Literary History II (1700-1900)
Course Description
This course is a survey of British and American literature written (roughly) between the years 1700 and 1900. Our goal for the semester will be to consider the ways in which diverse writers used literature to represent, shape, and sometimes resist their rapidly changing worlds. Indeed, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the intensification of a whole host of “modernized” forces: revolutions (both political and industrial), empire, as well as new conceptions of the self. In this course, we’ll read and closely analyze texts produced on both sides of the Atlantic, with the aim of better understanding how literary forms, genres, and styles interacted with the broader cultures in which they were produced.
Throughout the semester, we’ll also pay special attention to the dynamics of canon-formation itself. How have racialized and gendered regimes of personhood impacted the creation, reception, circulation, and legacy of various texts? How might we—as twenty-first century readers and critics—engage with the archive while also attending to its gaps and limitations? And how might the inclusion of non-canonical texts (especially those written by women, Black, and Native authors) revise our sense of English literary history?
Required Texts
Jane Austen, Persuasion (Broadview, 1998)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Broadview, 2004)
Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories (Penguin, 2016)
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Vol. C) (2018)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Broadview, 1998)
Assignments
1. Participation
For this class to be a lively and productive group conversation, I’d like all voices to be included. I understand that not everyone is comfortable with verbal participation in a classroom setting. If this description feels familiar, please come to my office hours and we’ll talk about how we can best incorporate your ideas into the class.
Attendance is part of your participation grade. Attending and being attentive in each class meeting may not always be possible, but I hope you will make an earnest effort. I always appreciate hearing from you if you are going to miss class; this helps me to keep a record of ongoing engagement even if you can’t be present, and it allows us to come up with a plan for making up any work. You can miss two classes without penalty; if you will miss more than two, please talk to me about it.
2. Epistles to a Classmate; or, Canvas Posts
In this class, we will be experimenting with the form of the discussion post. Rather than simply posting a comment to no one, you will be writing epistolary discussion posts. (Epistolary means “relating to the writing of letters.” An epistle is a letter.) This means that your discussion posts will be letters of a sort, written to someone in particular. Throughout the semester, you will be writing posts to a single someone, and that someone will be writing back to you.
I will be dividing the class into two groups: group A and group B. Each person in group A will have a class pen-pal in group B. Those in group A will write to those in group B, and vice versa. Here’s how it’s going to work:
Beginning in week 3, group A will meet on Friday for a synchronous, online discussion. Group B will not meet for class on Friday. Instead, the members of group B will make a discussion post – that is, they will write a letter to their class pen-pal and post it on a Canvas thread reserved just for them. Like any discussion post, these letters should reflect your thoughts and questions about at least one of the texts assigned for that week. They might develop observations about a passage, ask intellectually risky questions about where you ran aground in the reading, draw attention to issues that may have escaped others’ notice; or recapitulate an argument in order to frame or anticipate debates.
What distinguishes these posts is that they should in some way take the form of a correspondence. We’ll talk in class about what exactly distinguishes correspondence from standard discussion posts, but the main feature is that this writing has an explicitly interpersonal nature: it is directed toward a particular reader and it is considerate of that reader’s real, embodied existence. These letters should be posted by 10am Friday morning so that group A pen-pals will have time to read them before the smaller-group discussion on Zoom.
These smaller Friday meetings will be an opportunity for us to have unmasked, face-to-face encounters, and to have a more intimate discussion. Recipients of letters should be prepared to speak about the letters they’ve received from their pen-pals. Our discussion can address as many letters as you wish to discuss, or we can consider other topics. Regardless, your job after the Friday meeting will be to respond to your pen-pal on Canvas. Responses should be made by Sunday at 5pm.
The next week, the process will reverse: group A will write letters to group B; group B will meet to discuss the letters (and other topics) during a Friday Zoom meeting; group B will then respond to group A.
