Last updated: Apr. 25, 2008
Week 1: Jan. 14-18
Mon. Introduction
Wed. Alexander Pope's site: eighteenth century music, painting, cosmos, and revolution.
Fri. Continue Wed.'s discussion. Read Alexander Pope, "Essay on Man." You will find this poem on the Pope site/ Poetry.
Week 2: Jan. 21-25
Mon. Holiday: Martin Luther King Day.
Wed. Assignment: "Essay on Man." Objective for reading Pope and possible Mid-Term Exam question: After viewing and listening to the files on the eighteenth century (Pope's site on my website) and reading "Essay on Man" characterize what it might feel like to live in this era. In other words, would you feel enlivened (upbeat) by Newton's discoveries and the spirit of revolution and enlightenment or would you feel like Pope, rather afraid? Also, think of the mood or tone of the music and painting of this period. Why are there so many depictions of classical (Greek or Roman) subjects? This may be clearer to you after you read the information on the Revolution.
Introduction to Dickens
Fri. Charles Dickens's Bleak House, chapters 1-4.
Week 3: Jan. 28-Feb. 1
Assignment
Mon. Romantics: Wordsworth's and Coleridge's revolutionary views on poetry.
Read in the British Literature II textbook, William Wordsworth, The Lucy Poems: "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known" p. 251; "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" p. 252; "Three Years She Grew" p. 252 ; "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" p. 254; "I Travelled among Unknown Men." p. 254
"It is a Beauteous Evening" p. 297; "The World Is Too Much with Us" p. 297
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality" p. 286.
Response paper # 1 due Wed.: What is revolutionary about Wordsworth's poetry?
Click here to see the errors I will hold you responsible for: Grammar errors
Click here to see an example of a response paper: Sample response paper
Fri. Charles Dickens's Bleak House, chapters 5-8
Week 4: Feb. 4-8
Mon. "Tintern Abbey," p. 235. In "Tintern Abbey" he describes altering, or changing, his consciousness in lines 37-49.
Wed. Essay # 1 due Wed., Feb. 6. Contrast the concerns of Alexander Pope in the eighteenth century to Wordsworth in the nineteenth. What is different about the two poets?
You must use two secondary sources that you find from the college databases. Please see the syllabus for a link to the databases and for a sample essay. You will also find there a link to Knight Cite which will write the citations for your Works Cited.
Avoid any articles with word "Review" in them and any biography/reference databases -- do not choose an article from Biography Resource Center, Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale Literary Databases, Literary Reference Center, Literature Resource Center, Scribner Writers, and Twayne's Author Series.
JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, and ProjectMuse are the most comprehensive databases.
Grading checklist: I use this checklist to grade your essays. If you do not follow the thesis/topic sentence organization you cannot make higher than a C on an essay. Also, if you have too many grammatical errors, you cannot make higher than a C.
Assignment
Wed. William Blake, poet and artist: from Songs of Innocence and Experience: Compare "The Lamb" in Songs of Innocence to "Tyger" in Songs of Experience and compare "The Chimney Sweeper" in Songs of Innocence to "The Chimney Sweeper" in Songs of Experience.
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 9-12
Week 5: Feb. 11-15
Mon. Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" p. 439. Also, read Coleridge's explanation of the poem on p. 439.
Wed. Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale" p. 849; "Ode to a Grecian Urn" p. 851
Response paper # 2 due Wed.: What lines in the "Ode to a Nightingale" can you point to that suggests he experiences a change in consciousness? Does he experience something similar to Wordsworth?
Shelley, "Ozymandias" p. 725
[Note on "Ozymandias": this name is a made-up name of an ancient king of Egypt. Great kings built monuments to themselves, temples, and sculptures in the belief that these works, so gigantic and made of solid stone would last forever. And yet the traveler in the poem comes across a broken bit of the sculpture: nothing lasts forever, the poem is implying, nothing but a "Wreck" and "lone and level sands" stretching far away. This is an ironic poem. Look at what the king has written on the pedestal of his statue, and look at what has remained.]
Please read the explanations of some of these poems on their poets' web sites: Romantics
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 13-16
Week 6: Feb. 18-22
Mon.
Victorian Poetry
Assignment
Mon. The Victorian Age: culture, music, and art.
Wed. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," p. 1204; The Lotus Eaters," p. 1208; "Ulysses" p. 1213
Response paper # 3 due Wed.: What is Victorian about this poetry? How is it different from Romantic poetry?
