ENGL 354: Survey of English Literature II
Dr. Jon Bolton boltojw@auburn.edu
Winter 2000 www.auburn.edu/~boltojw/
Office: HC 8058 Office Hours: 10-11am, M-F
Required Text: Longman Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2
Date Reading Assignment
1/4 Course Introduction & Policies
I. The French Revolution and the Spirit of Romanticism
1/5 Edmund Burke: from "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (58-66)
1/6 Thomas Paine: from "The Rights of Man" (76-82); William Blake: from Songs of Innocence: "Introduction," "Holy Thursday," "The Little Black Boy," "Chimney Sweeper" (110-115)
1/7 Blake: from Songs of Experience: "Holy Thursday," "Chimney Sweeper," "Infant Sorrow," "London" (120-124)
1/10 Mary Wollestonecraft: from Maria; or The Wrongs of Women (235-246)
1/11 Mary Anne Radcliffe: from The Female Advocate (262-67); Hanna More: from Strictures on Female Education (269-272).
1/12 Percy Shelley: "The Mask of Anarchy" (660-669)
1/13 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Letters & Vol. 1, Ch 1-2 (813-831)
1/14 Frankenstein: Vol. 1, Ch. 3-7 (832-853)
1/17 Martin Luther King Day
1/18 Frankenstein: Vol. 2, Ch. 1-6 (853-873)
1/19 Frankenstein: Vol. 2, Ch. 7-9, Vol. 3, Ch. 1 (874-891)
1/20 Frankenstein: Vol. 3, Ch. 2-5 (891-910)
1/21 Frankenstein: Vol. 3, Ch. 6-Conclusion (910-927)
1/24 Paper Conferences
1/25 Paper Conferences
1/26 Due: Paper #1
II. Religion, Science and Sexuality in The Victorian Era
1/27 Charles Darwin: from Autobiography (1304-1311); Sir Edmund Gosse from Father and Son (1342-1345).
1/28 Alfred Lord Tennyson: from In Memorium A.H.H -- #54, #56,#59 (1227-29) & "Epilogue" (1242-43)
1/31 Strauss: from The Life of Jesus (1318-23); Newman: from Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1328-34).
2/1 Elizabeth Barrett Browning: from Aurora Leigh (1158-1168)
2/2 from Aurora Leigh (1168-1181)
2/3 Robert Browning: "Porphyria’s Lover," "My Last Duchess" (
2/4 Robert Browning: "The Bishop Orders his Tomb" (1355-57); "Love Among the Ruins" (1360-62)
2/7 George Eliot: "Bother Jacob" (1522-35)
2/8 "Bother Jacob" (1535-48)
2/9 Matthew Arnold: from Culture and Anarchy (1673-81).
2/10 Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest: Act 1 (1883-96)
2/11 The Importance of Being Earnest: Act 2 (1896-1913)
2/14 The Importance of Being Earnest: Act 3 (1913-22) & Aphorisms (1922-24)
2/15 Paper Conferences
2/16 Paper Conferences
2/17 Due Paper #2
III. The Twentieth Century: Militarism and the Decline of Empire
2/18 G.B. Shaw: Major Barbara Act I (2119-31)
2/21 Major Barbara Act 2 (2131-55)
2/22 Major Barbara Act I (2155-78)
2/23 from Blast "Vorticist Manifesto" (2193-2201)
2/24 Rupert Brooke: "The Soldier" (2226) Wilfred Owen "Dulce et Decorum Est" (2242) & Philip Larkin "MCMXIV" (2835)
2/25 Isaac Rosenberg: "Break of Day in the Trenches" (2244); Robert Graves: from Goodbye to All That (2285-2293)
2/28 T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land (lines 60-76, 115-172); Virginia Woolf: from Mrs. Dalloway (handout)
2/29 D.H. Lawrence: from Etruscan Places (2617-25); W.B. Yeats: "The Second Coming" (2312)
3/1 W.H. Auden: "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" & "September 1, 1939" (2658)
3/2 Winston Churchill: "Two Speeches" (2680-86); Dylan Thomas: "Refusal to Mourn..." (handout).
3/3 Elizabeth Bowen: "Mysterious Kor" (2690-2699).
3/6 Salman Rushdie: "The Gifts of War" (2823-31)
3/7 John Osborne: Look Back in Anger (original film version)
3/8 Look Back in Anger
3/9 Course Evaluations & Review for Final Exam
Final Exam: Thurs, March 16
Course Policies and Grading
I. Quizzes, In-class projects, and Participation (10% of grade). Because of this class’s seminar format, participation will be a crucial part of your success in the course. You will be evaluated on the consistency and quality of your participation in classroom discussion of assigned texts. This participation can take the form of a response to issues raised in the reading, ways of interpreting ambiguous events, characters, images, symbols, passages, etc, or questions about such matters. Quizzes will only be given if it appears that the readings are not being completed, and will consist of 3 short answer questions about the assigned reading. They will be graded on a scale of 1-10, with one correct answer counting 5 points, two counting 3 points, and three 2 points. More than 5 unexcused absences will result in failure of the course.
Essays: (60% of grade): you will be required to sumbit a total of two essays papers (5-7 pages in length) at the date appointed on the syllabus. The subject of your paper can be any single work, an analysis or comparison of two or more works, or a more general topic on a section of the syllabus. You will be evaluated on the originality and creativity of your thesis (i.e. your personal treatment of an assigned project), the strength of your supporting evidence and examples, and the overall quality of your writing (i.e. clear thesis statement, clarity of prose, punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc.). I will provide you with paper topics, but you are also free to develop your own topics. Papers turned in late without a legitimate excuse will be lowered by 1/2 a grade per day.
Exams (30% of grade) ; the midterm and final exams will consist of short answer questions and a choice of essay questions. The exams will be designed to measure your general retention of material covered in the final section of the course ("The Twentieth Century"). Questions will measure your knowledge of authors, major characters, key issues discussed in class, themes, events, and general facts about literary history that come from my mini-lectures and introductions. I will give more details in the review class prior to the exam.
Note: If anyone requires special accomodations in the classroom, please make an appointment to see me early in the term.
Course Goals and Objectives
1.) To improve students’ interpretive and analytical skills through close reading and discussion of canonical texts in English literature from 1789-present.
2.) To improve writing skills. That is, to develop students’ ability to articulate opinions in an intelligent, clear, and well-organized manner, to refine their argumentative and rhetorical skills, and to acquaint students with the fundamentals of academic writing (including bibliographic forms and citation).
3.) To develop critical thinking skills, including the ability to form opinions and a discerning attitude toward the relative merits and/or weaknesses of literary works and the views expressed therein.
4.) To develop and refine verbal skills in an intellectual environment (i.e. the ability to express confidently and articulately one’s views on a variety of topics among one’s peers).
5.) To acquire a general knowledge of historical movements and trends in British intellectual, particularly literary, history from 1789-the present--the period archetypes generally defined by the labels "Romanticism," "The Victorians" "Modernism," and "Post-modernism."