Course Bulletin Fall 2017 and Summer 2017

English Department Course Bulletin Fall 2017 and Summer 2017

Note to Majors: We are delighted by your interest in our upper level classes, and we look forward to studying and working together. One word of advice: Upper level classes are challenging, with strong reading and writing requirements. Please ask yourself how many upper level classes you can really take well in one semester, without throwing the course reading overboard or writing hastily and regrettably. The department, in general, recommends no more than two upper level English courses in a given semester. Also, we have observed in past semesters the custom of students registering for a number of upper level classes, only to drop them at some point “later” in the process. This practice can clog up registration and create enrollment headaches for your peers and our waitlists. As Hamlet counsels, “Pray you, avoid it.” In any event, we wish you the best on your intellectual growth, and we look forward to sharing our love of great literature with you. Students interested in a great humanities elective are welcome as well.

Note to Future Majors: We are happy that you are interested in the English major, and we welcome you to join our community of teachers, thinkers, and writers. If you choose to major in English, please be sure to declare your major with the Registrar and transition to a major advisor in the English department. If you have any questions about the English major, feel free to make an appointment with the department chair. For those starting out on the English major, the best course of action is to make your way through the 300s (the core of our major) to the 400s (our seminars), with good and deliberate order and planning. You will note, for example, that many 400s have a specific 300 as a prerequisite. Your major advisor will help you choose a good path through the major program and beyond. Welcome!

Note to Rising Sophomores: We look forward to introducing you to the love and glory of studying great literature in the Fall English 105 core class. As you know, English 105 is our required core course, which all students must take in the Fall semester of their sophomore year. Please be sure to register right away in an open section of 105; those who choose not to register will be placed in open sections later by the Registrar. English Department Fall 2017 Offerings

English 201-01: T/Th 2.30-3.45pm Dr. Ellen Condict English 201-02: Tuesdays 7-10pm Dr. Brent Cline

This course, which satisfies the Western Literature core requirement, introduces the student to Great Books of European literature from the Renaissance to modern times. Some emphasis will be placed on the literature in the context of general historical and artistic periods and movements: Renaissance humanism, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism. When appropriate, the function and form of literary works (for instance, the lyric, the novel, the short story) will be discussed. Authors studied may include Petrarch, Erasmus, Montaigne, Cervantes, Voltaire, Goethe, Rousseau, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, and Solzhenitsyn.

300 Level Courses

English 310: Anglo-Saxon and Medieval British Literature Dr. Patricia Bart T/Th 6-7:15pm

Readings will run from Caedmon's hymn though the Canterbury Tales, with Beowulf, Judith, "The Battle of Maldon," "The Dream of the Rood," "Wanderer," "Seafarer," Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers Plowman as ports of call along the way. You will gain an Old English vocabulary useful for understanding the social, theological and philosophical aspects of the Anglo-Saxon works that are unfamiliar to us today, and you will also come to appreciate how even the words familiar in the Middle English texts will often have changed profoundly in meaning over the intervening centuries. There are no prerequisites for this course besides discipline and ambition, two virtues common to those whose strength rejoices.

CCA-SA 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Gen, 2.0 Gen., 1.0 Gen. 2005 by Odejea Course Requirements: Two papers, one of them an annotated bibliography leading to insightful interpretation of a text, which constitutes the second; a midterm and final.

2 English 320: Renaissance British Literature Dr. Benedict Whalen MWF 1:00-1:50 This course examines English literature from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a period that reaches from the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation to the English Civil War, and includes, among other things, the glories of Elizabethan theatre, the heyday of the English sonnet sequences, several great English epics, and the flourishing of English devotional verse. Complete works covered in this course include Thomas More’s Utopia, plays by Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, and John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. We will study selections from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, as well as a large assortment of lyric poetry, including works by Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, John Donne, Mary Wroth, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and, of course, Robert Herrick. Hence, reading will include prose narratives, stage plays, epic poems, and lyric poetry. Course Requirements: Two papers, midterm exam, final exam, poetry memorization. Course Texts (tentatively): The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. B: The Sixteenth Century/The Early Seventeenth Century. 9th Ed. ISBN: 978-0393912500; Ben Jonson’s Plays and Masques. Ed. Richard Harp. ISBN: 978-0393976380