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 17-20
Week 7: Feb. 25-Feb. 29
Assignment
Mon. "In Memoriam": poems # 54, 55, 56 p. 1230; "The Charge of the Light Brigade," p. 1280
Response paper # 4 due : Explain how "In Memoriam" illustrates the religious doubt that Darwin caused. See the Darwin page on the Victorian website. Also, comment on how the tone of the music in the nineteenth century has changed from the tone of the music of the eighteenth century. What do you think accounts for this change?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "Sonnets from the Portuguese," pp. 1179-1180. (Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning eloped and spent their married life in Italy.)
Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess," p. 1352; "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church," p. 1359; "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" p. 1367
Emily Bronte, "Remembrance" p. 1421
Mathew Arnold, "Dover Beach" ( 1867) p. 1492
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 21-24
Week 8: Mar. 3-7
Assignment
Mon. and Wed., Continue with Browning, Arnold, Bronte
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 25-28
Response paper on Bleak House is due. See topics on Dickens's website.
Week 9: Mar. 10-14
Mon. and Wed. Mid-Term Exam: TBA
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 29-32
Week 10: Mar. 17-21
Spring Break
Bleak House, chapters 33-44
Week 11: Mar. 24-28
Dickens quiz
The Twentieth Century
Assignment
Thomas Hardy: "The Darkling Thrush," p. 1937; "Channel Firing," p. 1944
A. E. Houseman: "To an Athlete Dying Young," p. 2042
World War I Poets
Mon. The World War I Poets site: twentieth century music and painting , war, and cosmos.
Wed. Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier" p. 2050
Wilfred Owen: "Anthem for Doomed Youth," p. 2066; "Dulce Et Decorum Est," p. 2069; "Disabled," p. 2071; from Owen's Letters to His Mother, p. 2072
Siegfried Sassoon: "They," p. 2055; "The General," p. 2056; "Glory of Women," p. 2057; from Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, p. 2058
Wed. Response paper # 5: Discuss the darkness of the WWI poets' vision.
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 45-48
Week 12: Mar. 31-Apr. 2 (no class Friday)
Assignment
Mon. William Butler Yeats pp. 2085-2130: Poetry of Phase 1 and 2: "The Stolen Child," "The Rose of the World," "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "When You Are Old," "Who Goes with Fergus?" "The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland," "Adam's Curse," "No Second Troy," "A Coat," "The Wild Swans at Coole"
Wed. Bleak House, chapters 49-52
Week 13: Apr. 7-11
Assignment
"The Circus Animal's Desertion"
Yeats: Poetry of Phase 3 and 4: "The Second Coming," "A Prayer for My Daughter," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Lead and the Swan," "Among School Children," "Byzantium," "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop," "Lapis Lazuli," "The Circus Animals' Desertion"; please read the commentary on the Yeats site: Yeats/Poetry
Response # 6 due Mon., Apr. 18 at noon: Compare one of the poems in stage 3 or 4 to an early poem from stage 1 or 2.
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 53-56
Week 14: Apr. 14-18
Assignment
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, p. 2368. Please study the site on Eliot with the footnotes in an easier (I hope) format to read. I also have commentary on Notes and there is a Recording to listen to from an expert discussing the themes.
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 57-60
Response # 7 due Apr. 23: Write an response in which you explain "modernism" using lines and/or stanzas from the poetry of Eliot and Yeats. In other words, explain how these two writers' works are modern, how they are different from the poetry of the previous century.
Week 15: Apr. 21-25
Assignment
Mon. Essay # 2 due: Bleak House. TBA
You must use two secondary sources that you find from the college databases. Please see the syllabus for a link to the databases and for a sample essay. You will also find there a link to Knight Cite which will write the citations for your Works Cited.
Avoid any articles with word "Review" in them and any biography/reference databases -- do not choose an article from Biography Resource Center, Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale Literary Databases, Literary Reference Center, Literature Resource Center, Scribner Writers, and Twayne's Author Series.
JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, and ProjectMuse are the most comprehensive databases.
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot, Watch the film in class.
Wed.
Fri. Bleak House, chapters 61-64
Week 16: Apr. 28-May 2
Read the poems by Ted Hughes found on the Hughes web site under "Poems"; the Sylvia Plath material is optional.
No writing assignment
Wed. No class. Go to the Testing Center for the second test on quotations.
Fri. Bleak House lunch
Week 17: May 5-9 Exam Week
Thurs. May 8, Graduation Day