| Wednesday, 27 August: Innocence and Experience |
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"Introduction: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries" L 2A 3-29
William Blake, selections from Songs of Innocence and Experience
"Nurse's Song" (I) and"Nurse's Song" (E) L 2A 164-65, 174
"The Lamb" and "The Tyger" L 2A 159-60, 177-78
"The Chimney Sweeper" (I) & "The Chimney Sweeper" (E) L 2A 161-62, 174
"The Divine Image" (I) and "A Divine Image" (E) L 2A 163, 183
"The Clod and the Pebble" L 2A 170
"The Sick Rose" L 2A 174
Images from Songs of Innocence and Experience |
| Wednesday, 3 September: Romantic Revolutions |
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Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France L 2A 103-12
Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Man L 2A 112-20
Readings on the Sublime, the Picturesque, and the Beautiful L2A 30-46
William Wordsworth
from "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads L 2A 408-20
"The world is too much with us" L 2A 450
"Strange fits of passion I have known" L 2A 421-22
Song ("She Dwelt among th' Untrodden Ways") L 2A 422-23
"Expostulation and Reply" L 2A 401-2
"The Tables Turned" L 2A 402-3
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Biographia Literaria L 2A 634-41
Joanna Baillie, Introduction to Plays on the Passions L 2A 357-61 |
| Wednesday, 10 September:
Emotion Recollected in Tranquility |
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William Wordsworth
"Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" L 2A 404-8
"The Solitary Reaper" L 2A 533-34
"The Old Cumberland Beggar" L 2A 428-32
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality . . ." L 2A 528-33
Mary Robinson, "The Old Beggar " L 2A 277-78
Joanna Baillie, "London" L 2A 362-63
John Keats
"Ode to a Nightingale" L 2A 953-55
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" L 2A 924
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" L 2A 955-57
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Response Assignment (All): Post to the "Discussion Board" a brief comment (a paragraph or two) about one or more of the poems assigned for today. Your comment might pertain to the text's formal aspects (structure, meter, language, etc), or it might investigate the way(s) in which the poem reflects the poetic theories laid out in the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads. Be sure to post your comment to the "Discussion Board" before class. Come to class prepared to discuss your insights. |
| Wednesday, 17 September: Dream Visions |
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Thomas De Quincey, from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater L 2A 1055-1071
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Kubla Khan" L 2A 614-16
"Frost at Midnight" L 2A 576-77
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" L 2A 580-97
Mary Robinson, “To the Poet Coleridge” L 2A 616-18 |
| Wednesday, 24 September: Creation(s): Mountains and Monsters |
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Ozymandias" L 2A 823
"Mont Blanc" L 2A 817-23
"To a Skylark" L 2A 837-39
"Ode to the West Wind" L 2A 835-37
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Vols. I-II (3-115) |
| Response Assignment (Group 1): Write and post to the "Discussion Board" two discussion-style questions on this portion of Frankenstein. After you have posted your own questions and read those posted by your classmates, choose one question from the group and write a brief (one page maximum) response to that question. Post your response to Blackboard, and be prepared to discuss your response with your classmates. |
| Wednesday,1 October: Romantic Monstrosity |
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Continue discussion of Frankenstein, Vol. III (115-79)
Exam review |
| Response Assignment (Group 2): Write and post to the "Discussion Board" two discussion-style questions on this portion of Frankenstein. After you have posted your own questions and read those posted by your classmates, choose one question from the group and write a brief (one page maximum) response to that question. Post your response to Blackboard, and be prepared to discuss your response with your classmates. |
| Wednesday, 8 October: Midterm Examination |
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The Exam will be given during our regularly scheduled class period. You are required to supply your own blue books for the Exam. Blue books are available at the campus bookstore. If you do not bring a blue book to the Exam, you may purchase one from me at the obscenely inflated price of $5 or else forfeit 10 points from your Exam score. Plan ahead: buy your blue books early (and bring extras to sell to your desperate classmates)!
If you miss the Exam, you will need to contact me immediately to make alternate arrangements. "Make-up" exams will be given only at my discretion, and only in cases of extreme necessity. In other words, if you miss the Exam, you'd better have an amazing (and thoroughly documented) excuse.
