English 571 British Masterpieces in the Classroom

English 571-A01, A60, A61, A62
British Masterpieces in the Classroom

Summer Session A, May 29-June 29
Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:00‹7:45, Tate Page Hall 0130

Professor Lloyd Davies
Cherry Hall 132
lloyd.davies@wku.edu
Phone: 745-5717 (office); 781-7422 (home)

Texts

Aims and Organization

This course is meant to give you graduate-level exposure to the great tradition of British literature while preparing you to teach these works in a secondary school classroom. We will proceed chronologically, touching on representative texts from each major period and dealing with pedagogical issues as they arise. In essence, this is a one-semester survey of the entire corpus of British literature, but with an emphasis on selected masterpieces.

Our primary text will be the Holt Rinehart Winston textbook, Elements of Literature, a standard text for high school senior English classes. The publisher's representative has graciously provided us with two complete kits of supplementary material for instruction which we will incorporate into our study. One of the kits will reside in the Bowling Green classroom, and the other in Owensboro. Our readings in Elements of Literature will be correlated with the Reading Contract for the M.A. Oral Examination in English; where possible, we will read works that fulfil its requirements. I also am supplementing our basic text with three other books: a Cambridge School Shakespeare edition of Macbeth (an edition designed for school-age children); a Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice; and one of the books in the MLA's Approaches to texts series: Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. These books are meant to expose you to some of the additional resources available to enrich your own understanding of British literature.

Assignments and written Work

  1. You will write four short papers of 3-4 pages each, with at least one paper in each of these three categories: narrative, drama, and poetry. You must inform me of your topic the week before the paper is due. These papers should be conceived of as practical essays which will help you better understand a genre, period, theme, text, or author, in order to enhance your teaching of literature in the classroom.
  2. You must write one (but only one) review essay on one of our supplementary books.
  3. You must use one of the other MLA Approaches to Teaching books for one of your essays (for instance, there are volumes on Beowulf, Keats, etc.). This is the only specific requirement involving library research.
  4. Familiarize yourself with the resources available in the EL kit. At least one of your papers should use those resources. You should also prepare a classroom presentation of your work making use of those resources (overhead, Web page, etc.) and evaluating their usefulness (ten minutes).
  5. You should be prepared to present the content of any of your papers to the class at the time that we cover that material. You may not read from your paper. This should be a presentation of no more than ten minutes. You should expect to make at least one presentations during the term, not including your EL kit presentation.
  6. For each class period you should construct a list of the key literary terms used for that segment. It should include the term, a definition, and an example from the readings for that day. You may consult the Handbook of Literary Terms in EL 1189-1203, which lists 141 terms and gives relevant page numbers. For instance, the first readings in Collection 1 would include epic, epic hero, alliteration, caesura, kenning, elegy, etc. (You are not responsible for the other literary works in each collection, but you do need to be familiar with terms mentioned in reference to them.) You will receive credit for each session in which you turn in a list.

In summary, your four papers will include

  1. a review essay (on one of our supplementary books);
  2. an essay using a MLA Approaches to Teaching text;
  3. an essay using EL kit. materials; oral presentation based on this work;
  4. an open essay.

Paper Topics

1. Narrative: due during Week Two. Choose one of the following:

  1. Write a thematic essay on Beowulf.
  2. Write a review essay on Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
  3. Write a thematic essay on one of the Canterbury Tales.
  4. Write an essay on Collection 1 or 2 from EL.
  5. Write an essay based on a genre from the readings from these collections (epic, narrative poem, etc.).

2. Drama: due during Week Three. Choose one of the following:

  1. Write a review essay on the Cambridge School Shakespeare edition of Macbeth.
  2. Write a thematic essay on Macbeth.
  3. Write an essay on Collection 3 from EL.
  4. Write an essay based on the genre of tragedy.

