one semester is impractical, the course has been designed to introduce students to texts that resonate with the most provocative and foundational questions animating these disciplines of study. Weekly guest lectures by faculty in the department will offer a range of perspectives and cumulatively will introduce key concepts and broader issues. Among these are issues of canon formation, periodicity, literary value, and national identity. We will explore both literary value (What is literature? Who decides what gets read? Why and how are some texts designated as "classics?") and the values that literature supports (ie. perspectives on race, class, gender, and sexuality). Though organized chronologically, the course will give students a variety of ways to conceive literary history including but not limited to concerns of literary production (questions about authorship, the emergence and transformation of genres), reception (the composition of reading publics, the circulation of literary texts), and criticism. Discussion sections both before and after the weekly Wednesday lecture will address problems and questions of reading and comprehension, add complementary short texts, or invite critical commentary on the lecture.


Course Materials

Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume A & Volume B ( BABL)

Shakespeare, The Tempest, Norton Critical Edition

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Seventh Edition (NAAL)

Various PDF files on Blackboard

 

Requirements

Attendance is mandatory; unexcused absences will severely affect your grade

You must bring the relevant textbook(s) to each Wednesday common hour lecture in Vaughan Lit 100 (Trout Auditorium)

Participation in some English Department functions, such as readings and lectures, to be announced in class

Participation in class discussion

All reading assignments must be completed ahead of each Weekly Unit—plan ahead!

Make sure to read all period and author headnotes in the anthologies

 

Assignments

Two three-page response papers on two faculty lectures of your choice, to be turned in before spring break and within one week following the lecture. Each paper should connect the lecture with at least one specific and significant detail from the primary text or from the period or author introduction in the anthology. Also, each student will submit one five-page comparative response paper due after spring break, in which a recent reading and lecture are compared and contrasted with one earlier reading and lecture not covered in one of the two response papers.

Short midterm exam, TBA

Final comprehensive exam (based on readings, lectures, headnotes)

 

Grading

Response Papers – 10% each (for a total of 20%)

Comparative Response Paper – 20%

Midterm – 20%

Participation (including attendance, quizzes, and in-class writing) – 10%

Final Exam – 30%

 

Attendance

Attendance and active participation are crucial parts of your experience in English 299. You are expected to attend every Wednesday lecture session. Repeated absences from class will result in a significant lowering of your grade.

 

Lecturers

A different member of the English Department will lecture on the week's reading every Wednesday; for more background on our lecturers, please follow the links on the English Department's "Faculty and Staff" web page at http://www.bucknell.edu/x925.xml

 

Syllabus

Period Coverage

 

I.  THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH

 

 

Week 1

 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Lecture:  Alf Siewers, Wednesday, January 21

Reading: "The Medieval Period" (BABL-A 1-33) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (BABL-A 144-213)

 

 

Middle Ages

 

Week 2

 

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Lecture:  Alex Block, Wednesday, January 28

Reading: "Introduction to The Renaissance . . ." (BABL-A 450-467); "The Drama" (BABL-A 495-501); Shakespeare headnote (BABL-A, pp. 784-788); and Shakespeare, The Tempest, pp. 3-77

 

 

Renaissance

II.  COLONIZATION, EMPIRE, AND DESIRE

 

 

 

Week 3

 

Colonial American Literature

Lecture:  Michael Drexler, Wednesday, February 4

Reading (Including headnotes): Introduction  (NAAL bottom of 7-14); John Smith (NAAL 43-57); Mary Rowlandson (NAAL 117-134); Olaudah Equiano (NAAL 355-368), and Introduction to Paradise Lost in BABL-A, pp. 996-997

 

 

Early American

 

Week 4

 

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

Lecture:  Christopher Camuto, Wednesday, February 11

Reading: "Introduction to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century" (BABL-A 1062-1078) and "The Novel" (BABL-A 1089-1095); Daniel Defoe (BABL-A 1244-1245) and excerpts from Robinson Crusoe (BABL-A 1250-1269) and Swift, "A Modest Proposal" (BABL 1389-1394)

 

 

 