You may bring to the exam one 4x6 index card with notes, quotes, etc. No other notes, books, or aids will be permitted. |
| Wednesday, 15 October: Victorian Art and Artists |
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"The Victorian Age: Victoria and the Victorians" L 2B1099-1102
"The Age of Reading" and "The Role of Art in Society" L 2B 1115-22
Robert Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi" L 2B 1433-42
Matthew Arnold
"Sweetness and Light" L 2B1695-97
"The Scholar Gypsy" L 2B L 1672-78
John Ruskin
from Modern Painters L 2B1578-80
--Click Here for on Turner
--Click Here for Images of Turner's Painting's (Including The Slave Ship)
from The Stones of Venice L 2B 1580-90
from Modern Manufacture and Design L 2B 1590-93
Oscar Wilde,
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray L 2B 2002
Walter Pater,
from The Renaissance, "Preface" and "Conclusion" L 2B 1778-81, 1782-84
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| Wednesday, 22 October: Victorian Progress |
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"The Age of Energy and Invention" L 2B 1102-1105
"The Industrial Catastrophe" L 2B 1106-08
"The Age of Reform" L 2B 1108-1110
"The Industrial Landscape" L 2B 1137-8
Thomas Carlyle, from Past and Present L 2B 1125-1136
Charles Dickens
"A Walk in a Workhouse" L 2B 1513-17
A Christmas Carol L 2B 1464-1513
--Click Here for Resources and Information about the Victorian Economy |
| Response Assignment (All): Construct a "thesis statement" of no more than a single page, putting forth an argument about A Christmas Carol. Think about this as an embryonic paper (in miniature): craft a very precise, tightly focused statement about the text. Post your paper to the "Discussion Board" well in advance of our class meeting, and be prepared to present, explain, and defend your analysis in class. |
| Wednesday, 29 October: Science, Evolution, and Religious Doubt |
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Charles Darwin
from On the Origin of Species L 2B 1357-62
from The Descent of Man L 2B 1362-68
from Autobiography L 2B 1368-74
Thomas Henry Huxley, from Evolution and Ethics L 2B 1398-1403
Robert Browning, "Caliban upon Setebos" L 2B 1454-146
Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" L 2B 1662-63
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde L 2B 1939-77 |
Response Assignment (Group 1): Select one of the textual excerpts from Darwin or Huxley and write a short (one paragraph) summary of it. Your summary should focus on the central argument or idea of the text and include only the most essential of its details.
Response Assignment (Group 2): Construct a "thesis statement" of no more than a single page, putting forth an argument about EITHER The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde OR "Caliban upon Setebos." Think about this as an embryonic paper (in miniature): craft a very precise, tightly focused statement about the text you have chosen. Post your paper to the "Discussion Board" well in advance of our class meeting, and be prepared to present, explain, and defend your analysis in class. |
| Wednesday, 5 November: Images of Empire |
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"The Age of Empire" L 2B 1112-15
Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Minute on Indian Education" L 2B 1897-1901
Rudyard Kipling
"The White Man's Burden" L 2B 1936-37
"Recessional" L 2B 1885-86
"Without Benefit of Clergy" L 2B 1860-74
Charles Darwin, "Tierra Del Fuego" L 2B 1347-57
Sir Henry Morton Stanley, from Through the Dark Continent, L 2B 1921-27
Mary Kingsley, from Travels in West Africa L 2B 1928-1935
Sir Richard Francis Burton, from A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah L 2B 1908-13 |
| Response Assignment (All): Write a brief commentary on one or more of the texts assigned for today. Your response may focus on a single text, or it may unite multiple texts. What strikes you most about these texts? How do these texts represent the wider world to a metropolitan readership? What do these texts suggest about the relationship between Britain and its colonial Other? |
| Wednesday, 12 November: Women and Men |
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"The Woman Question" L 2B 1110-12
"Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen" L 2B 1626-27
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women L 2B 1176-86
Florence Nightingale, Cassandra L 2B 1608-1625
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Aurora Leigh L 2B 1203-25 |
| Response Assignment (Group 2): Write a short (one paragraph) summary of Cassandra. Your summary should focus on the central argument or idea of the text and include only the most essential of its details. |
| Wednesday, 19 November: Temptations |
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Robert Browning
"Porphyria's Lover" L 2B 1411-13
"My Last Duchess" L 2B 1415-16
Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market" L 2B 1731-44 |
| Response Assignment (Group 1): Construct a "thesis statement" of no more than a single page, putting forth an argument about one of the poems assigned for today. Think of this as an embryonic paper (in miniature): craft a very precise, tightly focused statement about the text. Post your paper to the "Discussion Board" well in advance of our class meeting, and be prepared to present, explain, and defend your analysis in class. |
| Wednesday, 26 November: Entrapment and Escape |
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Ulysses" L 2B 1244-46
"Mariana" L 2B 1233-35
"The Lady of Shalott" L 2B 1235-39
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest L 2B 2004-43 |
| Response Assignment (All): In no more than two sentences, articulate a brilliant insight into one of the texts assigned for today. Think of this as a sort of sound-bite literary analysis. If you had but one thing to say about the text (and less than a minute to say it), what would you say? |
| Wednesday, 3 December: Endings |
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Conclude discussion of The Importance of Being Earnest
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia" L 2B 1557-1572
Final Exam Review |
| Wednesday, 10 December: Final Examination |
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The Final Exam will be held in Cooper Hall, room 337, from 5:30-9:00 pm. Although the Registrar has designated 5:30 as the official start time for the Exam, individual students may begin the Exam as late as 6:30. As with the Midterm, you are required to supply your own blue books for the Exam. Blue books are available at the campus bookstore. If you do not bring a blue book to the Exam, you may purchase one from me at the obscenely inflated price of $5 or else forfeit 10 points from your Exam score. Plan ahead: buy your blue books early (and bring extras to sell to your desperate classmates)!
The Final Exam will be the same format as the Midterm. Students will be allowed to bring to the Exam one 4x6 note card with notes, quotes, etc. No other notes, books, or aids will be permitted.
As this is the last week before Winter Break, there will be no opportunities to "make up" a missed Exam. |