English 464.001
British Literature, 1900-45
M W 4:05 - 5:20
Tompkins G118
Instructor:  Dr. David Herman
Office:  Tompkins 211
Office phone:  515.4103
E-mail:  dherman@unity.ncsu.edu
Office hours:  Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, 1:30 - 2:30 (N.B.  Sometimes faculty committee meetings will prevent me from keeping office hours on particular days.  Please check with me first if you need to schedule a meeting time during office hours)

Web address for syllabus:  http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/Herman/Eng464001.html

Purpose of the Course:

Welcome!  This course is designed to familiarize you with major British writers from 1900 to 1945.  The class encompasses a variety of works-including fiction, drama, poetry, and critical essays-written by both women and men during the period often referred to as the "modernist" period.  (Click here for a brief definition of the term modernism; click here for some information about the visual arts during this period.) We will study both the innovative formal techniques used by modernist writers and the cultural and historical contexts in which they worked.  Overall, the course aims to improve your ability to appreciate, analyze, and write coherently and persuasively about modernist British literature, equipping you with interpretive skills that will assist you in your lifelong practice of reading.

Required Texts:

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)
Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1914)
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1916)
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
Harry Blamires, The New Bloomsday Book (either 2nd or 3rd edition)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1927)

+ poems by T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and W. H. Auden on electronic reserve.  Click here to access electronic reserves, using my last name or Eng464, section 001, as descriptors.

Also on electronic reserve you will find two required critical essays:  Virginia Woolf's "Modern Fiction" (assigned for the first day of class) and T.S. Eliot's "Ulysses, Order, and Myth" (assigned for Monday, March 17).  Here are complete bibliographic citations for both items:

Other Materials on Reserve

Furthermore, here are some other items that I have asked the library to place on (non-electronic) reserve for your use throughout the term.  All of these books are on a 2-hour loan period, except for the Bradbury and McFarlane volume, which is on a 1-day loan period:

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 ten-minute oral presentation to be given by every student in the class (10%).  I'll pass out a sign-up sheet so that you can be scheduled to give a presentation.  Here are some guidelines for presentations:

Using the MLA database that can be accessed from the D.H. Hill Library's home page (or else some other electronic or print database), find a critical article that discusses the work you are focusing on for your presentation (Conrad, Shaw, Joyce, etc.).  Carefully read the article and then, in your presentation, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the critic's analysis of the work in question.  In what ways is the critic's approach a productive one, i.e., what sorts of insights into the text does the critic's essay afford?  Conversely, are there important aspects of the text that, in your view, the critic fails to address?  What are they, and how might they be brought into sharper focus?

You should try to take advantage of your presentation by incorporating the article you discuss into your final research essay.

2. Mandatory attendance (10% or more [see below]).
3. Writing opportunities (45%).  There will three writing opportunities during the semester.  As the term progresses, I will create links to paper topics from this web page-well in advance of the due date for each opportunity.  In the meantime, click here for some general guidelines for composing and formatting your essays.  Also, click here for a peer review form that I've used in other classes.  This, too, will provide you with some tips for composing and revising your essays. While working on your essays, you are welcome to take advantage of the Writing and Speaking Tutorial Services, whose website you can find at http://www.ncsu.edu/tutorial_center/writespeak.html.
5. A midterm exam (15%), on Monday, March 3.  The exam will contain brief definition questions; identification questions, which ask you to identify and analyze passages from works we've read and discussed; and an essay question asking you to compare and contrast several works.
6. A final exam (20%), which will be a comprehensive take-home exam due Wednesday, May 7, by 5:00 p.m.  Exact format to be determined later.

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 four 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 13  Introduction; read Woolf, "Modern Fiction" (1919)
W 15  Conrad, Heart of Darkness
M 20  Martin Luther King Holiday
W 22  Heart of Darkness
M 27  Heart of Darkness; Shaw, Pygmalion
W 29  Pygmalion

February

M 3  Pygmalion
W 5  Eliot, "Portrait of a Lady"; "Preludes"; "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"; "Gerontion"; "The Waste Land"
M 10  Eliot continued
W 12  Yeats, "The Stolen Child" (1886); "Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea" (1892); "Ego Dominus Tuus" (1917); "Easter 1916" (1916); "The Second Coming" (1920); "A Prayer for My Daughter" (1919)
M 17  Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium" (1927); "The Tower" (1927); "Meditations in Time of Civil War" (1923); "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" (1921); "Leda and the Swan" (1924); "Parnell's Funeral" (1932-34); FIRST ESSAY DUE (500 WORDS)
W 19  West, The Return of the Soldier
M 24  The Return of the Soldier
W 26  The Return of the Soldier; review

March

M 3  MIDTERM EXAM
W 5  Joyce, Ulysses, chapters 1 ("Telemachus) and 2 ("Nestor"); Bloomsday Book, chapters 1 and 2
M 10  Spring Break
W 12  Spring Break
M 17 Ulysses, chs. 3 ("Proteus"), 4 ("Calypso"), and 5 ("The Lotus Eaters"); Bloomsday Book, chs. 3, 4, 5; also read Eliot, "Ulysses, Order, and Myth" (1923)
W 19  Ulysses, chs. 6 ("Hades") and 7 ("Aeolus"); Bloomsday Book, chs. 6 and 7
M 24  Ulysses, chs. 8 ("The Lestrogynians") and 9 ("Scylla and Charybdis"); Bloomsday Book, chs. 8 and 9
W 26  No class:  instructor out of town
M 31 Ulysses, chs. 10 ("The Wandering Rocks"), 11 ("The Sirens"), and 12 ("The Cyclops"); Bloomsday Book, chs. 10, 11, and 12; SECOND ESSAY DUE (1000 WORDS)

April

W 2  Ulysses, chs. 13 ("Nausicaa") and 14 ("Oxen of the Sun"); Bloomsday Book, chs. 13 and 14
M 7  Ulysses, ch. 15 ("Circe"); Bloomsday Book, ch. 15
W 9  Ulysses, ch. 16 ("Eumaeus") and 17 ("Ithaca"); Bloomsday Book, chs. 16 and 17; BY THIS DATE, YOU MUST HAVE RECEIVED APPROVAL FOR THE TOPIC OF YOUR FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT
M 14  Ulysses, ch. 18 ("Penelope"); Bloomsday Book, ch. 18
W 16  Spring Holiday
M 21  Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
W 23  Mrs. Dalloway
M 28  Mrs. Dalloway
W 30  Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts"; "A Bride in the 30's"; "In Memory of W. B Yeats"; "September 1, 1939"; "Danse Macabre"; THIRD ESSAY (RESEARCH PROJECT) DUE (2,000 - 2,500 words)

May

W 7  TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM due in my office by 5:00 p.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.