18th Century

III.  NATURE, REASON, AND REVOLT

 

 

Week 5

 

Alexander Pope

Lecture:  Greg Clingham, Wednesday, February 18

Reading: "Poetry" ( BABL-A 1082-1086) and Pope, "The Rape of the Lock" (BABL-A 1399-1414) and excerpts from "An Essay on Man" (BABL-A 1421-1429)

 

 

18th Century

 

Week 6

 

British Romanticism

Lecture: Ghislaine McDayter, Wednesday, February 25

Reading: Mary Wollstonecraft, excerpt from A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Introduction and Chapter 2 (BABL-B 62-79); William Blake, "The Garden of Love" and "London" (BABL-B, 49); William Wordsworth, "Nutting" (BABL-B 131-132), "Resolution and Independence" (BABL-B, 139-141), and "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" (BABL-B, 141); and Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England in 1819" (BABL-B 402)

 

 

19th Century

 

Week 7

 

American Romanticism: Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman

Lecture:  Saundra Morris, Wednesday, March 4

Reading:

Douglass: Headnote (NAAL 920-923) and "What To the Slave is the Fourth of July" (NAAL, pp. 988-991)

Whitman: Headnote (NAAL 991-995) and excerpts from Song of Myself, sections 1 through 11 and 44 through 52 (NAAL 1011-1018 and 1048-1055); and "Vigil Strange I Kept . . ." and "Reconciliation" online at http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mdrexler/ENG299/whitman.htm

Dickinson: Headnote (NAAL 1197-1200) and selected poems in NAAL pp. 1201-1221 by poem number: read poems #122; 236; 260; 269; 340; 409; 479; 519; 591; 620; 764; and 1263; also read online: http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mdrexler/ENG299/dickinson.htm

 

 

19th Century

Midterm Exam

 

Friday, March 6

  

Week 8

The Victorians: Alfred Tennyson / Charles Darwin / Matthew Arnold

Lecture:  Virginia Zimmerman, Wednesday, March 18

Reading: "Introduction to the Victorian Era" (BABL-B 497-517); Tennyson, In Memoriam (BABL-B 658-701); Short excerpts from Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell (Online: click here); also, Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" (BABL-B 785)

 

19th Century

IV.  THE LITERATURE OF MODERNITY

 

 

Week 9

 

Three Modern Irish Poets: W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and Eavan Boland

Lecture:  John Rickard, Wednesday, March 25

Reading: "The Early Twentieth Century: From 1900 to Mid-Century," BABL-B 1003-1032, and "Ireland, Scotland, and Wales," BABL-B 1409-1412

W. B. Yeats: Headnote and "Easter 1916," "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," "A Prayer for My Daughter," "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," "The Second Coming," "Meditations in Time of Civil War," and "In Context" (BABL-B 1140-1168, passim)

Seamus Heaney: Headnote and "Digging," "The Grauballe Man," "Punishment," and "Casualty" (BABL-B 1444-1449)

Eavan Boland: "Yeats in Civil War," "The Famine Road," "Mise Eire," "Heroic," and "Unheroic"

 

 

Modern

Week 10

The Harlem Renaissance

Lecture: James Peterson, Wednesday, April 1

Reading: Zora Neale Hurston (NAAL, 2157-2169) and Langston Hughes (NAAL, pp. 2263-2271)

 

Modern

 

Week 11

 

Modernist Drama

Lecture: Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Wednesday, April 8

Reading: Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape (BABL-B, pp. 1378-1384); also Not I and Play (available on Blackboard)

 

 

Modern

 

Week 12

 

Contemporary American LGBT Literature: Allen Ginsberg and Audre Lorde

Lecture: Glynis Carr, Wednesday, April 15

Reading: NAAL, pp. 2590-2601 and pp. 2692-2695

 

Modern and Contemporary

 

Week 13

 

Toni Morrison

Lecture: Carmen Gillespie, Wednesday, April 22

Reading: Morrison, "Recitatif" (NAAL, pp. 2637-2651) and Morrison's Nobel Prize Lecture, online at (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html; you can read it or listen to an audio file)

 

 

 

Modern and Contemporary