English 330: Restoration and Romantic British Literature

Dr. Lorraine Murphy MWF 2:00 – 2:50 pm

Our study extends from the Restoration of Charles II in the mid- seventeenth century to the apex of the Romantic Movement in the early nineteenth century. These are some of the most transformative years in British literature as authors subject the traditional conventions of verse and prose genres to scrutiny and radical revision. Indeed, the status of language itself—its power to communicate meaning and sustain human relationships—is called into question. Our task is to imagine, experience, and evaluate this aesthetic revolution by immersing ourselves in the period’s greatest works. Course Requirements: Two essays, an annotated bibliography, mid-term and final exams. Required Texts: Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th ed., Volumes C and D; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Norton Critical, 2nd ed.; Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey, Oxford World's Classics.

3 English 340: Victorian and Modern British Literature Dr. Dwight Lindley T/Th 9.30-10.45am

This course provides an introduction to the men and women who have thought our thoughts before we ever did so. In the last two centuries, the Victorians and Modernists (~1830-1940) bravely faced the same religious, philosophical, and social upheavals we face today, only with fresher eyes and greater immediacy. The writings they have left us are among the most beautiful in the language, but also strikingly relevant to our own concerns. Through close readings of their essays, stories, novels, plays, and poems, our goal will be to see the challenges of late modernity through nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century eyes. The result, I hope, is that you befriend our Victorian and Modernist ancestors, understanding just how much we share with them, but also how much we differ from them. All we read together will provide both a window into the past—our history—and a reflection on questions, themes, and ideas that transcend any one time. Course readings include:

1. Black, Joseph, et al., eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 6A: The Twentieth Century and Beyond: From 1900 to Midcentury. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2008. ISBN 978-1551119236. 2. Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Ed. Rosemary Ashton. Penguin Hardcover Classics. New York: Penguin, 2011. ISBN 978-0141196893. 3. Trilling, Lionel & Harold Bloom, eds. Victorian Prose and Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. ISBN 978-0195016161. 4. Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 2012. ISBN 978-0316216449. 5. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Robert Mighall. Penguin Hardcover Classics. New York: Penguin, 2009. ISBN 978-0141442464.

4 English 350: American Literature: Colonial-1820 Dr. John Somerville MW 2:00-3:15pm

Opening the term with an examination of the promotional writings of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, we will give further, particular attention to the literature of Puritan New England, the emerging national consciousness and political writings of the eighteenth century, and the literature of the Federalist period. Among the writers we will read are John Smith, William Bradford, Edward Taylor, Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Charles Brockden Brown, and William Cullen Bryant.

Course Requirements: An array of written assignments, a midterm, and a final exam.

English 360: Romanticism, American Renaissance, and Realism – 1820-1890 Dr. Franklin T/Th 1:00-2:15 PM

The American nineteenth century produced some of our culture's greatest and most influential (and experimental) writers. During the excitement, upheavals, and violence of Westward expansion, the Civil War, and the post-war era, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and countless other great American writers worked to articulate their experiences in literary form. This course will explore the development of American literature from 1820-1890, moving from American Romanticism, through the mid-century flourishing of the "American Renaissance" and concluding with an investigation of American Realism.

Course Requirements: 15-20 pages of written work, Midterm and Final exams. Required Texts: Norton Anthology of Literature, 9th Edition, Vols. B and C.

5 English 370: Naturalism and Modernism – 1890-present Dr. John Somerville MW 11-12.15pm

A survey of American literature since 1890. We will read selections from Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway, among others. Course Requirements: A fair amount of writing. A midterm and a final exam. Required Texts: George McMichael, ed. Anthology of American Literature. (Tenth Edition, Volume 2). Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time.

