Professor Katie Conrad
e-mail: kconrad@eagle.cc.ukans.edu
homepage:  http://eagle.cc.ukans.edu/~kconrad
office address: 2035 Wescoe Hall
office hours: W 2-5 and by appointment
office phone (leave a message): 864-3287
real mail address:
3116 Wescoe Hall
Department of English
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS  66045-2115
 

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This course is a survey of British literature of the Romantic, Victorian, Modernist, and contemporary periods. We will be concerned in this course not only with literary form but also with some of the political and social issues that serve as context for the literature. Our readings will include essays, poetry, drama, short fiction, and novels.

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Requirements:

• Participation (20%)

Attendance will be taken in this course. More than 5 unexcused absences, counting from the first day of your enrollment in this course, will result in failure of this course. Work in other classes, away games, hangovers, vacations, and sniffles do not count as excused absences. If you are in doubt, ask me. Excused absences require either notification of me on or before class date (by e-mail, preferably, or by a message on my office voicemail), or official documentation shortly after the absence.  If you cannot attend your scheduled class, consider attending my other section of this class (see above).  Students will be allowed one unexcused absence; after that, the attendance portion of your participation grade (50%) will fall by one full letter grade. 50% of your participation grade will be based on in-class participation, including short writing assignments and group work.
 

• Two 4-5 pp. essays (50%)

You will have some choice of topics and texts from those studied in the course. At least one paper must be on a close reading of (one or two) poems. Essay topics will be provided, but you are encouraged to come up with your own topics and discuss your topics and papers with me. There will be four possible due dates for papers: 2 for the first paper, and 2 for the second paper. If you choose to write on topics I have provided, your due date for the paper is as specified below. You must turn in your first paper by no later than Oct. 21. By 4 pages, I mean 4 full double-spaced pages with one-inch margins.

Topics for paper 1
Topics for paper 2
Topics for paper 3
Topics for paper 4
 

• Midterm (15%)

The midterm examination will cover the first half of the course. It will consist of identification questions and essay questions. The midterm will be held on Oct. 13.
 

• Final (15%)

The final examination will cover the second half of the course. The format will be similar to the midterm. The final examination will take 1 ½ hours at the scheduled final examination time for the course.

Related online resources:

• Writing resources:
• Resources for Writers (Writing Consulting:  Student Resources, KU).
• Information on Writer's Roosts (KU writing help).
• Strunk and White handbook.
• Jack Lynch's guide to grammar and usage.
• Romantic:
• Jack Lynch's Romantic resources page.
• Voice of the Shuttle Romantics resources page.
• Romantic Circles website.
• Romantic-era Women Writers site at Loyola University Chicago.
• Victorian and fin-de-siecle:
• Jack Lynch's Victorian resources page.
• Voice of the Shuttle Victorian resources page.
• The Victorian Web at Brown.
• Victorian Women Writers project.
• Modern and contemporary:
• Jack Lynch's Twentieth-Century British and Irish resources page.
• Voice of the Shuttle Modern British resources page.
• Voice of the Shuttle Contemporary  resources page.
• General/miscellaneous:
• KU Library web site.
• Jack Lynch's Literary Resources homepage.
• Voice of the Shuttle English literature main page.
• Celebration of Women Writers website.
• Prose and verse criticism of poetry (including poets commenting on other poets)--U Toronto library.

Syllabus:

This reading and assignment schedule is subject to change. Changes will be announced in class. Major changes will be posted to this course website.

• Th 8-20 Introduction

• T 8-25 ROMANTICISM: Romanticism, poetic form. Blake poems--selections from Songs of Innocence and Experience. See this link for Blake images.
• Th 8-27 Blake poems (esp. "The Tyger" and Marriage of Heaven and Hell). See this link for Blake images.

