English 3500-01, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Autumn 2018, Mon., Wed., Fri. 11:00-11:50 am, Hoyt Hall room 125, 29 August to 10 December 2018
Dr. Eric W. Nye, Office Hours:
MWR 10:00-10:50 am or by appt., Hoyt 242, 766-3244
The Infant Shakespeare attended by Nature and the
Passions. George Romney (pinxit.), B. Smith (sculpsit.).
from Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery (1789-1802).
Wed. 29 August: the problem of the past
in Britain and America
Introduction to course, grades, books.
Mark Edmundson, "Why Teach?"
(2014)
Henry Fuseli,
"The Artist Moved by the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins,"
(1778-79).
"American Literature: 1700-1820," NAALS8 1:157-69.
Jonathan Edwards, esp. "Personal
Narrative"
(c. 1740), NAALS8 1:177-89.
Philip Freneau, NAALS8 1:397-401
The Muses: a Modern Pantheon
Vocabulary 1 exercise assigned, due Wed., 5 Sept.: click here for assignment
Fri., 31 Aug.: reason and imagination, forms of nature
*Joseph
Warton, "The
Enthusiast: or, The Lover of Nature" (1744). (* indicates text is in
course pack)
*Alexander Pope, "An
Essay on Criticism" (1711) NAEL9 1:2669-85.
*Thomas
Gray, "Ode
on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" (1747) NAEL9
1:3047-50 and "Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751) NAEL9
1:3051-54 and "The
Bard: a Pindaric Ode" (1757), see
John
Martin's oil rendition, 1817.
Paper one assigned, due Wed., 19 Sept.
Mon. 3 September.: Labor Day (no class)
Wed., 5 Sept.: the world must conform to
our idea of it: the problem of subjectivity
*Samuel
Johnson, Rasselas (1759) NAEL9
1:2856-2923, "The
Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749) NAEL9 1:2843-51 and excerpts from Prefaces to The Dictionary of the English Language
(1755) and The Works of William Shakespeare (1765)
NAEL9 1:2929-47.
*William
Collins, "Ode
to Evening" (1748) NAEL9 1:3057-58.
The epistemological revolution of the late 18th century:
*David Hume, excerpts from Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding (1777).
*Immanuel Kant, excerpts from Critique of Pure
Reason (1781, 1787).
*Adam Smith, excerpts from
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(1776).
A
Pack of Useful Lies about the Eighteenth Century.
Vocabulary one due: handout.
Fri., 7 Sept.: the dark side of the imagination
*Christopher
Smart, excerpt from Jubilate Agno (1759-1763) and A Song to David
(1759-1763) NAEL9 1:3058-61.
*Oliver Goldsmith,
The
Deserted Village (1770) NAEL9 1:3061-71.
*William
Cowper,
"The
Castaway" (1799), NAEL9 1:3077-78,
* The
Task (1785) NAEL9 1:3071-76 (excerpts) and "The Diverting
History of John Gilpin" (1782).
See Caldecott's
illustrations.
Kate Winslet teaches Hugh Grant how to read Cowper ("The Castaway")
from Sense and Sensibility (1995).
Common Measure
and the Hymn
and The Cyber Hymnal.
Classic and Romantic music.
A Note on English Titles
Mon., 10 Sept.: reason, liberty, and
self-control
*The
Declaration of Independence (1776) and
*The Constitution of the United States (1787)
NAALS8 1:337-44.
Benjamin Franklin, selections from letters and Autobiography (c. 1781),
NAALS8 1:248-308.
J. H. St J. de Crèvecoeur, selections from Letters from an American
Farmer (1782), NAALS8 1:308-23.
*Thomas Jefferson, personal and political writings. Notes on the State of Virginia (1784),
selections, see
Frederic Church's oil rendition of the Natural Bridge, 1852.
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Federalist Papers (1787),
NAALS8
1:345-53.
Wed., 12 Sept.: the objects of poetry
Phillis Wheatley, NAALS8 1:401-12
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, NAALS8 1:656-65. And see more
poems of Longfellow.
Washington Irving, NAALS8 1:467-82.
William Cullen Bryant, NAALS8 1:491-98.
*Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Snow-storm"
(1835).