400 Level Classes English 401-01: English Romanticism Dr. David Whalen T/Th 2.30-3.45pm

Less a course in an “ism” than in a major body of works, English 401-01 will take up the famous—and often infamous—poetry and prose of the Romantic era in Britain. Historical context matters, as do the philosophical, religious, biographical, and political themes and ideas at play in the period. Nevertheless, our focus will be on the major (and some not-so-well-known) literary texts themselves. The literature of the Romantics, whether praised or blamed, is often misunderstood. It tends to be dissolved into historical generalizations or hardened into “doctrinal” obsessions. We will strive to understand the texts and to combine both awareness of context with “naïve” attention to the texts’s sharp and subtle movements. Authors read include Austen, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, and others. Genres include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Course Requirements: Students will have a mid-term exam, a final exam, and two essays the combined page count of which will exceed twenty. Course Texts: Texts include Duncan Wu’s Romanticism: An Anthology, 4th Edition, (Wiley-Blackwell).

English 401-02: The Citizen and the Scaffold – The Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More Dr. Stephen Smith MWF 2.00pm-2.50pm

The class will examine the life and writings of Thomas More, along with a selection of other relevant texts from period, especially from More’s fellow humanists. There will be a weekly writing assignment, along with a midterm exam and a longer seminar paper.

Course Readings

Summer assignment: Cicero’s De officiis. Erasmus counseled that the young should read De officiis (“On Duties”) and commit its contents to memory.

Earliest Lives of More – We will read Roper’s Mirror, Erasmus’ letters on More, and the anonymous Elizabethan play, Sir Thomas More, on which Shakespeare collaborated.

The Life of Pico – More’s fascinating translation of a Latin life of Pico della Mirandola, the famous humanist and author of “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” among many other writings. This early work is one of More’s most thought provoking meditations on the intellectual life, its promises and perils.

Translations from Lucian – More’s first published work, part of a translation contest with his friend, Erasmus. More choose three revealing dialogues to translate: The Cynic, Menippus (or “The Descent into Hades”), and Philopsuedes (“Lover of Lies”). More had a special love for Lucian, a great classical satirist. The volume concludes with an original composition, More’s declamation in response to Lucian’s Tyrannicide.

Utopia: A Truly Golden Handbook – More’s most famous book centers on the question of the “best republic,” the debate over whether intellectuals have a duty to serve, and the challenges of prudence and charity. More’s book launched the modern genre of “Utopian” and “Dystopian” fiction. One clergyman was so taken by More’s book that he requested to become bishop of the Utopians.

The History of Richard the Third – During the English renaissance, More’s historical writing was praised as an achievement equal to the best of the Roman historians. More’s History, which exists in both English and Latin, was never published during his lifetime. It is his extraordinary study of tyranny.

The Epigrams – More’s Latin poems reveal every facet of his personality and thinking. They include his famous “Coronation Ode,” written for the 17-year-old King Henry VIII, as well as witty and probing poems on art, politics, philosophy, and theology.

A Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, Knight – More’s 1529 Dialogue addresses all the controversies of the emerging English reformation. CS Lewis has called the work “great Platonic dialogue…. Perhaps the best specimen in English.”

A Dialogue of Conscience – These two letters, perhaps co-authored by More and his brilliant daughter, Meg Roper, have been compared to Plato’s Crito.

A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation – Composed in the Tower of London, the Dialogue is a book that CS Lewis said should be on everyone’s shelf.

The Sadness of Christ – More’s last work, Sadness is More’s Latin commentary on Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The work is a fitting synthesis of his lifelong concerns.

More’s Letters – We will read More’s correspondence from his early letters (on the need for good counsel) to his final letters to family and friends, written in the Tower of London. We will read his correspondence with Erasmus and the other humanists, along with the famous letters to Oxford University, defending the study of Greek, and the prison letters detailing his interrogations.

The Trial of Sir Thomas More – We will read a recent reconstructed text of Thomas More’s famous trial, drawn from Henry Kelly’s work in Thomas More on Trial (Boydell and Brewer).

English 402-01: Life and Writings of Robert Frost Dr. Christopher Busch MWF 11-11.50am

This course will examine primarily Frost’s poetry, but also will consider his biography, prose, and perhaps drama included in the Library of America edition of his works. Students will study Frost’s formal and thematic concerns, as well as intersections between his life and works. The course will be conducted as a seminar. There will be two exams and at least one paper. Students will be responsible for leading some discussions based on outside research.

