ENGL 426: Modern British Literature (1890-1945)

ENGL 426: Modern British Literature (1890-1945)

Freeman, English 2621

ENGL 262: British Literature Since 1800

“Being in Uncertainties”:Revolution/Reaction/Resistance in

British Literature since 1800

Dr. Chris Freeman ()Fall 2012

M/W 10am (32616)THH 203

Office Hours: Tues/Thurs 11-noon and by appt.Taper 436

The Course and Its Goals

The title for this course comes from the Romantic poet John Keats and his notion of “negative capability”—how we live with uncertainty, how we move forward from it. That problem—or the reality—is something that will come up for us throughout the term in various ways.

English 262 traces literary movements and historical and social contexts of British literature since 1800. That means we’ll be reading Romantic poetry and talking about the role of the poet in society; Victorian poetry, prose, fiction, and drama and thinking about the rise of the middle class, anxieties about gender, family, and modern science; turn-of-the-20th-century texts dealing with the transition into a more urban and internationalized world; poetry and fiction about the devastation of World War I and II and the rise of modernism, feminism, and postmodernism, and closing with texts of the last twenty-five or so years, including music, film, and other aspects of British popular and literary culture.

Students will to pursue individual projects on texts, writers, or movements of interest to them and to present that material to the class, which will allow us to fulfill some aspects of the “survey” component of the course. The combination of reading, discussion, writing, and research in this class should give you familiarity with the literature and culture of the last 200 or so years of British history, and it should provide you with sufficient context in order to think about the relationship between a cultural moment and its literary production.

You will do a considerable amount of writing, research, and presentation during the semester. Since we are all engaged in the same literary-historical project, the more of this work that can be shared, the better. We will make every effort to broaden the scope and content of this course through the assignments, and we will take advantage of the size of the class to create a seminar atmosphere of discussion, student contribution, and intellectual community.

The Contract

In accepting this syllabus and becoming a member of this class, each student agrees to complete all assignments in a timely and serious fashion. You also affirm your commitment to the exploration of ideas in the liberal arts tradition, which is intellectual, creative, and respectful of others in the classroom. Your commitment to the quality and integrity of your work during the semester means that all work you hand in will be your own; any outside sources will be properly cited; and your work will be of the highest quality that you can produce. Plagiarism will have severe ramifications, and I will spot-check anything suspicious to ensure against it. If you have any questions about using outside sources, please ask me to help you.

As the instructor, my commitment to you is that I have put considerable thought into developing this course; that I will work hard to invigorate and challenge you during the semester; that I will read your work carefully and with an open mind and will value it and evaluate it accordingly; that I will be prepared for class but that my agenda won’t get in the way of your input; and that I will be available to help you in your writing and thinking about texts and issues we will be actively exploring.

The Texts

  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Stephen Greenblatt, et al (Eds.), 9th ed., Norton, 2012 (NOTE: Get the NEWEST edition, vols D, E, and F)
  • Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861) Edgar Rosenberg (Ed.), Norton, 1999
  • Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Harcourt, 1981, 2004
  • Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (1945), New Directions, 1954, 2008
  • Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner (1959), Vintage, 2010
  • Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader, Picador, 2007

Assignments

Everyone will write two literary-critical essays (5-7 pp.), andyou will do a larger research project/presentation (6-8 pp. and 10-12 minutes—essays are due ONE WEEK after presentation date).You are expected to come to class every day and to be prepared to discuss the day’s readings. There will be a take-home final exam.

Grading

  • Two literary-critical essays (5-7 pp.)250 points each
  • Research project/presentation (6-8 pp./10-12 minutes)300 points
  • Take-home Final100 points
  • Class Participation/attendance100 points*

*NOTE: 3 unexcused absences will forfeit ALL 100 POINTS in this category.

A: 930-1000; A-: 929-895; B+: 894-870; B: 869-830; B-: 829-795; C+: 794-770, etc.

Schedule of Assignments

(subject to change as pacing dictates)

Part One: Romanticism and the Gothic (1780s-1830s)

Week One

Introduction to course and the period; syllabus

Norton: 3-30; Blake bio and excerpts from Songs of Innocence and of Experience (poems to focus on: Introductions to both; SOI: “The Lamb”; “The Chimney Sweeper”; “Infant Joy”; SOE: “The Chimney Sweeper”; “Nurse’s Song”; “London”; “Infant Sorrow”)

Week Two

No class Labor Day; Norton: Wollstonecraft; Price; Payne; Burke—French Revolution/Fear at Home/The Spirit of the Age (183-207)

Week Three

Norton: Wordsworth selections; Coleridge selections (especially: Preface to Lyrical Ballads; “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”; “My Heart Leaps Up”; “London 1802”; “The World is Too Much With Us”; Dorothy Wordsworth, “Grasmere Journals”; STC: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; “Frost at Midnight”; “Dejection: An Ode”

Week Four

Norton: Shelley and Keats (Shelley: “Mont Blanc”; “England, 1819”; “Ode to the West Wind”; excerpts from Defence of Poetry; Keats: New Yorker essay on the posthumous Keats; “When I Have Fears I Cease to Be”; “Bright Star”; “Ode to a Nightingale”; Letter to his brothers on ‘negative capability, p. 967); Project: Jane Austen

The Gothic (Norton, 584); Project: Mary Shelley (intro in Norton, p. 981)

Part Two: Victorian Literature and Life (1830s-1900)

Week Five

Norton Intro (vol E: 1017-43); Great Expectations (1-125, through ch. xix); Project: John Constable/J.M. W. Turner and visual arts; discuss topics for essay one

Great Expectations (126-226, through ch. Xxxvii); Project: Ireland/Potato Famine/Immigration to U.S.

