ENGL 4145, Victorian literature

Summer, 2004

Humanities 225

Insenga

 

Office: TLC 2238

Office Hours:  10:30-12:00, TR and by appointment

E-mail: ainsenga@westga.edu

Website: http://www.westga.edu/~ainsenga/

Office phone: 770 836 6512

Home phone:  770 378 2387 (you can call up until 8 p.m.)

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Course Description:

In his text Victorian People and Ideas, Richard Altick claims of the era that “The only human certainties were that everything, in ethics, religion, history, experience, was relative, and that absolutes, if they did exist, were beyond man’s grasp; and that since evolution was the basic law of life, all was flux.”  Out of such a quagmire several social and artistic reactions arose.  Some threw themselves headlong into paradigmatic beliefs in religion or science while others reveled in that which was “beyond man’s grasp” by creating the fantastic and the terrible, monsters born out of uncertainty.  Still others fancied the occult, and sought contact with the ghosts that reminded them of their past or could possibly foretell their future.  As a means of entering into dialogue with the era, we’ll examine the tropes of the monster and the ghost in Victorian literature. 

 

Course Objectives:

  • To develop an understanding of the literary and historical period known as “The Victorian Era”
  • To sustain discussion of a common trope across genre boundary lines
  • To read prose and poetry from the era and understand major narrative structures/poetics utilized
  • To write analytically about the era using both primary and secondary materials

 

Required Textbooks:

Altick, Richard. Victorian People and Ideas

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights:  A Norton Critical Edition

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre:  A Norton Critical Edition

Stoker, Bram. Dracula:  A Norton Critical Edition

Various Victorian poems (anthology TBA)

 

Major Assignments/Percentage Breakdown

  • Four, one single-spaced page Reading Responses (40%):  first one is 5%, second and third are 10%, and the last is 15%
  • In-class, 15-20 minute presentation: (20%)
  • 8-10 page research paper:  (30%)
  • class participation (10%): involves willingness to discuss, preparedness, active listening, and attendance

 

Description of Major Assignments:

  • The Reading Response:  For each of the responses, you’ll be free to choose a topic of interest from the current text.  All I ask is that you have a claim and support it with either the primary text or a secondary source like Altick or one of the articles from the Norton Critical editions I’ve asked you to purchase.  I ask that you keep to the one, single-spaced page requirement, though I won’t penalize you should you write more. Writing less than what is required will result in lowered grades. Each Response must be word-processed using 10 or 12 point font, and should be well-written, adhering to the standards of the English language. 
  • The Research paper:  We’ll be using MLA documentation for this 8-10 page paper. There are two options for the research paper.  The first one entails doing a history of critical reception for one of our texts or a longer poem.  Essentially, should you choose this option, your goal becomes examining the various critical responses to the text at hand; you may focus on various theoretical schools (New Historical readings of Jane Eyre, feminist readings of Jane Eyre, and psychoanalytical readings, for example) or create a linear-based paper which isolates the major schools of thought from the text’s inception to the present.  The second research paper option involves study of a “monster” or “ghost” figure/icon over time—from the Victorian era to present.  You may use poetry, film, prose, or fiction for this option.  You could also modify this assignment by examining various cinematic representations of a figure over time (from the Victorian to the most modern), or examine different cinematic representations of one of our texts (all the different Jane Eyre films, for example).   There are some examples of both of these options in all of our critical editions. For example, in Jane Eyre, see the essays which begin on pages 457 and 515.  In Dracula, you may also examine the “Reviews and Reactions” section and the essays which begin on pages 404 and 470.
  • The Presentation:  See the list of options and the assignment sheet for details.

 

Plagiarism/Collusion

From the English Department’s website:  “The Department of English and Philosophy defines plagiarism as taking personal credit for the words and ideas of others as they are presented in electronic, print, and verbal sources. The Department expects that students will accurately credit sources in all assignments. An equally dishonest practice is fabricating sources or facts; it is another form of misrepresenting the truth. Plagiarism is grounds for failing the course.  The University policies for handling Academic Dishonesty are found at the following internet URLs:

·        The Faculty Handbook http://www.westga.edu/~vpaa/handrev/

·        Student Uncatalogue: "Rights and Responsibilities" http://www.westga.edu/handbook/”

 

Attendance/Workload

Summer classes can present challenges.  Our course meets 16 times in eight weeks.  The university requires that we accomplish a semester’s worth of work in this time period.  Because of this requirement, the rules for attendance are strict since one absence is equivalent to missing a week’s worth of work.  For this reason, should you miss more than two class periods, you’ll be dropped from the course. Each class lasts 2 ½ hours, and we’ll take a fifteen minute break during each class.  Please know that leaving or arriving at the break will count as an absence.

 

The workload will be rigorous as we move through our goals this summer.  You can expect about 50 pages of reading per night, and the heaviest reading loads will be assigned on Thursdays for Tuesday classes since you have five nights to read.  I’ve attempted to mitigate some of the stress by focusing largely on active reading and analytical writing instead of testing or quizzing, and I hope that this class structure helps you focus on the primary texts and the tasks at hand rather than mere memorization and regurgitation of facts.  On each class day between novels, we’ll have a poetry day, and the reading load will almost always be less than 50 pages on those days.