8 English 402-02: Southern Humor from the Southwestern Humorists to Twain, Faulkner, O'Connor, and Cormac McCarthy Dr. Michael M. Jordan, T/Th 9:30-10:45am

Course Description: The main elements that unite our readings are threefold: Southern writers who feature comic or humorous scenes, situations, characters, plots, and speech using vernacular or dialectal language (i.e., Southern dialect). In other words, we will be concerned with the use of dialect (as opposed to conventional literary language) in the Southwestern Humorists and later comic writers from the American South. We will investigate the subjects (hunts, fights, courtships, drinking exploits, etc.), the characters (usually low-born and uneducated, often grotesque), and the formal characteristics of dialect in various works, noting differences between dialectal expression and conventional literary language in vocabulary or diction, in idioms, in grammar and syntax, in pronunciation, in spelling, and in imagery and figurative language. We will consider the historical, political, artistic, and religious causes affecting the manifestation of dialectal literature. As we transition from the Southwestern Humorists (writing from 1830 to 1865) to Twain and later writers, we will see what they add to the picture. We will consider the success or failure of dialectal literature in expressing various tones, moods, and themes. Is dialectal literature as successful as those works that feature “normal” characters and conventional or standard literary language? We will investigate these concerns in the writings of Southwestern Humorists (Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, T. B. Thorpe, George Washington Harris, and others) and of four “classic” Southern writers (Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy). If there is time, we will also look at selected works by Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Wendell Berry.

Required Texts: *Humor of the Old Southwest, edited by Hennig Gohen and William Dillingham *The Portable Mark Twain, edited by Tom Quirk (Penguin Books) *The Portable William Faulkner, edited by Malcolm Cowley (Penguin Books) *Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works, collected by Sally Fitzgerald (The Library of America) *Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage Books Paperback) *Possible selections from Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Wendell Berry Requirements: Prospectus, Annotated Bibliography, Classroom Presentation, and Research Paper (approximately 3500 words in length)

English 403-01: Dostoevsky – The Madman and the Prophet

Dr. Justin Jackson Wednesdays 6:00-9:00pm

“He is the Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum—” Viscount Melchior de Vogue. In this seminar, students will investigate several of the major works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Though the literature will not be taught in a strict chronological fashion, we will work through some of his early writings to illustrate the seeds of his spiritual and psychological insights which give way to the fruits of Dostoevsky’s prophetic vision. We will begin our reading with The Double (1948), an early work panned by critics but which Dostoevsky recognized as crucial to his poetic and psychological vision. From here, we will turn to his major literary breakthrough (though not fully appreciated in its own time), the first of his fruits as it were, Notes from Underground. From here, we will move out from the Dostoevskyan “underground” (though one never really leaves it) to his vision of suffering and redemption—indeed, of paradise itself. Of his major novels we will read Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. We will pair each novel with one of his shorter works and investigate the way in which he crafts his poetic, psychological, and/or theological vision. We will also read various writings from two important literary theorists, Mikhail Bakhtin and René Girard, both of whom have shaped the way other critics and even translators have understood Dostoevsky. Requirements: on the first night of class, students will be given an exam covering The Double, Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov; students will participate regularly on a message board; seminar paper of 23+ pages; final exam. Prerequisites: at least 2 English classes beyond the 200-level; a sturdy soul.

10 English 404-01: Poetry Workshop

Professor Kjerstin Kauffman M 6:30-9:30 PM

Registration is by permission of John Somerville, in consultation with the department chair. A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. --W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse” This course offers students strategies for and experience in the writing of lyric poetry. Using both classic and contemporary poems as models, students will draft and workshop a poem each week, selecting favorites for revision and inclusion in a final portfolio. We’ll practice various strategies in both received form and free verse, and memorize and recite many poems, old and new. In addition to this practical experience, the course includes a significant reading component; we’ll spend about a third of the class time each week talking about poetics since modernism, exploring contemporary poetry journals and recently released collections, and asking ourselves why we write poems in the first place. Required texts: Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize, ed. by John Hollander (Riverhead, 1997). A recently released book of poems or poetry journal or magazine (details on this later)

Recommended Resources (on reserve): Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell, revised edition (Random House, 1979). Twentieth-Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry, edited by Gioia, Mason, & Schoerke Rhyme’s Reason by John Hollander, 4th edition (Yale University Press, 2014). A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch (Houghton Mifflin, 2014). The Resistance to Poetry by James Longenbach (University of Chicago, 2004).

