Web address for syllabus:  http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/Herman/Eng251004.html

Purpose of the Course:

Welcome!  This course is designed to familiarize you with major British writers from the medieval period to the beginning of the twentieth century.  The course thus encompasses a variety of works-including plays, poetry, and fiction-written by both women and men over a period of more than 500 years.  In addition, the class is designed to help you improve your writing skills through practice.  You will be given a number of writing opportunities throughout the semester.  These opportunities will involve multiple drafts and peer review.
    Overall, then, the class should improve your ability to appreciate, analyze, and write coherently and persuasively about the literature we study.  Providing you with interpretive skills that will assist you in your lifelong practice of reading, the course will also give you tools needed to communicate your ideas to others.

Required Texts:

• The Norton Anthology of English Literature:  Major Authors (2001).  7th edition.  Edited by M.H. Abrams, S. Greenblatt, and others.
• William Shakespeare, The Tempest.  Viking Penguin, 1999.

Grading, Exams, Papers:

Please note that I use a +/- system of grading and a 10-point grading scale.  Your grade for the course will be determined by the following factors:
1. Active class participation, including a five-minute oral presentation to be given by every student in the class (5%).  I'll pass out a sign-up sheet so that you can be scheduled to give a presentation.  Your presentation should raise some questions about the reading for that day that you'd like to see us address during class discussion.  Here is a menu of issues you might want to consider:  Were there details of the plot you couldn't follow?  Were there inconsistencies (in the characters or setting) that threw you off?  What main ideas did the author seem to be trying to get across, and how?  Were you disappointed in any sense by the work?  If so, why?  Or, to the contrary, do you find the work to be successful or interesting in some particularly important way?
2. Mandatory attendance (10% or more [see below]).
3. Pop quizzes on the assigned readings.  The quality of class discussions will determine how many such quizzes are necessary.  Please keep up with your reading, and speak up in class! (5%).
4. Writing opportunities (40%).  There will be a total of three writing opportunities during the semester.  Later in the term, I will incorporate paper topics into this web page-well in advance of the due date for each opportunity.  You will be able to print off the topics by visiting this web page.  In the meantime, click here for some general guidelines for composing and formatting your essays.

Opportunity #1:  An essay (due Tuesday, September 10), 500-750 words, and centering on one or more of the works we'll be reading.  You will hand in a first draft and then revise it in accordance with my comments/feedback.  Your grade will be based on a combination of three factors:  (a) the quality of your first draft, (b) the amount of effort you put into revising your essay in response to my comments, and (c) the quality of your final draft.  In other words, you are obligated to work hard at every stage of the process of composition and revision. You will need to turn in both versions when you hand in the final draft, which will be due one week from when I return it to you.

Opportunity #2:  An essay (due Thursday, October 3), 1000-1,250 words, centering on one or more of the works on the syllabus.  You will create a first draft, which you will turn in to me and which will be peer-reviewed by a classmate.  (Click here for a copy of the peer-review form that you will need to print off and bring to class on October 3.)  You will then turn in a copy of the peer-review sheet along with your revised version.  Again, your grade will be based on a combination of factors:  (a) the quality of your first draft; (b) the amount of effort you put into revising your essay in response to the peer evaluation; (c) the quality of your final draft; and (d) the thoughtfulness and care of your peer-review of the paper of the classmate with whom you exchange drafts.  In other words, you are obligated to work hard at every stage of the process of composition, peer-review, and revision.  Please note:  the final version of your essay will be due one week after the peer review.

Opportunity #3:  A 1,500-word essay (due Thursday, November 14, if you choose to do the first draft) centering on one or more of the works on the syllabus.  In this case, turning in a first draft is optional but not required.  If you do not turn in a first draft, your entire grade for the essay will be based on the single version I receive.  If you decide to turn in a first draft, I will once again base your grade on the combination of factors considered for Opportunity #1, only this time a greater proportion of your grade will be based on the quality of your first draft.

Attendance:

You will be allowed a maximum of two absences to accommodate hardships that may arise during the semester.  Any additional unexcused absences will cause you to receive an "F" for a component of the course worth 10% of your overall grade.  More than 4 unexcused absences will cause you to receive an "F" for a component of the course worth 25% of your overall grade.

Completing Assignments:

All assigned readings must be read before the date listed on the syllabus.  All out-of-class assignments are due at the beginning of class.  If an emergency arises and prevents you from turning in your assignment on time, always call me and leave a message on my voicemail if I am not there.  In the absence of any previous consultation with me, work handed in late will be graded down, normally one letter grade for each day that it is late.

Class Schedule:

Below is a list of readings for all class meetings.  This list is meant to provide a common frame of reference for all readings and assignments, but we may have to adjust the schedule as the semester proceeds.

