Spring
2008
Instructor Information: Maia Adamina, MA.
Email address: maia.adamina-guzman@wayland.wbu.edu
Course Number and Title: ENGL 2301 English Literature SA 01
Catalog Course Description: Selected studies in important works of English literature beginning with Beowulf
Prerequisite: English 1302
Required Textbook: The Norton Anthology of English Literature 8th ed.
Course outcome competencies: Upon the conclusion of this course, students actively engaged in learning will be able to:
1. Discuss a representative selection of canonical British literary works.
2. Analyze these works’ themes.
3. Differentiate the cultural and historical contexts (periods) in which the works were
written.
4. Demonstrate comprehension of limited scholarship on an assigned literary work.
5. Articulate this comprehension in a research essay.
The more the student puts in the course, the higher his or her outcome competencies will be.
Course Requirements and Means of Assessment:
8 in-class writings = 40%
1 oral presentation done in pairs (10-12 minutes) = 30%
1 Resesarch Essay (5 pages, double spaced) = 30%
Attendance: As stated in the Wayland Catalog, students enrolled at one of the University’s external campuses should make every effort to attend all class meetings. All absences must be explained to the instructor, who will then determine whether the omitted work may be made up. When a student reaches that number of absences considered by the instructor to be excessive, the instructor will so advise the student and file an unsatisfactory progress report with the campus dean. Any student who misses 25 percent or more of the regularly scheduled class meetings will receive a grade of F in the course. Additional attendance policies for each course, as defined by the instructor in the course syllabus, are considered a part of the University’s attendance policy.
Additional attendance policies: If you are absent the day an assignment is due, you are still expected to turn it in by the deadline, but do not e-mail essays to me without prior permission. Late papers will not be accepted. In-class assignments may not be made up.
Instructor's Policy
on Academic Dishonesty: First incident will result in an F for the
assignment; second instance will result in an F for the course.
Statement: It is University policy that no otherwise qualified disabled person be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational program or activity in the University. Students should inform the instructor of existing disabilities at the first class meeting. (Documentation of disability may be required.)
Course Outline or Schedule: Please make a point of also reading the introductions to the authors in the text
Week 1August 19 Orientation to course. For next week review rules for writing about literature – specifically pages 15-19
http://www.dianahacker.com/writersref5e/pdf/WritingAboutLit-REF.pdf
Week 2 August 26 Have read Beowulf (31) and sign up for oral presentations
Week 3 September 2 Have read The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer “The General Prologue” (170), Summary of “The Knight’s Tale” (190), “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale” (191), and “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” (250). If you like, check out my essay on “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” published in the journal Trickster’s Way at
http://www.trinity.edu/org/tricksters/trixway/current/Vol%204/Vol4_1/adamina.pdf
Week 4 September 9 Have read William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (510) 12 and Edmund
Spenser’s “Epithalamion” (434)
Week 5 September 16 Have read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1114) and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1136)
Week 6 September 23 Discuss Research Essay. Have read William Wordsworth “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (1539), Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” (1676), and John Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (1840), “Ode to a Nightingale” (1845)
Week 7 September 30 Have read Elizabeth Barrett Browning ‘s “The Cry of the Children” (1922) and Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (2221)
Week 8 October 7 Have read William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” (2402), James Joyce’s “Araby” (2503), T.S. Elliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (2610), and Dylan Thomas’s “Poem in October” and “Fern Hill” ((2707 and 2708)
Week 9 October 14 *Essay Due Watch Pride and Prejudice
Week 10 October 21 First round of Oral Presentations
Week 11 October 28 Second Round of Oral Presentations
Proposed authors for oral presentations
First
Round
Second Round
Medieval
Literature The Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Marie de
France
Henry Fielding
Middle English
Literature Aphra Behn
Margery Kempe The Romantic Period
Sir Thomas Malory Percy Shelley
The Sixteenth
Century Mary Shelley
Christopher Marlowe The
Victorian Age
Sir Walter Ralegh Charles Dickens
The Early Seventeenth Century Charlotte Bronte
John Donne The Twentieth Century
John Milton Virginia Woolf
The oral presentation must include a brief biography, an overview of the era and culture’s effect on the author, and an analysis of how those points manifest in a major work by the author. Please use PowerPoint – follow the guidelines regarding PowerPoint presentation design at the following: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/686/01/ Please use sources, not Wikipedia, and include a Works Cited sheet.
The research essay must focus on one of the works from the textbook. You should pick a work other than the ones discussed in class and other than the ones used in the oral presentations. The essay is 5 pages long and documented according to MLA standards. You will research and discuss at least three scholarly sources about the text as well as including the same points as listed above for the oral presentations.