Web address for syllabus:  http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/Herman/Eng262001.html

Purpose of the Course:

Welcome!  This course is designed to familiarize you with British literature, along with its cultural and historical contexts, from about 1700 to the beginnings of the twentieth century.  The course thus encompasses a variety of works-including plays, poetry, essays, and fiction-written by both women and men over a period of around two hundred years.  The class should improve your ability to appreciate, analyze, and write coherently and persuasively about the literature we study, equipping you with intepretive skills that will assist you in your lifelong practice of reading.

Required Texts:
 

Please make sure to purchase the seventh edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2.  Also, please note that only volume 1c of the Longman Anthology of British Literature is required.  Our readings in the Longman textbook will fall during the first few weeks of the class, ending January 28.  After that, all readings will be in the Norton textbook.

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.  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. Two formal, non-research papers, word-processed.  The first essay (15%) is to be 4-5 pages in length and is due Monday, February 18.  The second essay (20%) is to be 6-8 pages in length and is due Friday, May 3.  I will distribute paper topics well in advance of the due dates for your essays.
5. Two midterm exams (25%), the first on Wednesday, February 6, and the second on Friday, April 12.  The exams will contain brief definition questions; identification questions, which ask you to identify and analyze passages from works we've discussed; and an essay question asking you to compare and contrast several works.
6. A final exam (20%) on Wednesday, May 8, 8:00 - 11:00 a.m.  The final, which will be comprehensive, will have the same format as the midterms.

Attendance:

You will be allowed a maximum of three 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 6 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.

January

M 7  Introduction to the course

W 9  Longman Anthology, "Introduction to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century," pages 1979 - 2002; also read Jonathan Swift, "Description of a City Shower," page 2364

F 11  John Gay, The Beggar's Opera

M 14  Gay, The Beggar's Opera

W 16  Swift, Part 4 of Gulliver's Travels

F 18  Book 4 of Gulliver's Travels continued; also, read Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

M 21  Martin Luther King, Jr., Day; no class

W 23  Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock

F 25  Pope, An Essay on Man

M 28  Samuel Johnson, "On Fiction," "On Biography," "On Idleness," "Preface" to The Plays of William Shakespeare

End of Readings in the Longman Anthology; All Subsequent Readings Are in the Norton Anthology

W 30  Introduction to "The Romantic Period" (in your Norton textbook); also read all the poems by Anna Letitia Barbauld and Charlotte Smith

February

F 1  William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (pp. 43-60)

M 4  Blake continued; review for the midterm

W 6  MIDTERM EXAMINATION

F 8  Read all the poems by Mary Robinson and Joanna Baillie

M 11  Materials on "The French Revolution and the 'Spirit of the Age'":  introductory section on pp. 117-118; excerpt from Burke on pp. 121-28; excerpt from Wollstonecraft on pp. 128-33; excerpt from Paine on pp. 133-37; excerpt from Blake's The French Revolution, pp. 144-46

W 13  Mary Wollstonecraft, chapters from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (pp. 163 - 192)

F 15  William Wordsworth, "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads; Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

M 18  Wordsworth, "A slumber did my spirit seal," "The Ruined Cottage," "Ode:  Intimations of Immortality"; FIRST ESSAY DUE

W 20 Wordsworth, The Prelude, Books 1 and 2

F 22  Wordsworth, The Prelude, Books 3, 4, 6, and 9-11

M 25  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Eolian Harp" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

W 27  Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn," "Christabel," and Biographia Literaria, chapter 13

March

F 1  George Gordon, Lord Byron, Manfred

M 4  Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos 1, 3, and 4

W 6  Byron, Don Juan, Cantos 1 and 2

F 8  Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Mutability," "Mont Blanc," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Stanzas Written in Dejection," "Ode to the West Wind"

SPRING BREAK

M 18  Shelley, excerpt from A Defence of Poetry (pp. 789 - 803); John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and "Ode to a Nightingale"

W 20  Keats, letter on "negative capability" on pp. 889-90, "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "Ode to Melancholy," and "Lamia"

F 22  Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "To Autumn"

M 25  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

W 27  No class

F  29  No class

April

M 1  Shelley, Frankenstein continued

W 3  Shelley Frankenstein continued; also, read Introduction to "The Victorian Age"

F 5  No class:  instructor out of town

M 8 Thomas Carlyle, portraits of Coleridge and Wordsworth; Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

W 10 John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women; also, read the materials included in the section on "The Woman Question" (pp. 1719 and following); review for midterm

F 12  Second Midterm Examination

M 15 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese and "Mother and Poet"

W 17 Alfred Lord Tennyson, all the poems from In Memoriam

F 19  In Memoriam continued; Robert Browning, "Porphyria's Lover," "My Last Duchess"

M 22  Browning, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"

W 24  John Ruskin, excerpt from The Stones of Venice (pages 1432-42); George Eliot, excerpts on pages 1454-69;

F 26  Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" (1492-93) and excerpts from The Study of Poetry and Literature and Science(pages 1534-58);  T. H. Huxley, "Science and Culture" (pages 1559-66)

M 29   Walter Pater, "Conclusion" to The Renaissance (pages 1642-44); Christina Rosetti, "Goblin Market"; Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Windhover, "Pied Beauty," and "No Worst, There is None"

May

W 1  Introduction to "The Twentieth Century"; Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"; William Butler Yeats, "Adam's Curse" and "The Wild Swans at Coole"

F 3  Yeats, "Easter 1916," "A Prayer for My Daughter," "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Second Coming," and "Leda and the Swan"

Turn in Second Essay by Friday, May 3, at 5 p.m.

Final Exam:  Wednesday, May 8, 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.