ENGLISH 301 - Junior Seminar in English Literary History

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

America after the Fall Full course for one semester. This course, a study of the methods and a sample of the materials of American literary history, will focus on epic and lyric poetry. Texts will include Milton's Paradise Lost and the poetry of Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. In addition, there will be substantial reading in literary theory and an extensive critical bibliography project. We will consider questions about genre, literary authority, tradition and innovation, canon formation, and intertextuality. Primarily for English majors, for whom the junior seminar is usually required no later than the end of the junior year. Prerequisites: junior standing and two English courses at the 200 level or above. Conference. Not offered 2009-10. Irony, Allegory, Epic Full course for one semester. A study of the methods and a sample of the materials of English literary history using the narrative tradition extending from Chaucer to Fielding. Texts include Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale," Spenser's Faerie Queene, Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Fielding's Tom Jones. There will be substantial reading in literary theory. We will consider questions about representation, figures and tropes, genre, influence, intertextuality, authority, tradition and innovation, and canon formation. Primarily for English majors, for whom the junior seminar is required no later than the end of the junior year. Prerequisites: junior standing, two English courses at the 200 level, or consent of instructor. ConLyric, Epic, Künstlerroman Full course for one semester. A study of the methods and a sample of the materials of English literary history. After some definitional questions, the course will begin with an examination of change and continuity in the English sonnet. We will then focus especially upon Wordsworth's Prelude, considered both as a transformation of the epic tradition and as the main poetic exemplar of what would become the novel of artistic self-discovery and development. Texts to be read include: Spenser, The Fairie Queene (Book I); Milton, Paradise Lost; Thomson, The Seasons; Wordsworth ,The Prelude; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Woolf, To the Lighthouse. Throughout the semester, we will address problems of canon construction, literary intertextuality, generic transformation, and critical history. Students will develop their own critical history of approaches to a work by a major author. This course is primarily for English majors, for whom the junior seminar is usually required no later than the end of the junior year. Prerequisites: junior standing, two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man This course will engage in an in-depth study of Ellison's 1952 novel by reading not only the text, but also Ellison's essays and interviews and a substantial amount of the critical history. Additionally, we will read texts alluded to in the novel by Emerson, Twain, Douglass, Washington, Du Bois, Whitman, Garvey, and T.S. Eliot. Students must assemble an annotated bibliography of 25 major essays on and a critical history of one major text covered by the parameters of the course. This course is primarily for English majors, for whom the junior seminar is usually required no later than the end of the junior year.Prerequisites: junior standing and two English courses at the 200 level or above. Conference.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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