Thurs., 13 Sept.: 7-10 pm, Hoyt Hall, room 125: extracurricular showing of Oliver Goldsmith's, She Stoops to Conquer (1773). Jane Austen Society at the University of Wyoming, formational meeting (bring a friend).
Fri., 14 Sept.: the mythic past and the
feminine present
"The Romantic Period" NAEL9 2:3-30. *A
Time-Line of English Poetry, 449-2010.
Edmund Burke, excerpts from Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790), NAEL9 2:187-94.
Macpherson and
Chatterton. See
*Norton Topics
Online.
Anna Letitia Barbauld, NAEL9 2:39-53.
Charlotte Smith, NAEL9 2:53-77.
Mary Robinson, NAEL9 2:77-87.
500 Years of Female
Portraits in Western Art, Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Cello
no. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma.
Mon., 17 Sept.:
review
Wed., 19 Sept.:
review
Paper one due. Twenty-four tips about writing to be ignored only after receiving your Nobel Prize.
Thurs., 20 Sept.: 7-10 pm, Hoyt Hall, room 125: extracurricular showing of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's, The School for Scandal (1777). Cancelled for lack of interest.
Fri., 21 Sept.: sources of poetry: the volk and the vates
Robert Burns, NAEL9 2:165-82. Listen to soundclips of
"Green grow the
rashes,"
"Auld Lang
Syne," and
"A Red,
Red Rose" by Jean Redpath.
Ballad revival. Listen to
The False
Knight upon the Road (Child no. 3), sung by Frank Quinn, Coalisland,
County Tyrone (from Topic 12T160). The false knight, better known as
the devil, accosts a young boy embarked on life's pilgrimage. The knight
tries to trap the boy with a series of questions, but the boy recognizes
his interlocutor, responds successfully, and escapes.
Lady
Isabel and the Elf-knight (Child no. 4), sung by Fred Jordan, Aston
Munslow, Shropshire (source as above). The maid is charmed by a man
of the north country, presents a dowry, rides out to the seaside, and is
almost seduced. The man, a Bluebeard figure, announces the fate of her
six predecessors, but the maid tricks him and reverses their fortunes.
William Blake (stress Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)),
NAEL9 2:112-165.
Milton (1804),
plate 2.
Prosody I: Metrical Feet
Vocabulary two exercise assigned, due Fri., 28 Sept.: click here for assignment.
Mon., 24 Sept.: the romantic revolution
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (stress Lyrical
Ballads (1798)), NAEL9 2:270-92.
Wordsworth and Coleridge, "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
NAEL9
2:292-304.
Wed., 26 Sept..: sources in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite "I AM"
Coleridge, Poems of the Supernatural, NAEL9 2:443-77, and excerpts from Biographia Literaria (1817), Lectures on Shakespeare (1808-12), and The Statesman's Manual (1816), NAEL9 2:488-509.
Fri., 28 Sept.: Prof. Nye at conference, Roslyn Fleming lecturing
Mary Wollstonecraft, NAEL9 2:208-52.
Kenneth Clark: Civilisation (10): The Smile of Reason (1969). Print this study guide before viewing.
Vocabulary two due.
Mon., 1 October: pantheism, theism, and the freedom of the imagination
Coleridge, Conversation Poems, NAEL9 2:437-43, 477-87.
Listen to an Eolian Harp.
*"The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens"
(Child no. 58).
NAEL9 2:31-39.
Coleridge's Outline
of the Constitution of the English Church and State (1830).
See Norton Topics Online.
Vocabulary three exercise assigned, due Fri., 12 Oct.: click here for assignment
Wed., 3 Oct.: the love of nature
Wordsworth, misc. poems and sonnets, NAEL9 2:305-48.
*Wordsworth, "Prospectus to The Recluse"(1814) and
The Prelude
(1805), books I, II, V, VI, VII, X, XI, and XIII, NAEL9 2:349-402.
Hip-Hop
Daffodils. Click here for rapper text.
Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas DeQuincey, NAEL9 2:509-23
and 546-83.
Kenneth Clark: Civilisation (11): The Worship of Nature (1969). Print this study guide before viewing.
Fri., 5 Oct.:
Review
Mon., 8 Oct.: rescuing the novel
Jane Austen, Emma (1816) vol. 1, pp. 5-106, and
Wed., 10 Oct.: the character of an "imaginist"
Austen, Emma (1816), vol. 2, pp. 107-216.
