English 10B-2 - Winter, 2011

Literatures in English II: 1700-1900

Class Information

Instructor: Pivetti, Kyle
CRN: 22421
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50
Location: 101 Olson

Description

This course will build upon the lessons learned in 10A through a survey of selected authors and genres of the period. We will discuss, for instance, the satires of Jonathan Swift, the poems of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the American appropriations of Walt Whitman. This class is designed, therefore, to introduce students to some – but by no mean all – of the literary and historical developments of the 18th and 19th centuries. By the end of the quarter students will learn the following skills:
- to read closely a literary work and to identify its major formal elements in relation to the period’s popular genres
- to understand developments in the English language in both Britain and America between 1700 and 1900
- to write clearly and carefully in response to ongoing critical debates
- to use the resources employed by practicing literary scholars

Accomplishing these goals entails a heavy load of reading and writing, yet these assignments will enable us to cover a number of topics, including constructions of nationhood, advents in print culture, and the developing language of human rights. Our wide breadth will give the foundations for understanding how the literatures of these periods provide languages for imagining man as a product of both natural and political systems.

Grading

Two papers, research assignments, quizzes, in class participation, and a final exam.

Texts

Broadview Concise Anthology of British Literature, Vol. B
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Course Reader