English 252 1T3RA                                    Professor David Richter

Fall 2006                                          Survey of English Literature II

 

Syllabus

 

Chronology: This half of the course covers the period from the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.  Milton should have been covered in 252, the major modernist writers (including Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf) should be covered in 255 (Twentieth Century Literature in English).

 

Required Texts:

 

The Longman Anthology of English Literature, Third Edition, volumes 1C (The Restoration and Eighteenth Century), 2A (The Romantics and Their Contemporaries), and 2B (The Victorian Age).

 

Required Work:

 

A midterm, scheduled for October 17, plus a final exam, which will be scheduled during Examination Week (December 15-22).

 

Final Examination – click on the hot link for takehome exam and instructions.

 

No papers but extra credit will be granted to raise your grades based on your work on the class wiki. 

 

Here are the directions for wikiing

 

(1) Go to the WIKI site. 

(2) From there you go to the page called “Historical Context.”  There you will find a list of possible pages to add to.  Pages that are blank (no one has written anything) have dots under the words.  Pages that have already been written to are underlined. 

(3) When you click on a blank page, titled X, you will go to a screen that says, “The Page X does not yet exist … but you can create it.” 

(4) You then click on the hot link “…but you can create it.” 

(5) At this point a form comes up asking you to name your page X or to change its name.  You do either, then click at the bottom on the link that says “Create new page”.   

(6) What then comes up is a form, with the title of the page, X, and then in parens, the word “editing.”  You then type in or paste in from a previously created file what you want the page to consist of. 

(7) When you are done, you click “Preview” to see what it will look like on the Wiki, and then you can return to editing, or Save the page as it is. 

 

When you save a page for the first time, the Wiki will ask for your password (engl252) and for your name and email address.  It needs those to save the page. 

 

Once again, the extremely devious password that you will need to access the site and allow you to make changes in the files is engl252  -- the first four letters of “English” in lower case followed by the number of the course, 252.

 

The WIKI is now complete—all extra credit has now been awarded (three points per successful posting).

 

Tentative Schedule:

NB: The list is of required readings for each day and you need to keep up with the class.  We have limited class time but need to read the major figures of two and a half centuries, so not everything can be covered in class.  Those texts that will definitely be discussed in class are listed in boldface red but other texts may be discussed, and in any case all listed readings are required and regardless of whether or not they are gone over in class they will be used for paper topics and will appear on your midterm and final examinations.

      

August 31:  Introduction to the course.  A quick overview of England and Europe 1660-1900.  Enlightenment and Modernity, Revolution and Reaction, Imperialism and Industrialization to the edge of the abyss.   The changing function of literature in a changing world.  Text:  John Dryden: “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day.” (handout)

 

September 5: Poets within politics.  Text: John Dryden: “Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem,” p. 2211. Also read: Dryden: “Mac Flecknoe,” p. 2239.  Aphra Behn: Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave., p. 2278.

 

September 7:  Restoration satire on society, science and reason.  John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: “The Disabled Debauchee,” p. 2347; “The Imperfect Enjoyment,” p. 2348; “A Satyr against Reason and Mankind,” p 2351.  Also read: Samuel Pepys: The Diary, p. 2146; Robert Hooke, selections from Micrographia, p. 2182; Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, “The Description of a New Blazing World,” p. 2205.

 

September 12: Restoration satire once more.  Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub.  Full text will be available at Deep Singh’s Tale of a Tub site (unless something happens to the Lehigh website) and the part we will be closely reading in class, chapter IX, “A Digression Concerning the Original, the Use, and the Improvement of Madness in a Commonwealth,” should be there but is definitely at http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/ENGLISH/Staff/richter/swifttaleofatubchapter9.html

 

September 14: Swift: Gulliver’s Travels.  Please read at some point, now if possible, the complete 1726 edition of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, available on the net here .  The section that we will be discussing is Book IV, the Voyage to Houyhnhnmland, in your text, p. 2531.

 

September 19:  Sex and Satire. Alexander Pope: “The Rape of the Lock,” p. 2631. Mary, Lady Chudleigh, “To the Ladies” p. 2327;  Mary Leapor, “The Headache – To Aurelia,” p. 2335; “An Epistle to Artemisia on Fame” p. 2338; Jonathan Swift, “The Lady’s Dressing-Room,” p. 2506; Alexander Pope, “An Epistle to a Lady: Of the Characters of Women,” p. 2684;  Mary Leapor, “An Essay on Woman,” p. 2692.

 

September 21:  The Augustan Vision:  Alexander Pope: Book I of Essay on Man, p. 2664

 

September 26: Crime and Politics: John Gay: The Beggar’s Opera, p. 2719.  Film version available outside class.