Fri., 12 Oct.: repairing the ruin of our first parents
Austen, Emma (1816) vol. 3, pp. 216-333.
Vocabulary three due.
Midterm Exam Part One distributed
Mon., 15 Oct.:
Midterm Exam, Part 2 (in class).
Midterm Exam, Part One (take home essays) due.
Annotated edition of Emma due in class.
Wed., 17 Oct.: the prison of self
*George Gordon, Lord Byron, NAEL9 2:612-748, and handout
(stress lyrics, "Darkness," Prisoner of Chillon, and
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage).
Percy Bysshe Shelley (stress "Mont Blanc" and A Defence of Poetry),
NAEL9 2:748-869.
Fri., 19 Oct.: the fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do (Middle of Term)
John Keats (stress sonnets, odes, letters, "Eve of St. Agnes" and "La
Belle Dame sans Merci"), NAEL9 2:901-980.
Listen to Luscinia Megarhynchos, the Nightingale.
Mon., 22 Oct.: America's virtues and vices
Ralph Waldo Emerson (stress "Nature," "The American Scholar," "Self-Reliance"),
NAALS8 1:505-83.
See Norton
Study Space Online.
Henry David
Thoreau (stress Walden, ch. 1 "Economy," ch. 2 "Where I
Lived and What I Lived For," ch. 5 "Solitude," ch. 17 "Spring," and ch.
18 "Conclusion"), NAALS8
1:839-934.
*Alexis de Tocqueville, excerpts from
Democracy in America (1835, 1840).
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), chs. 2, 3, 5-7, 10, NAALS8
1:934-1005.
Wed., 24 Oct.: the historical imagination and the idea of freedom
"The Victorian Age: 1830-1901," NAEL9 2:1007-43.
Thomas Carlyle, NAEL9 2:1044-76 (stress Sartor Resartus and
Past and
Present). Browse the online
Collected Letters of
Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle.
John Stuart Mill, NAEL9 2:1066-1122 (stress excerpt from Autobiography).
Fri., 26 Oct.: art and beauty in a transitory existence
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, NAEL9 2:1156-1259 (stress "The Lady of Shalott," "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur," In Memoriam, and Idylls of the King). *Hear Sir Lewis Casson read "Ulysses" in an MP3 clip. Tennyson's recording on an Edison cylinder in 1890 of "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
Mon., 29 Oct.:. empathy amid a cacophony of voices
Robert Browning, NAEL9 2:1275-1328 (stress "My Last Duchess," "Andrea del Sarto," and "Caliban upon Setebos").
Wed., 31 Oct.:
review
Paper two assigned, due Wed., 14 Nov.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up (1838), National Gallery, London
Fri., 2 November:
Browning and Tennyson review.
Prosody II: Stanzaic Forms
Mon., 5 Nov.: wandering between two worlds
Matthew Arnold, NAEL9 2:1369-1449 (stress "To Marguerite--Continued," "Memorial Verses," "The Scholar Gypsy," "Dover Beach," and "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse").Hear Ralph Vaughan Williams's setting of "The Scholar Gypsy" and "Thyrsis" in "An Oxford Elegy" (1947-49).
*Henry James, Daisy Miller (1879).
Kenneth Clark: Civilisation (12): The Fallacies of Hope (1969). Print this study guide before viewing.
Wed., 7 Nov.: darkness in the American imagination
"American Literature: 1820-1865," NAALS8 1:445-66.Nathaniel Hawthorne (stress "Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil," and "The Birth-Mark," NAALS8 1:603-56.
*Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness" (1899).
Fri., 9 Nov.:
*Edgar Allan Poe (stress "Ulalume," "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," "The
Fall of the House of Usher," "The Purloined Letter,"
"The Imp of the
Perverse," and "The Philosophy of Composition," NAALS8
1:683-745.
Sun., 11 Nov.: 9:00 pm, Mathison Library, Hoyt Hall, extracurricular reading of Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850). Bring your own complete text.
Mon., 12 Nov.: what is an American poet?
