Dr. Bolton

HC #8058, Hours: M-F, 11-12,

Phone: 844-9015

email: boltojw@mail.auburn.edu

website: www.auburn.edu/~boltojw

Required Texts: The Yeats Reader; James Joyce’s Dubliners; Lady Gregory’s Selected Writings, Synge’s Aran Islands and Playboy of the Western World; O’Casey’s Three Plays.

6/16 Political and Historical Background

6/17 Gregory: from Cuchulain of Muirthemne, "Fate of the Sons of Usnach (167-197)

6/28 J.M. Synge: The Aran Islands, Part I

6/29 The Aran Islands, Part II

6/30 The Aran Islands, Part III

7/1 The Aran Islands, Part IV

7/5 July 4th Holiday

7/7 Yeats’ "Dierdre" (148-174)

7/9 Lady Gregory: "The Gaol Gate" (356-362) "The Rising of the Moon" (363-372)

7/8 Lady Gregory: "Grania" (383-421)

7/12 Synge: Playboy of the Western World, Act I

7/13 Playboy, Act II

7/14 Playboy, Act III; Yeats: "On Those Who Hated ‘The Playboy...’

7/15 Synge: Riders to the Sea; Yeats: "The Fascination of What’s Difficult"

7/16 Paper Conferences

7/19 Paper Conferences

7/20 Due: Paper #1

7/21 Dubliners: "The Sisters" & "An Encounter"

7/22 Dubliners: "Araby" & "Eveline"

7/23 Dubliners: "After the Race" & "Two Gallants"

7/26 Dubliners: "The Boarding House" & "A Little Cloud"

7/27 Dubliners: "Counterparts" & "Clay"

7/28 Dubliners: "A Painful Case" & "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"

7/29 Dubliners: "A Mother" & "Grace"

7/30 Dubliners: "The Dead"

8/2 Yeats: "September 1913," "A Coat," "The Wild Swans at Coole"

8/3 "Easter 1916," "Sixteen Dead Men," "The Rose Tree"

8/4 "On a Political Prisoner," "The Second Coming" "Sailing to Byzantium"

8/5 Film: Michael Collins

8/6 Michael Collins

8/9 "Meditations in Time of Civil War," Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen"

8/10 "Leda and the Swan," "Among School Children"

8/11 O’Casey: Shadow of a Gunman, Act I

8/12 Shadow of a Gunman, Act II

8/13 O’Casey: The Plough and the Stars, Act I

8/16 The Plough and the Stars, Act II&III

8/17 The Plough and the Stars, Act IV

8/18 Lady Gregory: from Seventy Years, "The Changing Ireland" (37-53)

8/19 Yeats: "Circus Animals’ Desertion," "Municipal Gallery Revisited," "Politics"

8/20 Due: Final Paper; Review and Course Evaluations

8/25 Final Exam, 11am-1:30pm

Quizzes, In-class projects, and Participation (10% of grade): Throughout the quarter you will be quizzed on assigned readings. These quizzes, graded on a scale of 1 to 10, will consist of three questions, all of which will be answerable provided that you have read carefully and can recall major incidents, characters, themes from the reading. One correct answer will give you 5 points, a second receives 3 additional points, and all three correct gives you 10 points. I will drop the lowest quiz grade. Because this is a discussion-based class, attendance and participation are essential. More than 5 unexcused absences will result in failure of the course.

Essays (70% of grade; 35% each): You will be required to submit a total of two essays (about 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 the section as a whole. You will be evaluated on the originality and creativity of your thesis (i.e. your personal treatment of an assigned topic), the strength of your supporting evidence and illustrations, and the overall quality of your writing (i.e. clear thesis statement, clarity of prose style, punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc.). I will provide paper topics at least a week in advance of the essay's due date, but you may also choose your own separate topic. Papers turned in late without a legitimate excuse will be downgraded by a minus grade for each day that it is late. (i.e. a "B" becomes a "B-" if it is one day late, a "C+" if two days late).

Final Exam (20% of grade): The final exam will consist of short answer questions and a selection of passages from the readings that you will be asked to interpret and/or paraphrase. These exams will be designed to measure your general retention of material covered during in the course, particularly your knowledge of authors, works, key issues, themes, characters and events in the assigned texts and the general facts about the history and politics of Ireland during the period in which they were written. I will give more specific details prior to the exams.

Note: If anyone requires special accommodations in the classroom, please inform me as soon as possible.

1. To read and appreciate a selection of major works from the period known as the "Irish Renaissance" or "Irish Revival" in the context of the historical circumstances that, to a large extent, shaped such works and in some cases brought these texts into being.

2. To theorize about the relationship between literature, history, and politics, and to consider the extent to which literature has an impact on the political sphere. Also, to complicate a famous and intriguing statement from W.H. Auden’s elegy on the death of W. B. Yeats: "Poetry makes nothing happen."

3.) To consider the major issues facing postcolonial writers and societies, such as questions of identity and identity formation, cultural imperialism, modes of protest and resistance, and the political imperatives and friction between private feeling and public expectations facing writers from a colonized nation such as Ireland was at the time.

4.) In Seamus Heaney’s poem, "Broagh" (pronounced "Bro"), he speaks of the stranger to Ireland’s frustration with Gaelic words and placenames. We will seek to acquire a familiarity with Gaelic pronunciation, especially of legendary figures, and attempt to surmount the consonantal difficulties of which Heaney speaks.

5.) To refine close reading strategies and to develop advanced writing and research skills.

1649. Cromwell's Expedition: attempt to achieve Irish submission to his regime and acquire dispossessed Irish lands for redistribution among English subjects; massacres at Wexford and Drogheda.

1798. Revolutionary uprising led by Wolfe Tone, the first significant secular republican, and Robert Emmet. Tone commits suicide in prison. Emmet leads another rising in 1803 and is hanged.

1800. Act of Union: Separate parliament at Dublin dissolved. Ireland gets 100 MPs, 28 peers, and 4 C. of I. Bishops at Westminster. (Catholics still excluded from holding office).

1826. Daniel "The Liberator" O'Connell starts reform movement (Catholic emancipation, universal education, poor laws, tenant rights).

1873 Isaac Butt starts Home Rule League, later led by Charles Stuart Parnell.

1905. Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Fein ("We Ourselves"), political wing of IRB. Also runs the nationalist newspaper of same name.

1916. Easter Rising: Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett, acting on mystical belief in blood sacrifice, take over General Post Office in Dublin and declare Irish independence. They hold out for a week (450 deaths, 2600 wounded). Leaders are executed.

1921. Irish Free State: Edmund de Valera delegates Michael Collins, leader of IRA, to sign peace accord with Britain that ultimately leads to partition.

1933-34 Blueshirt Fascism: former Dublin Police chief Eoin O'Duffy starts Irish fascist party. Yeats briefly affiliated with O'Duffy.

1939-45 Republic of Ireland remains neutral in WW II. Churchill denounces Ireland's "frolic with the Germans." de Valera's broadcast reply: "a small nation that stood alone."

69. Revival of IRA and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

1972. Bloody Sunday Massacre in Belfast.