Requirements: One new poem per week; workshop participation; various craft exercises; at least one presentation; weekly recitations; and a final portfolio.

11 English 404-02: Plato and Socratic Dialogue Dr. Jeffrey Lehman T/Th 1pm-2.15pm

This course will explore Plato’s Socratic dialogues and the influence of “Socratic conversation” on teaching and learning in the Western tradition of liberal education. Central to these dialogues is a vision of philosophy and the philosophical way of life, a vision embodied by Plato’s character, Socrates. Along the way, we will entertain such questions as the following: • Within the context of each Socratic dialogue, how does Socrates attempt to guide his interlocutors? How successful is he at doing so? • What is the goal of Socratic conversation? Does Plato’s Socrates think the attainment of truth is possible? • Is there a discernible teaching in the Socratic dialogues? Since Plato never speaks on his own behalf as an interlocutor, how, if at all, do we identify Platonic teachings in these dialogues? • What is dialectic? And how does it relate to the literary form of dialogue? • What is the relation between mythos and logos in these dialogues? • What response does Plato attempt to elicit from his readers? How do the dialogues themselves teach the reader? • How does the literary form of philosophical dialogue relate to the content of the Socratic dialogues? • Is there an irreconcilable conflict between philosophy and oratory? What is the place of rhetoric in these philosophical dialogues?

Among the dialogues we will study are Plato’s Meno, Ion, Gorgias, Laches, Protagoras, Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, and Phaedrus.

From there, we will consider the legacy of Socratic conversation in the Western tradition through the writings of some authors who were influenced in one way or another by Plato and his Socratic dialogues, including Augustine, Boethius, Thomas More, and David Hume, among others. While reading these authors, questions for discussion will include: • In this text, what evidence is there of Platonic inspiration? What images, metaphors, modes of argument, etc. does the author use in fashioning this work? • How exactly does the work attempt to teach? How is the pedagogical character of the work like and unlike Plato’s Socratic dialogues? • How does this work contribute to the tradition of Socratic conversation? How does it challenge that tradition? How does it refashion it or renew it? We will conclude the course by considering the revival of Socratic conversation as a method of teaching and learning in the twentieth century and beyond. With rare exceptions, all class sessions will be conducted as Socratic seminars. Students will be responsible for taking careful reading notes and submitting questions for classroom discussion. In addition, students will complete a term paper (20-25 pages) as well as midterm and final examinations.

12 Summer Session 2017: Session One

English 201-01 Dr. Lorraine Murphy, 9:00am-12:00pm

Our study extends from the early Renaissance to the cusp of the Modern era and provides a general introduction to great works of European literature in the context of relevant historical and artistic movements. More especially, this course provides a framework for examining the relationship between two realms: that of fiction, fantasy, abstractions, and ideals on the one hand, and that of concrete, insistent, down-to-earth reality on the other. Every story we read will map this fissured terrain; some will seek a bridge across the divide. Together they will compel us to ask ourselves a series of questions: Am I a realist or a dreamer? Where am I most free? What do my ideals and aspirations require of me? Can I know, and must I submit to, the limits of the given? If the gap between the realms cannot be bridged, where will I make my home? Course Requirements: Regular reading quizzes, two exams, one essay. Required Texts: Please see instructor for details.

English 201-02 Dr. David Whalen, 1-4pm

English 340 Bart

Dr. Patricia Bart 9am-12pm

A brief review of important Romantic works will prepare us to appreciate how the Victorians and Modernists variously inherited, modified or declared independence from this seminal movement that still subtends much of our culture to this very day. By examining such Victorians as Carlyle, Browning, Arnold, Hopkins, Kipling, Tennyson, and Newman, among many others, we will consider most particularly how, in this era that is often seen as abounding in an expansive confidence and moral certainty, the best authors, even the most conservative among them, were burdened with an impending sense of something ominous to come: collapse, bleakness, chaos. The Modernists by comparison, were often expansively triumphant in their mood, in the aftermath of the cataclysm of WWI, while those who were advised by Ezra Pound to "make it new" quite often did so by returning to the old, and even to the ancient in order to do so, as seen in the work of Joyce, Eliot, and Conrad. Course Requirements: One essay based on a primary text and a single secondary source—an excellent chance to hone your research writing skills with personal coaching—a midterm and a final.

