Syllabus for 45 B. Instructor: Charles Altieri, Wheeler 427

OH Mon 1-2: 3-5.

Jan 18—Introduction

Jan 23. The Puritans in the U.S. Bradford, Norton Anthology of Am Lit 156-61,

194-5; Winthrop 206-17; Mather 392-97; Edwards 498-511

‘ 25. American Exceptionalism. Franklin 534-37; Crevecoeur 657-666;

Jefferson 726-32, 734-37; Federalist 742-47

“ 30. Congreve, The Way of the World, Norton Anthology of English literature,

2228-2284

Feb 1, Swift, “A Modest Proposal” 2462-2468. Begin Gulliver’s Travels, 2323.

Feb 6 and 8 All Gulliver’s Travels.

Feb 13. The pleasures of the heroic couplet. Pope, 2405-6 (a selection from

“Essay on Criticism” and from “Dunciad” 2559-61. All of Ann Finch and Lady

Mary Wortley MOntagu and Earl of Rochester, 2168-2171.

“ 15. Pope, “Rape of the Lock.” I also highly recommend “Eloise and Abelard” 2513-24, but probably will not get to it in class.

Feb 20. Holiday

“ 22. William Blake. Norton anthology of Romantic Literature, 79-97

Feb 27. Wordsworth, preface to Lyrical ballads 262-73, poems 258-62, 274-77

Mar 1. Wordsworth cont—292-301, 317 314-17, 361-367. Landscape painting.

Mar 6. Keats, Letters and 880-863, 887-901, 939

“ 8. Keats 901-926.

Mar 13 and march 15. Jane Austen, Emma.

“ 17 Midterm**—in sections.

Mar 20. Emerson, “Nature,” Norton Anthology of American Lit., 1107-11181128-

1134, and “Experience” 1192-1206

“ 22. Poe, “Fall of the House of Usher” 1534-1546, “The Purloined Letter.”

Spring Break

Apr 3 . Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” 1263-1272, “The Minister’s Black

Veil” 1280-1288.

“ 5. Hawthorne, “young Goodman Brown” 1263-72, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

1313-1332.

Apr 10. Melville, “”Bartleby the Scrivener,” 2330-2344. begin Benito C.

“ 12. ‘ , Benito Cereno, 2371-2426..

Apr 17. Emily Dickinson, poems 2499-2523

“ 19. “ , poems 2524-2542.

Apr. 24 Tennyson, Norton Anthology of Victorian Lit, 1109-1126, 1166-1175.

“ 26. Browning, 1255, 1259-65, 1271-86.

May 1 Arnold, 1350-1357, 1368, 1374-1385,1398-1401

“ 3, and May 8 review and catch up.

There will be a lot of reading and regular quizzes—this is the only way to do a survey and to prepare yourself eventually to enjoy the material. There will also be questions for the class available on my website at least by 10PM the evening before the class. There will be quizzes on these questions.

I also have to comment on the texts for the course. I initially ordered two very general Norton anthologies. This year for the first time they broke the anthologies into several texts. They are giving you a very good deal on the English anthologies, and if you are an English major you should buy them. But in case you are short on money, I will produce a reader that includes all that I am assigning from the Victorian anthology. And this reader will contain all that I am assigning from the first American literature anthology from 1495 to 1820. The reader will also contain some philosophy texts that we will not actually study in class, but I recommend them for anyone interested in the period. Sorry for this complexity, but it stems from wanting coverage in this course and also texts in which you browse forever.

There will be two papers and mid-term in this course, along with some short writing assignments imitating the texts we read (for example you might try the first or the last two paragraphs of a puritan sermon). (You can extend this assignment to cover one of the papers. The section leaders can set the dates and decide whether you should all hand in at once or sequence each of the papers. I will suggest dates and topics but the leaders have the power to modify the assignments. The first paper will be due March 6. It can be a close reading of any text or section of a text we have studied. I will explain what I mean by a “close reading” in the course of the course. The second paper will be due on May 1. I would like this to a be a comparison of two short passages where you see that close attention to the difference between the passages can make a distinctive contribution to understanding some form of cultural pressure creating problems for the authors. You can deal with big problems like concerns with religion or gender or moral value, or you can try more nuanced issues like qualities of character or affect that seem called upon by situations, or that fail to handle the problems addressed. Another possibility is that you write an essay on some Victorian novel dealing with similarities and differences from the treatment of character in Jane Austen.