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1881 edn.), Preface to
Leaves of Grass (1855), "Song of Myself" (stress 1-6,
11, 15, 20-21, 24, 30-36, 44, 48, 52), , NAALS8 1:1005-99.
Also
Emerson, stress "The Poet," NAALS8 1:566-81 and
Letter to
Walt Whitman, July 21, 1855.
Hear
Whitman's recording on an Edison cylinder of "America":
"America / Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, / All, all alike
endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, / Strong, ample, fair, enduring,
capable, rich, / Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love."
Abraham Lincoln, stress "Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865,"
NAALS8 1:745-49.
Vocabulary four exercise assigned, due Fri., 16 Nov.: click here for assignment.
Wed., 14 Nov.: new ways of being an American poet
Whitman, stress "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," "When I Heard the
Learn'd Astronomer," "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim,"
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," Letter to Ralph Waldo
Emerson, August 1856, NAALS8 1:1005-99.
*Emily Dickinson, nos. 112 [67], 123 [131], 202 [185], 207 [214], 269
[249], 320 [258], 359 [328], 365 [338], 372 [341], 373 [501], 409 [303],
448 [449], 479 [712], 591 [465], 598 [632], 620 [435], 935 [1540], 1096
[986], 1263 [1129], 1489 [1463], 1773 [1732]. Letters to T. W. Higginson,
NAALS8 1:1189-1219. And see additional
Dickinson poems in supplementary readings.
Paper two due.
Fri., 16 Nov.: what is the soul?
Newman and William James
Whitman and Dickinson, review
Vocabulary four due.
Mon., 19 Nov.: Paper three assigned, due Wed., 5 Dec.
Barry Moser, woodcut for Arion Press edition, designed by Andrew Hoyem (Univ. of California, 1979)
Mon., 26 Nov.:
The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World at the New
Bedford Whaling Museum
Introduction to Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851), prefatory material.
Melville, "Hawthorne and his Mosses" (1850).
Melville, Moby Dick (1851), chs. 1-43, Norton Critical edn. pp. 7-165.
Wed., 28 Nov.:
Melville, Moby Dick (1851), chs. 44-61, Norton Critical edn. pp. 165-233.
Paper four assigned (optional), due Tues, 18 Dec. at Final Exam
Fri., 30 Nov.:
Melville, Moby Dick (1851), chs. 62-108, Norton Critical edn. pp. 233-361.
Mon., 3 December:
Melville, Moby Dick (1851), chs. 109-135, Norton Critical edn. pp. 361-427.
Reading annotations in your copy of Moby Dick due in class.
The view from Melville's window at Arrowhead (near Pittsfield, Mass.) where he wrote Moby Dick.
Wed., 5 Dec.: funeral, class canceled
*Whitman, Passage to India (1870). The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams set texts from the last sections of this poem in his Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony (1910).
Fri., 7 Dec.: Prof. Nye at conference, Roslyn Fleming lectures: the death of the spirit in the rise of industrial materialism
Christina Rossetti (pp. 1489-1512), the Pre-Raphaelites
(pp. 1463-71, and John Ruskin (pp. 1335-52, esp. the pathetic fallacy;
1468-70 on the Pre-Raphaelites)
"In the Bleak Mid-Winter" set
by Gustav Holst.
Paper three due.
Mon., 10 Dec.: last day of classes
*Whitman, Passage to India (1870). The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams set texts from the last sections of this poem in his Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony (1910). Listen to the BBC Symphony and Youth Chorus perform it at the Proms under conductor, Sakari Oramo (2013).
*Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Bridges, and Edward Thomas, *Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, T. S. Eliot
Tues., 11 Dec.: Come Christmas Caroling by Lamplight at 7 pm meeting at ?
Final Exam: Tuesday, 18 December, 10:15 am - 12:15 pm, in our usual
classroom.
Paper 4 due (optional).