13 English 360

Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin 12:00-3:00 PM

Dr. Christopher Busch 9:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.

English 401-01: John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement

Dr. Dwight Lindley, 1-4pm

In this course, we will examine the philosophical, historical, theological, and literary thought of John Henry Newman, one of the Victorian period’s great sages. In particular, we will appreciate and analyze the works he wrote during the first half of his career (1826-45), works which he wrote in association with the Oxford Movement. During this period, Newman strove to imagine vividly and understand critically the relations between faith and reason, Church and State, freedom and authority, history and truth. He did so in a startling array of genres, writing sermons, histories, philosophical lectures, treatises, magazine articles, poems, and novels. Reading along with Newman, we stand to learn how to face the bewildering challenges of developing modernity as he did, with wit, fortitude, elegance, and deep theoretical intelligence. Grades for the course: class participation, reading quizzes, a few short papers, and a comprehensive final examination. Chief Texts: Newman, John Henry. Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford, Between A.D.1826 and 1843. Ed. Mary Katherine Tillman. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1996. ISBN 978-0268009960. ---. Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Ed. Ian Ker. New York: Penguin, 1995. ISBN 978-0140433746. ---. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Ed. Ian Ker. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1989. ISBN 978-0268009212. ---. Loss and Gain. Ed. Trevor Lipscombe. San Francisco: Ignatius P, 2012. ISBN 978-1586177058.

14 English 401-02/404-01 Shakespeare

Dr. Benedict Whalen, 1:00-4:00pm

“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood…” This course will study Shakespeare’s tragedies. While part of our goal will be to gain an understanding of Shakespeare’s works as such, we will also be attending to tragedy as a genre, and Shakespeare’s particular work within, and development of, that genre. Aristotle’s Poetics, a comedy, and finally a romance will supplement our reading of tragedy. Rash and bloody deeds, green-eyed monsters, and daggers in men's smiles will all make appearances.

Readings: Aristotle’s Poetics A Midsummer Night’s Dream Romeo and Juliet Julius Caesar Hamlet Othello King Lear Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra The Winter’s Tale

Course Requirements: message board critical reflections, 1 paper (10-12 pages), final exam. English 402-01: Southern Fiction after Faulkner

Dr. John Somerville, 9.30-12.30pm

Flannery O'Connor, in a comment on the formidable and daunting presence of William Faulkner in the consciousness of modern southern writers, described him as an advancing locomotive, "the Dixie Limited," who threatens to overwhelm every lesser talent who has the misfortune to find his "mule and wagon" on the tracks as Faulkner's engine approaches. In this course we will begin by taking a look at one of Faulkner's great novels, The Sound and the Fury, then will turn our attention to a succession of southern authors from the mid- and late twentieth century, "lesser talents," perhaps, in comparison to Faulkner, but immensely gifted writers all the same. Among the writers we will read are Eudora Welty (The Golden Apples), O'Connor (A Good Man is Hard to Find), Walker Percy (The Moviegoer), Cormac McCarthy (Suttree), Robert Penn Warren, Mark Richard, Barry Hannah, and Katherine Anne Porter. Course Requirements: Many pages of writing. Final exam.

15 English 403-01 Reading Biblical Narrative

J. A. Jackson, 9-12pm This course is designed to give the student a solid literary foundation in a broad range of texts from the Hebrew Bible and will provide the student with various examples of Biblical exegesis—from New Testament sources, from early rabbinic sources, and from sources from the early Christian Church. While the focus in the course is primarily on biblical narrative, we will also focus on the art of biblical poetry as well—since much of biblical narrative is comprised of biblical poetry. Additionally, we will study the physical setting of the biblical narratives, cultural/historical settings, and important mythic and anti-mythic narrative patterns throughout. Course requirements: Message board participation; Final exam (both in-class and out-of-class essays). English 403-02 Contemporary Literature