• T 9-1 "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" and Wordsworth poems:  Sonnets (pp. 198-200), "Lines" (Tintern Abbey), "I travelled among unknown men," "I wandered lonely as a cloud," "Ode:  Intimations of Immortality," "Ode to Duty".  Recommended (but we won't discuss):  "Michael".
• Th 9-3 Coleridge poems:  "The Aeolian Harp," "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," "Dejection:  An Ode."  Also excerpts  from Biographia Literaria Ch. 13, 14, and 17  (387-398).  Coleridge talks about taking opium (laudanum)--a letter (from Virginia website).

• T 9-8  Shelley, "Defense of Poetry" and poems:  "To Wordsworth," Mutability," "Ozymandias," "England in 1819," "To Sidmouth and Castlereagh," "Ode to the West Wind."  Keats letters: "To Benjamin Bailey,"  "To George and Thomas Keats," and "To John Hamilton Reynolds"  (pp. 829-33; )poems: "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy."
• Th 9-10 Continue discussion Shelley and Keats. Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women.  Paper topics handed out.

• T 9-15 Bronte, Wuthering Heights
• Th 9-17 Wuthering Heights

• T 9-22 Wuthering Heights
• W 9-23 (by 4:30 pm) Paper due: if you do not turn in a paper today, you must turn in a paper by Oct. 21.
• Th 9-24 Wuthering Heights

• T 9-29 Wuthering Heights. VICTORIANISM: Rossetti, "Goblin Market."
• Th 10-1 Darwin, from The Descent of Man.

• T 10-6 Arnold poems and essays.  See also Hecht's poem "The Dover Bitch."
• W 10-7:  office hours held outside the Union, in conjunction with the US Latina/o literature marathon reading.
• Th 10-8 Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems, Robert Browning poems.  EBB: pp. 1031-1034 (Sand poems, sel. From Sonnets from the Portugese)

RB: Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess, Memorabilia, Love Among the Ruins, A Grammarians Funeral, A Woman's Last Word.  Paper topics handed out.

• T 10-13 Midterm examination.
• Th 10-15 MODERNISM: Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

• T 10-20  Heart of Darkness.
• Th 10-22 Eliot poems:  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Norton) and "The Hollow Men" (handout); Yeats poems:  "Down by the Salley Gardens," "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "When You Are Old," "No Second Troy," "A Coat," "The Second Coming," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan."
• F 10-23 (by 4:30 pm)  Paper due:  if you did not turn in a paper on Sept. 23, you must turn in a paper today.  If you have already turned in a paper, DO NOT turn in a paper today.

• T 10-27 class cancelled; family emergency
• Th 10-29 reading day (no class)

• T 11-3 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession.
• Th 11-5 Mrs. Dalloway.  Paper topics handed out.

• T 11-10 Mrs. Dalloway.
• Th 11-12 Mrs. Dalloway.

• T 11-17 Mrs. Dalloway.
• Th 11-19 Joyce selections:  "The Dead" (from Dubliners) and "Anna Livia Plurabelle" (from Finnegans Wake). Paper topics handed out.

• T 11-24 catch-up reading day
• Th 11-26 Thanksgiving (no class)

• T 12-1 CONTEMPORARY:  Heaney:  Digging, Punishment, The Skunk.   Walcott:  A Far Cry from Africa, Nights in the Gardens of Port of Spain, The Glory Trumpeter, Midsummer.
• W 12-2 (by 4:30 pm) Paper due: if you did not turn in a paper on Nov. 18, you must turn in a paper today.
• Th 12-3 : class selections.Auden: Musee des Beaux Arts--see Brueghel's Icarus at this site, Lullaby,I n Memory of WB Yeats, Their Lonely Betters, The Shield of Achilles.

Thomas: The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, There Was a Saviour, Poem in October, Fern Hill, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Philip Larkin: Church Going, MCMXIV, Talking in Bed, Sad Steps.

• T 12-8 last day; summary and review.
• Final examination as scheduled.  See finals schedule.  Students can take the examination at either of the 314 scheduled exam times.