August

T 20  Introduction to the course

Some Medieval Writers

H 22  Read "Introduction" to The Middle Ages, pp. 1-20 in your Norton textbook; also read The Dream of the Rood and start on Geoffrey Chaucer, The General Prologue

T 27  Chaucer, The General Prologue, continued

H 29  Chaucer, The Miller's Prologue and Tale; also start on The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

September

T 3  Chaucer, The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, continued; The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale

H 5  Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings; The Chester's Play of Noah's Flood

Some Renaissance Writers

T 10  Read "Introduction" to The Sixteenth Century (pages 315 and following); also read Cantos 1 and 2 from Book 1 of Spenser's The Faerie Queene; WRITING OPPORTUNITY #1 DUE

H 12  Spenser, Cantos 4, 9, 10, and 11 from Book I of The Faerie Queene; Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (all the poems from this work included in your textbook)

T 17  Sidney, Astrophil and Stella continued; Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (all the poems included in your textbook); also read William Shakespeare's sonnets 3, 18, 30, 55, and 60

H 19  Shakespeare, Sonnets 73, 106, 116, 129; also, read Act I of Shakespeare, The Tempest

T 24  The Tempest, Acts II and III

H 26  Read "Introduction" to The Early Seventeenth Century (pages 577 and following); John Donne, "The Flea," "The Sun Rising," "The Canonization," "Love's Alchemy," "A Valediction:  Forbidding Mourning," "The Ecstasy," "The Relic"

October

T 1  Donne, Holy Sonnets 5, 7, 10, 14; Amelia Lanyer, all of the poems by her included in your textbook; Katherine Philips, all of the poems by her included in your textbook

H 3  WRITING OPPORTUNITY #2 DUE; peer reviews

T 8  John Milton, Paradise Lost, Books 1 and 2

H 10  Paradise Lost, Book 4, 5, 9, 10

T Fall Break

Three Eighteenth-Century Writers

H 17  Read "Introduction" to The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (pages 855 and following); Jonathan Swift, "A Description of a City Shower"; Part IV of Gulliver's Travels

T 22  Part IV of Gulliver's Travels, continued; Swift, A Modest Proposal

H 24  Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock

T 29  The Rape of the Lock, continued; Samuel Johnson, "On Fiction"

H 31  Midterm examination

November

Some Romantic and Victorian Writers

T 5  Read "Introduction" to The Romantic Period (pages 1313 and following); Anna Letitia Barbauld, "A Summer Evening's Meditation" and "Washing-Day"; also, William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience

H 7  Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience, continued

T 12  Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women; also read William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"

H 14  Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," "The Ruined Cottage," and "Ode:  Intimations of Immortality"; WRITING OPPORTUNITY #3 DUE (for those doing first drafts)

T 19  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Aeolian Harp"; Lord Byron, Canto 1 of Don Juan

H 21  Read "Introduction" to The Victorian Period (pages 1859 and following); Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese; Robert Browning, "Porphyria's Lover," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders his Tomb"

T 26  Tennyson, In Memoriam (all the excerpts included in your textbook)

H 28  Thanksgiving

December

Two Modern Writers

T 3  Read "Introduction" to The Twentieth Century (pages 2271 and following); Yeats, "Easter 1916," "The Second Coming," "A Prayer for My Daughter," and "Sailing to Byzantium"; also, read the first half of Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

H 5  Second half of A Room of One's Own; review for final; WRITING OPPORTUNITY #3 DUE (final papers due)

Final Exam: Tuesday, December 17, 8:00 - 11:00 a.m.

Academic Integrity Statement

From NC State's code for student conduct:
7.ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

       7.1 The free exchange of ideas depends on the participants' trust that they will be given credit for their work. Everyone in an academic community must be responsible for acknowledging, using the methods accepted by the various academic disciplines, their use of others' words and ideas. Since intellectual workers' words and ideas constitute a kind of property, plagiarism is like theft.
       7.2 Furthermore, as a reader you may want to follow other writers' paths of research in order to make your own judgments about their evidence and arguments. You will depend on those writers' accuracy and honesty in reporting their sources. In turn your readers will depend on yours.
       7.3 The free exchange of ideas also depends on the participants' trust that others' work is their own and that it was done and is being reported honestly. Intellectual progress in all the disciplines demands the truthfulness of all participants.
       7.4 Plagiarism and cheating are attacks on the very foundation of academic life, and cannot be tolerated within universities.  Section eight (8) of the Code defines academic dishonesty and provides information on potential sanctions for violators of academic integrity.

NC State Policy on Working with Students with Disabilities

NC State is subject to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  Section 504 provides that:

"No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States. . . shall, solely by reason of his handicap be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

This regulation includes students with hearing, visual, motor, or learning disabilities and states that colleges and universities must make "reasonable adjustments" to ensure that academic requirements are not discriminatory.  Modifications may require rescheduling classes from inaccessible to accessible buildings, providing access to auxiliary aids such as tape recorders, special lab equipment, or other services such as readers, note takers, or interpreters.  It further requires that exams actually evaluate students' progress and achievement rather than reflect their impaired skills.  This may require oral or taped tests, readers, scribes, separate testing rooms, or extension of time limits.

 Section 84.47 (b) of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare regulations implementing Section 504 deals in particular with academic and vocational counseling. When advising disabled students, advisers should be careful not to guide them, because
of their handicap, toward a more restrictive program or career than would be appropriate for a non-disabled student.  Factual information, such as licensing requirements, etc., that may present obstacles to disabled students should they decide to pursue a particular career or program, may be presented in an objective fashion.