Required Books:
Stephen Greenblatt, gen. ed.. Norton Anthology of English Literature, (New York: W. W. Norton, hardcover, 9th edn., vol. 2, 2012). 978-0393-91248-7 [NAEL9]. Also available bundled with Jane Austen's Emma, as below, bundle ISBN: 978-0-393-12250-3 . UW: $ used, $ new
Jane Austen, ed. George Justice. Emma, (New York: W. W. Norton, paper, 4th edn., 2012, Norton Critical Edition). 978-0-393-92764-1 [NCE4]. Also available bundled with the above. UW: $ used
Nina Baym, gen. ed.. Norton Anthology of American Literature, shorter edition, vol. 1, (New York: W. W. Norton, paper, 8th edn., vol. 1, 2012). 978-0-393-91886-1 [NAALS8]. Also available bundled with Herman Melville's Moby Dick, as below, bundle ISBN: 978-0-393-90128-3. UW: $ used, $ new
Herman Melville, ed. Hershel Parker & Harrison Hayford. Moby Dick, (New York: W. W. Norton, paper, 2nd edn., 1999, Norton Critical Edition). 978-0-393-97283-2 [NCE2]. Also available bundled with the above. UW: $ used
Supplementary Readings are contained on a separate website and may be printed as a whole for ease of access in lieu of a course pack (items marked * above are found on this website). UW: $ plus markup
Optional Book and Online Lecture (recommended):
Abrams, M. H. & Geoffrey Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 11th edn. (NY: Heinle-Cengage, paper, 2014). 978-1285465067; 1285465067 ($62.49)
Roger Stoddard, "The Book as a Spiritual Instrument" (online video lecture by former Curator of Rare Books, Houghton Library, Harvard University), 18 March 2008 from the Boston Athenaeum, introduced by Richard Wendorf.
Course Description:
In this, the second of these courses chronologically, we read selections of British and American writers from the years 1750 to 1865. British writing will be represented by such works as essays by Samuel Johnson, Charles Lamb, and Thomas Carlyle; poetry by Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, John Keats, P. B. Shelley, Lord Byron, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Alfred Tennyson; and fiction by Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, and Charles Dickens. American selections will include autobiographical writings by Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass; critical prose by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson; poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman; and fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. There will be three short papers, a journal, midterm and final exams.
Course Outcomes for English Department Survey Courses:
1. Comprehend the history of the
language, its grammar and syntax, the arts of rhetoric, and the
conventions of expository writing
2. Read extensively in canonical
literature while learning to question the status and historical
formation of the canon: master literary periods, terms, and major
authors
3. Read intensively with formal concentration, discerning the
quality of different literary modes and styles: know the historical
conventions of literary form and be able to differentiate literary
styles
4. Extend these methods of analysis to new works outside the
canon and to works outside the sphere of conventional textuality
5.
Understand various modes of literary criticism and be able to devise
appropriate critical theses both in writing and conversation: know the
major schools of criticism and be able to replicate their interpretative
strategies
6. Show intelligence, imagination, and creativity in the
formation and support of original literary interpretations
7. Relate the
history of literary creativity to allied fields of humane activity:
politics, arts, philosophy, theory and culture in general.
Grading Standards:
Several take home exercises (numerical, total 5% of final grade), Quizzes on assigned readings (numerical, total 10%), Reading notes (letter-grade, total 10%), Short essays and presentations (letter-grade, total 35%), Midterm exam (half objective-numerical, half essay letter-grade, total 20%), Final exam (half objective-numerical, half essay letter-grade, total 20%). Final grade is determined by total of the above. A poll will be taken at the beginning of the semester to determine whether we use +/- or straight grades.
Attendance policy:
University-sponsored absences are cleared through the Office of Student Life. Attendance is essential in a class like this. You will be allowed one absence by prior arrangement for personal business reasons. For that and any subsequent officially authorized absence you will be required to turn in a three-page essay on the syllabus material for the day(s) you miss and must contact me for details. The essay will be turned in the first class period after you return from your absence. Failure to turn in the essay will signify that you do not intend to pass the class. This policy accords with UW Regulation 6-713.
Academic Honesty is strictly enforced according to UW Regulation 6-802 "Procedures and Authorized University Actions in Cases of Student Academic Dishonesty".
The Student Code of Conduct may be found by linking to the Dean of Students Office page.
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Disability Statement: If you have a physical, learning, sensory or psychological disability and require accommodation, please let me know as soon as possible. You will need to register with, and provide documentation of your disability to University Disability Support Services (UDSS) in SEO, room 330 Knight Hall.
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Any changes to the syllabus will be announced in class or on this course website, where the date of most recent revision follows:
Last updated: 09-Dec-18
Notify me of corrections or additions.