3. Poetry: due during Week Four. Choose one of the following:

  1. Write a thematic essay on carpe diem poetry.
  2. Write an essay on a specific genre (like the sonnet).
  3. Write an essay on a specific author and his work (like Keats).
  4. Write an essay on a specific literary period (like Romanticism).
  5. Write an essay on Collection 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 in EL (focus on the specific poems selected for class).

4. Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: due during Week Five. Choose one of the following:

  1. Write a review essay on the Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice.
  2. Write a thematic essay on Pride and Prejudice.
  3. Write an essay on a specific author and his work (like Tennyson).
  4. Write an essay on a specific literary period (like Victorian).
  5. Write an essay on Collection 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 in EL (focus on the specific poems selected for class).

Grades

You will receive a letter grade on your four papers, two presentations, and your cumulative list of literary terms. Your seven grades will be averaged to reach your final grade.

Criteria for grades

1. papers will be judged on their written quality (structure, organization, grammar, usage) and on their rhetorical/argumentative content: is your paper not only well written but also insightful, informative, and persuasive?
2. Presentations should also be well organized, to the point, and confident.
3. Your cumulative list of literary terms should be orderly, clear, and complete.

Schedule

Note: stars indicate texts and authors listed in the Reading Contract for the M.A. Oral Examination in English

Week One: Introductions

May 30: Introduction to course, materials, assignments

Week Two: Early English Literature

June 4: Anglo-Saxon Period/Old English (449-1066)

Collection 1

Beowulf. EL 18

June 6: Middle Ages/Middle English (1066-1485)

Collection 2

* Geoffrey Chaucer
* "General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales. EL 103
* from "The Pardoner's Tale" EL 129
* "The Wife of Bath's Tale" EL 138

Gibaldi's Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Week Three: Shakespearian Tragedy

June 11: Macbeth

Collection 4

* Shakespeare
* Macbeth EL 300

June 13: Macbeth

The Cambridge School Shakespeare edition of Macbeth

Week Four: Poetry from the Renaissance through Romanticism

June 18: Renaissance (1485-1660)/Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1660-1800)

Collection 3

* William Shakespeare: The Sonnet
* Sonnet 29: "When in disgrace" EL 225
* Sonnet 73: "That time of year" EL 226
* Sonnet 116: "Let me not to the marriage" EL 228
* Sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes" EL 229

Carpe diem poetry
Christopher Marlowe
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" EL 231
Sir Walter Raleigh
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" EL 235
Robert Herrick
"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" EL 239
Andrew Marvell
"To His Coy Mistress" EL 241

* John Donne
* "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" EL 247
* "Death be not proud" EL 253

Collection 5

* John Milton
* from Paradise Lost, Book One, 1-270. EL 440

Collection 6

* Alexander Pope
* from An Essay on Man, EL 524
* from The Rape of the Lock, EL 526

Collection 7

Thomas Gray
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" EL 601

June 20: Romanticism (1798-1832)

Collection 8

William Wordsworth
* "Lines...Tintern Abbey" EL 657
* from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" EL 667

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Kubla Khan" EL 679
"The Rime of the Ancient Marine" EL 683

Collection 9

Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Ode to the West Wind" EL 734

* John Keats
* "Ode to a Nightingale" EL 754
* "Ode on a Grecian Urn" EL 760
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" EL 750

Week Five: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century

June 25: The English Novel

Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice (Norton Critical Edition)
EL 726

June 27: Poetry (Victorian Period (1832-1901)/Twentieth Century)

Collection 10

* Alfred, Lord Tennyson
* "The Lady of Shallot" EL 807
* "Ulysses" EL 821
"Crossing the Bar" EL 824

* Robert Browning
* "My Last Duchess" EL 829

Collection 11

Matthew Arnold
"Dover Beach" EL 847

Collection 12

* William Butler Yeats
* "The Second Coming" EL 923
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" EL 979

Collection 13

Dylan Thomas
"Fern Hill" EL 1033
"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" EL 1038

Collection 14

W. H. Auden
"Musée des Beaux Arts" EL 1092

Back to teaching.