As this literature class is meant to be a survey of British literature produced during the entirety of two centuries, including the Romantic period, the Victorian period, the modern period (1885-1945), and the post-modern or contemporary period, we cannot hope to be exhaustive or even fair to any one period. We will do our best, however, reading seminal works that convey important elements of each period and its interests. We will thereby get some idea of the shifts in interests and approaches to topics as each period addressed them in its literature.

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Required Texts:

Romanticism packet Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818 version! Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Early 20th-century poetry packet James Joyce, Dubliners Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine

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Course Requirements: Attendance and active participation are vital to making this course work for you and your classmates and are required. This class will proceed by active class participation, and participating orally will comprise no small part of your grade: it can change your grade earned by written work in this class. Any of you who are shy need to get over fears of speaking in front of your peers!

Other oral requirements: Group informal presentation to the class based on outside reading you do about the literary figures, genres, related literature, or topics we will be covering. Because we cannot each do outside research into everything and everybody we'll be discussing in class, your doing work on one topic and presenting it to the class in small groups is one way to join efforts to work cooperatively, enabling us all to learn more than each of us could on our own. Your presentations will also help guide discussion on each of the texts we read. Please speak to me beforehand about what you plan to do; I will be ready with suggestions.

Written work: Two exams (short answer and short essay) and two short papers (4-6 double spaced typed pages on non-erasable paper). Each will be worth 20% of your grade. Presentations and participation in discussion will make up the other 20% of your grade.

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Attendance and Late Paper Policies: If you miss more than three classes, your grade will start to drop. If you miss more than three weeks, you may fail. Save absences, therefore, for when you really need them. Very late arrivals or very early departures will count as absences, as will your coming to class unable to add to discussion from utter unpreparedness - from not having read the text or performed written work leading into discussion, for instance. If you are absent on days on which we do group work, in addition to being marked absent, you will receive a fail on that work. Assignments handed in late will also adversely affect your grade, unless you have discussed your need to hand a paper in late beforehand with me. Generally, papers handed in late will drop one half letter grade for each day they're late, and after one week, they will not be accepted. Plagiarism, which I invariably catch, will result in a fail on the paper, a fail in the course, and action taken against you through the appropriate university channels. Newspaper reading, sleeping, private conversation in class, along with any other rudenesses, will not be tolerated.

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Week 1: Sept 4 Introduction Week 2: Sept. 9 William Wordsworth Selections from the 1804 Preface to Lyrical Ballads Selections from the 1850 version of The Prelude "Intimations of Immortality" Week 3: Sept. 11 Samuel Taylor Coleridge "The Eolian Harp" "Frost at Midnight" "Fears in Solitude" Week 4: Sept. 16 Percy Bysshe Shelley Selections from "A Defense of Poetry" "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" John Keats "Ode to a Nightingale" "Ode on a Grecian Urn" Lord Byron "Prometheus" Week 5: Sept. 23 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 version!) Week 6: Sept. 30 Frankenstein, continued Exam Week 7: Oct. 7 Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847) Week 8: Oct. 14 Jane Eyre, continued Week 9: Oct. 21 Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Week 10: Oct. 28 T. S. Eliot "The Wasteland" "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" Week 11: Nov. 4 William Butler Yeats "Adam's Curse" "The Folly of Being Comforted" "The Second Coming" Week 12: Nov. 11 James Joyce, Dubliners Week 13: Nov. 18 Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse Week 14: Nov. 25 To The Lighthouse, continued Thanksgiving Week 15: Dec. 2 Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine Week 16: Dec. 9 Catch up, wrap up Final Exam (NOT cumulative!)