English 10A-3 - Fall, 2013

Literatures in English I: to 1700

Class Information

Instructor: Taff, Dyani
CRN: 32325
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Location: 113 Hoagland

Description

English 10A is the first course in the required three-part Literatures in English sequence. This is a reading- and writing-intensive class designed to prepare you for advanced study in English literature. Our focus will be literature written in English before 1700, a period of fascinating historical, political, social, and linguistic transformation. We will read texts from a range of authors and genres that reflect, address, and helped produce these changes. Topics we will consider include: emerging national identity; England’s status as an island nation and its relationship to the ocean, seafaring, and colonial enterprise; cultural and literary translation and transformation; the status of the monarchy during periods of political growth and unrest; and women’s participation in the literary world. Of paramount importance will be students’ development of skills in reading, discussing, and writing about the literature. Specifically, we will work on three kinds of skills: (1) seeing a big picture by spanning time and surveying the globe to track the emergence, development, and dissemination of the English language and its literatures; (2) focusing carefully on key literary texts and some strategies for interpreting them, or “close reading,” of poetry, prose, and drama; and (3) positioning your interpretation of a literary text in relation to other scholarship on it.

Grading

Short Writing Assignments and Quizzes
Close Reading Paper
Research Paper
Final Exam

Texts

The Tempest, William Shakespeare
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1 , (or the break out volumes, A, B, and C)