 

September 28:. The Great Cham of Literature: Samuel Johnson: “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” p. 2861;  Rambler #4 [On Fiction], p. 2872; Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, p. 2895; Letter to Lord Chesterfield, p. 2940; Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare, p. 2919; from Lives of the Poets, p. 2931.

 

October 3: College is on Monday schedule.

 

October 5: Writing Lives: James Boswell: from London Journal, p. 2946; from Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, p. 2957; from The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D., p. 2962.

 

October 10:  The Revolution and the Rights of Man:   Edmund Burke: from Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 103; Mary Wollstonecraft: from A Vindication of the Rights of Men, p. 113;  Thomas Paine, from The Rights of Man, p. 121; William Godwin, from Political Justice, p. 128, Hannah More, from Village Politics, p. 137; Arthur Young: from The Example of France, p. 145. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

 

October 12:  William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

 

October 17:  Midterm Examination

 

October 19: William Wordsworth: "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey," p. 404; "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways," p. 422; "Three Years She Grew," p. 427; "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," p 423; "Michael,” p. 433.

 

October 24: Wordsworth: Preface to Lyrical Ballads; "Ode: Intimations of Immortality”; “Resolution and Independence."

 

October 26: Samuel Taylor Coleridge:  “Frost at Midnight,” p. 576; “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” p. 580;  “Kubla Khan,” p. 614

 

October 31: Coleridge: “Dejection: An Ode,” p. 619; Biographia Literaria, p. 628; from Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 641.

 

November 2: George Gordon, Lord Byron: “She Walks in Beauty,” p. 658; “So we’ll go no more a-roving,” p. 659; Don Juan, Dedication and Canto 1, p. 727.

 

November 7: Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias,” p. 823; “Adonais,” p. 841; from “A Defence of Poetry,” p. 867.

 

November 9:  John Keats: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” p. 924; “The Eve of St. Agnes,” p. 935; “La Belle Dame sans Mercy,” p. 946.

 

November 14: Keats: Ode to a Nightingale, p. 953; Ode to a Grecian Urn, p. 955; Ode to Melancholy, p. 959; To Autumn, p. 960; “Bright Star” p. 991, Letters to Benjamin Bailey and to George and Thomas Keats.

 

November 16: Industrial England:  Thomas Carlyle, from Past and Present, p. 1125;  Anonymous, “The Steam Loom Weaver,” p. 1139; Fanny Kemble, Record of a Girlhood, p. 1140; Thomas Babington Macaulay, from Review of Southey’s Colloquies, p. 1141; Charles Dickens: from Dombey and Son, p. 1146 and from Hard Times, p. 1147; Friedrich Engels, from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, p. 1150; Henry Mayhew, from London Labour and the London Poor, p. 1158.

 

November 21: Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Mariana,” p. 1233; “The Lady of Shalott,” p. 1235; “The Lotos-Eaters,” p. 1240; “Ulysses,” p. 1244; “Tithonus,” p. 1246; Songs from The Princess: “Tears, Idle Tears,” “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,” and “Come Down O Maid.”

 

November 23: Thanksgiving Day, no classes.

 

November 28:  Tennyson: “In Memoriam A.H.H.” p. 1260; from Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur,” p. 1316.

 

November 30: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” p. 1200.  Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess,” p. 1415; “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church,” p. 1419

 

December 5: Robert Browning: “Fra Lippo Lippi,” p. 1433; “Andrea Del Sarto,” p. 1445; “Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology on the Island,” p. 1454.

 

December 7: Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach,” p. 1662; Culture and Anarchy, p. 1695.  Christina Rossetti: “Song: When I am dead, my dearest” p. 1725; Goblin Market, p. 1731.  William Morris: “The Defence of Guinevere, p. 1748; The Haystack in the Floods, p. 1756.

 

December 12: Algernon Charles Swinburne: “A Forsaken Garden,” p. 1775;  Gerard Manley Hopkins: “God’s Grandeur” p. 1792; “Spring and Fall,” p. 1797; Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din” and “Recessional”; Lord Alfred Douglas: “Two Loves.”

 

December 14: Reading Day

 

December 19 (week of): Final Examination

 

Contact Information

MISCELLANEOUS: My office is Klapper 639; telephone # (718) 997-4667; fax 997-4693; e-mail via internet "david_richter@qc.edu".  My departmental webpage is http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/ENGLISH/Staff/richter/index.html

 

My home address, if you need to mail me a paper, is Apartment 4F, 201 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024; telephone there is 212-580-3336.

 

My scheduled "office hours" are 3:15 to 4:30 TR, but I am usually in or around my office all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-5:00.