Week Six

Finish Great Expectations; Project: The Brontë Family

Victorian Poetry and Prose: Norton—J.S. Mill (from “Subjection of Women” and “Autobiography”); Alfred, Lord Tennyson selections (“Lotos Eaters”; “Ulysses”); Robert Browning poems (“Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess”); Project: Florence Nightingale and 19th century medicine OR Lewis Carroll

Week Seven

Norton: Selections from Matthew Arnold (“The Buried Life”; “Dover Beach”); Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; Wilde essay by Alex Ross, New Yorker; Project: Darwin

October 10th: Essay One due (5-7 pp.); finish Wilde, Earnest; Project: Victorian Sexuality

Week Eight

Norton introduction to 20th century (vol. F: 1887-1915); Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton); Project: The Empire at the end of Victoria’s reign

finish Conrad; Transitional Project: Thomas Hardy or Arthur Conan Doyle

Part Three: The Great War and Modernism (1900-1930)

Week Nine

The War Poets (Brooke, “The Soldier”; Sassoon, “’They’” and “Memoirs”; Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”; Letters to His Mother; and “Preface”); Project: World War I and Modern Warfare

Norton: Yeats (“Lake Isle of Innisfree”; “Easter 1916”; “Wild Swans at Coole”); T.S. Eliot (“Prufrock”; “Waste Land”; “Hollow Men” and “Tradition and the Individual Talent”); Project: American Poets in London (Frost, Eliot, Pound, HD; Imagism)

Week Ten

James Joyce, “The Dead”; Virginia Woolf from Norton (2080-2155) including “Modern Fiction”; Project:E. M. Forster or D. H. Lawrence

Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1-94);Project: The Bloomsbury Group

Week Eleven

Finish Mrs. Dalloway; clips from The Hours; discuss topics for essay two

Part Four: The Next Great War and its Aftermath (1930s-1950s)

Week Twelve

Norton: Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”; Auden (“Spain”; “Musée des Beaux Arts”; “Unknown Citizen”; “September 1, 1939”); Project: Spanish Civil War

Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (Maupin preface; “Berlin Diary” and “Sally Bowles”); excerpts from Cabaretand Chris & Don; Project: Churchill/The Bombing of London

Week Thirteen

Finish Isherwood (“Berlin Diary”); Norton: Dylan Thomas; Norton: Selections on Nation and Language—Thiong’o and Rushdie; Doris Lessing, “To Room Nineteen”; Project: Post-colonial Literature; Essay Two due (5-7 pp., Monday 11/19); No class 11/21: THANKSGIVING; Read Sillitoe over break

Part Five: Postmodernism/Contemporary Literature and Life

Week Fourteen

Norton: Seamus Heaney (“Digging”; “The Forge”); Alan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner”; “Mr. Raynor the School Teacher”; “The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale”; “The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller”

Projects: Angry Young Men;Ted Hughes &Sylvia Plath

Week Fifteen

Begin Bennett; watch clips from Stephen Frear’s film The Queen, starring Helen Mirren;Project: British Film since 1960

FinishUncommon Reader;Project: British Music, the Beatles and after; final exam assignment; course evaluations and wrap-up discussion

Take-home Final Examdue Wednesday 12/12 at 9am (hard copy, please)

NOTES

  • If you need any accommodation due to a learning disability or any other circumstance, please speak to me during week one of the semester so that arrangements can be made (see below for college policies)
  • I will give reading check pop quizzes if necessary, which will be factored into class participation grade
  • Attendance is required and roll is taken daily. More than three unexcused absences will be reflected in your final course grade, forfeiting ALL 100 possible class participation points
  • You MUST come to class having done your reading and prepared to DISCUSS the day’s reading assignment. BRING your texts to class—Underline and mark your copies with notes and tab passages that seem important to you; make notes about readings in your journal
  • Papers must be word-processed in 12-point font size, 1-inch margins, double-spaced, and stapled
  • Late papers/assignments will ONLY be accepted by pre-arrangement
  • Plagiarism will result in failure—work MUST be your own; it should be original. If you do research (including Google, etc.), please cite that within your essay and in references list

USC Dornsife College Policies on Student Behavior, Disabilities, and Academic Integrity

Our course will follow all of the procedures and policies outlined below:

Student Behavior

Behavior that persistently or grossly interferes with classroom activities is considered disruptive behavior and may be subject to disciplinary action. Such behavior inhibits other students’ ability to learn and an instructor’s ability to teach. A student responsible for disruptive behavior may be required to leave class pending discussion and resolution of the problem and may be reported to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs for disciplinary action. These strictures may extend to behaviors outside the classroom that are related to the course.

Students with Disabilities

Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me (or to TA) as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.

Academic Integrity

USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one's own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another's work as one's own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. SCampus, the Student Guidebook contains the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located in Appendix A:

Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The Review process can be found at

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