Posts should be at least 100-250 words but may be longer. You’re also welcome to incorporate links or other media to share with your pen-pal.
3. Midterm
The midterm for this course will take place in class on Friday, March 11. We will review for the midterm in class on Wednesday, March 9.
4. Essay (5-7 pp.)
For this essay assignment, you will select and analyze one or more course texts with the aim of exploring the relationship between our twenty-first-century present and the historical past. You may incorporate current events, technologies, art, literature, and media as part of your essay. The best essays will not simply leap to judgments about the past – as if we in the present have progressed beyond it; the best essays will extend generosity to writers of the past before offering criticism or points of departure. The best essays will likely be those that express complexity about the relationship between past and present; they will find points of connection, resemblance, and even lineage, while also acknowledging the ways in which contemporary genres, media, and modes of expression may differ from past iterations. You’ll receive detailed instructions for this assignment in the coming weeks.
5. Concept map
Instead of a final exam, you will complete a concept map for this course. A concept map is a graphic tool for the organization and representation of knowledge. Coggle (coggle.it) is a great tool for mapping concepts. You’re also welcome to go with an alternate medium of your choice: e.g., a bound book or sketchbook, a drawing or painting, something involving graphic design, a slide show, a website, a video, etc. You’ll receive detailed instructions for this assignment as we approach the end of term.
Schedule of Readings
Week 1:
introduction
read Daniel Defoe, selections from Robinson Crusoe (Norton, pp. 566-576); J.M. Coetzee, selections from Foe (Canvas)
discussion / no new reading
Week 2:
read Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Canto 1 (Norton, pp, 506-511)
watch The Favourite (Canvas)
Week 3:
read Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Cantos 2-5 (Norton, pp. 512-525)
read Eliza Haywood, Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (Norton, pp. 608-628)
discussion / no new reading
Week 4:
read Jonathan Swift, “The Lady’s Dressing Room” and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “The Reasons That Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room” (Norton, pp. 636-642); read poems by Mary Leapor (Norton, pp. 653-657)
read John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (Norton, pp. 657-702)
discussion / no new reading
Week 5:
read Joseph Addison, Spectator, nos. 10, 69, and 411 (Norton, pp. 465-67, 471-73, 481-83) and Spectator, no. 50 (Canvas) read Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village” and George Crabbe, “The Village” (Norton, pp. 1008-1023)
discussion / no new reading
Week 6:
read Samuel Johnson, Rambler, no. 60 (Norton, pp. 729-32) and Frances Burney, selections from the journal and letters (Norton, pp. 940-958)
read Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Norton, pp. 980-90) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “On the Slave Trade” (Canvas)
discussion / no new reading
Week 7:
read Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts” (Canvas)
watch Belle (Canvas)
discussion / no new reading
Week 8:
Jane Austen, “Plan of a Novel” (Canvas) and Persuasion (textbook)
Persuasion
Persuasion
Week 9:
Anna Letitia Barbauld, “The Caterpillar” and “Eighteen Hundred Eleven” (Canvas)
midterm review / no new reading
midterm
Week 10:
read selected prose and poetry by William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth (Canvas)
read selected prose and poetry by John Keats (Canvas)
discussion / no new reading
Week 11:
read poems by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Canvas) and Melissa K. Nelson, “Getting Dirty: The Eco-Eroticism of Women in Indigenous Oral Literatures” (Canvas)
essay proposal workshop / no new reading
essay workshop / no new reading
Week 12:
read Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (textbook)
read Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
read Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Week 13:
read Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (textbook)
read Melville, selections from “The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles” (textbook); and Walt Whitman, “Passage to India” (Canvas)
selected poetry by Emily Dickinson (Canvas)
Week 14:
read Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Aurora Leigh” and Christina Rosetti, “Goblin Market” (Canvas)
read Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (textbook)
read Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Week 15:
read Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
watch The Happy Prince (Canvas)
concept map workshop with partner / wrap-up
concept map due on Canvas by 5pm