Home Page
In addition to this syllabus, students taking this course should read all the links on the right side of the photograph on my home page.

Text
Greenblatt, Stephen. Ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2. The Eighth Edition. W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. ISBN: 9780393925326
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  Penguin edition. ISBN: 9780141439594.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Signet Classic edition. ISBN: 9780451527714.

Prerequisites
To be eligible for this course, you should have successfully completed English 111 and English 112 or English 125 at Northern Virginia Community College.  From another college or university, the prerequisite is a full year of English Composition. If you have not fulfilled these prerequisites, you should see me immediately so that you can switch to another course.

Description
English literature 244 is a three-credit college course in literature from the Romantic Period (the late eighteenth century) through the twenty-first century.  Throughout the semester, we will study selected poetry, fiction, drama, and essays from this period, particularly focusing on the themes, style, and content of the works.  We will also discuss the literature as a reflection of the tone and temper of the society in which it was written.

Course Objectives
By the completion of this course, you should be able to accomplish the following tasks:

  • to show connections between the literature of the period and the historical and cultural contexts in which it was written
  • to think critically about the literature under discussion
  • to be able to define and explain the following in literary works: theme, plot, character, imagery, and figurative language
  • to write essays that demonstrate college-level competencies in American usage, grammar, structure, as well as interpretative, analytical, and evaluative thinking skills
    • Evaluation
    Throughout the course, you will write three essays based on the literature from our text.  These essays will be argumentative and analytical in their approach.  That is, rather than simply summarize what occurs in a piece of literature, you will create a thesis statement that expresses your opinion about the work, and then you will use passages from the text to support your views.  Each of these essays will be a minimum of one thousand words, and each will be worth one hundred points.  Throughout the semester, we will also have unnannounced quizzes, so please bring a scantron (form # 882-E, available in our bookstore) and a number two pencil to class each day.  The essays will comprise approximately two-thirds of your grade, whereas the quizzes will comprise approximately one-third.

    Readings
    The follow is a schedule of the weeks of the course and of the writers and works that we will be reading during those weeks.  After the name, I have written in the work to be read by that writer.  For your benefit, I have italicized long works so that you'll know to spend more time on them.  One other point:  Read each brief biography of the writers we will be discussing.  The biographies precede each writer's work. You should have completed these readings before you attend class. Since I've listed the selections by the week, be prepared for the first half of the week's readings for the Tuesday class and the second half for the Thursday class.

     
    1/9   The Romantic Period: 1; Blake: "The Lamb," "The Little Black Boy," "The Chimney Sweeper, " "The Clod & the Pebble," "The Chimney Sweeper," (yes, again), "the Tyger," "The Garden of Love," "London," "A Poison Tree"
    1/16   Wollstonecraft: "The Rights of Women: Introduction and Chapter 2"; Wordsworth: "We are Seven," "Expostulation", "The Tables Turned," "Lines Composed," "Lucy Gray"
    1/23   Wordsworth: "I wandered," "My Heart Leaps Up," "Ode," "The Solitary Reaper," "London," "The World is Too Much With Us," "Mutability"; Coleridge: "The Rime," "Kubla," "Christabel," Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14, "Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads"; Lord Byron: "She Walks," "Don Juan," stanzas 1-79
    1/30   Shelley: 744 "Mutability," "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," "The Cloud," "To a Sky-Lark," "To Night," "Adonais"; Keats: "Chapman's Homer," "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," "Endymion," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy"
    2/6   Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
    2/13   The Victorian Age:  979, Carlyle: "Sartor Resartus," ("The Everlasting No," and "The Everlasting Yea"; Newman: "The Idea of a University"; Mill: "On Liberty," "The Subjection of Women"; E. B. Browning: "To George Sand" (both), "Sonnets from the Portuguese"
    2/20   Tennyson: "The Lady of Shalott," "The Lotos Eaters," "Ulysses," "Break, Break, Break," "Lockksley Hall," "Tears, Idle Tears," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Idylls of the King," ("The Coming of Arthur," "Crossing the Bar"
    2/27   Browning: "Porphyria's Lover," "Spanish Cloister," "My Last Duchess," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "Rabbi Ben Ezra"; Arnold: "The Scholar Gypsy," "Dover Beach," Culture and Anarchy, Chapters 1 and 2
    3/5   Spring Break--No Classes this week
    3/12   Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles (This novel is fairly long.  Take your time with it.  You have the break to read it.
    3/19   Hardy: Tess continued; Rosetti: "The Blessed Damozel," "My Sister's Sleep," Sonnets from The House of Life
    3/26   Hopkins: "God's Grandeur", "Spring," "Windhover", "Pied Beauty," "No worst," "I wake"; Darwin: entire selection
    4/2   Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest.  This is a play; take time with it.
    4/9   Housman: "Loveliest of Trees," "When I was One-and-Twenty," "To An Athlete Dying Young"; The Twentieth Century: 1827; Brooke: "The Soldier"; Thomas: "Adlestrop," "Tears," "Rain"; Sassoon: "They," "The Rear-Guard," "Glory of Women"; Owen: "Anthem," "Dulce Et Decorum Est," "Disabled"
    4/16   Yeats: "The Stolen Child," "Down by the Salley Gardens," "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "Easter 1916," "The Second Coming," "Sailing to Byzantium"; Woolf: "The Mark on the Wall," "Modern Fiction"; Joyce: "Araby," "The Dead" (This is a long short story.)
    4/23   Lawrence: "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"; Eliot: "The Love Song"; Thomas: "The Force," "Fern Hill," "Do Not Go Gentle"; Mansfield: "the Garden Party"; Heaney: all selections
    4/30   Final Exam Week

    Click on this link for the criteria for your First Essay-- This essay will deal with some aspect of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.  The essay is due at the beginning of class on February 14th.  If you wish to submit the essay as a late paper, you may do so at the beginning of the class on February 16th.  If you submit a late paper, you will lose one full grade on it; that is, instead of beginning with a possible A, you would begin with a possible B.  If you don't submit the paper by the late date, you will have to see me before you turn it in.  Failure to submit a paper will lead you to a zero, not an F, and there is a significant difference between the two.  A zero on a paper would make it virtually impossible for you to pass the course successfully.

    Click on this link for the criteria for your Second Essay -- This essay will deal with one of the Victorian writers we have discussed but not including Thomas Hardy. In addition, do not write on a work that is on the syllabus. Choose another work by the writer in whom you are interested. The due date for the essay is March 27th; the late date is March 29th, with the same stipulations as those mentioned above.

    Click on this link for the criteria for your Third Essay-- This essay will deal with some aspect of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  The due date is April 24th.  The late date is April 26th, with the same stipulations as mentioned above.

    Return to Robert's Home Page