Dr. Dutton Kearney, 1:00-4:00pm This course is a survey in Contemporary Literature, focusing on narrative literature and poetry from Europe, South America, India, and North America. The authors in this course are fascinated—but also frustrated—with the cultural displacement that has occurred under postmodernism. Through myth, vision, image, history, cartography, philosophy, and theology, these writers counter this fragmentation with new paradigms for the reconstruction of a unifying whole. Students are invited to analyze and to participate in the conversation that contemporary authors are having with the literary tradition. Novel/Novella A. S. Byatt, Possession and R.K. Narayan, The Man-eater of Malgudi (novella) Short Story (Selections) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Leaf Storm George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation Jim Shepard, Like You’d Understand, Anyway David Foster Wallace, Oblivion Lyric and Narrative Poetry (Selections) Carolyn Forché, The Angel of History Jorie Graham, The End of Beauty Li Young Lee, Book of My Nights Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Heavenly Questions A. E. Stallings, Hapax, and Mary Szybist, Incarnadine

Course Requirements: Message Board Participation; Essay (10-15 pages); Take Home Final

16 Summer Session Two 2017

English 401/403/404 Arthurian Literature Dr. Patricia Bart Star Wars has lasted two or three generations, Star Trek three or four. But the Arthurian legends have been productive for almost 1500 years. What makes for this resilience? How can we bring the energy, appeal, and genius behind this genre into the present time, to redeem popular culture in the service of the good, beautiful and true while still retaining the moral frankness about human frailty inherent in the Arthurian legends? This seminar will examine in summary lecture the major branches of the Arthurian tradition from the earliest surviving Celtic texts through the Latin chronicle tradition of Gildas and Geoffrey of Monmouth, to the Norman, Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Continental traditions of Wace, Chrétien de Troyes, Lawmon, Béroul, Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Cistercian Queste, Thomas Malory and Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Readings will consist of: week 1, selections from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien and the Queste week 2, selections from Malory week 3, selections from Tennyson. Discussion will focus on the themes, narrative styles, characterization of The Fellowship of the Round Table, the “horizon of expectation”[1] associated with the Arthurian genre, and how this “horizon” has been adaptable to changing audiences for well over a millennium. Course Requirements: A syllabus of readings adjusted for summer. A single seminar paper of 7-10 pages (including bibliography), with coaching available throughout the session. This paper will be based on a close reading in response to a single secondary work that discusses a selected text. It is an outstanding opportunity to hone your skills engaging with secondary authors by focusing on just one. There will be a comprehensive final. As in my other seminars, the examination responses will be prepared ahead of time with a set of quotations selected by the student and an outline to be brought to the final and collated into two coherent essays, based on prompts/questions distributed at the end of week 2. Active participation in the free play of ideas in a seminar class setting is also expected. Most importantly, members of this Fellowship should be forewarned that: Fun will be had. [1] See Jauss, Hans Robert, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” tr. Elizabeth Benzinger, New Literary History 2.1 (1970): 7–37.

17 The Hillsdale College English Major in Brief

The English major consists of at least 27 hours of English beyond 104-105 and 201. NB: English 201, Great Books Continental, is of course recommended, but that course fulfills the tier two core requirement in literature, and is not part of 27 hours of the English major.

For the major, students must take three of the four British Literature period courses: English 310 Anglo-Saxon and Medieval British Literature: 600-1500 English 320 Renaissance British Literature: 1500-1660 English 330 Restoration and Romantic British Literature: 1660-1830 English 340 Victorian and Modern British Literature: 1830-present Likewise, majors must take two of the three American Literature courses: English 350 American Literature: Colonial-1820 English 360 American Literature: 1820-1890 English 370 American Literature: 1890-present

As these courses together comprise the core of the major, students are encouraged to take as many as possible before venturing into the more specialized courses at the 400 level.

In addition to the 15-hour minimum in historical period courses, students must also take at least 12 hours (four courses) at the 400 level: English 401: Special Studies in British Literature English 402: Special Studies in American Literature English 403: Special Studies in Western Literature English 404: Special Studies in Genre, Literary Criticism and Writing

At least three of the four 400-level course areas must be represented, and at the instructor’s discretion, prerequisites among the 300-level courses may apply to a specific course at the 400 level.