• Texts
• Course Description and Goals
• Requirements and Grading
• Assignments

• Byatt, A. S. Angels and Insects: Two Novellas.  Random House.  ISBN: 0679751343.
• Doyle, Arthur Conan.  The Hound of the Baskervilles.  Dover.  ISBN: 0-486-28214-7.
• Eliot, T. S.  The Waste Land and Other Poems.  Ed. Frank Kermode.  Penguin.  ISBN: 0141180722.
• Fowles, John.  The French Lieutenant's Woman.  Little, Brown.  ISBN: 0316291161.
• Golding, William.  The Inheritors.  Harcourt.  ISBN: 0156443791.
• Lessing, Doris.  The Fifth Child.  Random House.  ISBN: 0679721827.
• Tennyson, Alfred.  In Memoriam.  Ed. Erik Gray.  Norton.  ISBN: 0393979261.

To be honest, this seminar provides the occasion for an immersion of several weeks in Tennyson's In Memoriam, which may be my own favorite work in English.  But In Memoriam, which may have been the most popular poem of the Victorian Age, is also the most comprehensive early response to the intellectual crisis that gave birth to the Modern Spirit.  We'll use Tennyson's sequence of elegiac lyrics--the themes that it explores--as a port of entry to later works, popular as well as literary and representing a variety of genres.  In general, those themes concern the effect of science on the literary imagination and in particular on conceptions of God, nature, love, childhood, and human prehistory.  Through reading assignments, in-class discussions, out-of-class research, and written assignments--and with the aid of an occasional film--you should become a more probing and appreciative reader of literature and a more articulate writer of expository and analytical/interpretive prose.

A=90-100; B=80-89; C=70-79; D=60-69; F=0-59 

• Short essay (3-4 pages or 1000 words) on In Memoriam (20%)--Due Thursday, February 12.
• Presentation and paper of 3-4 pages or 1000 words based on research of an assigned topic (20%)--I will assign topics for research during the first week of class.  You will make a very brief presentation, accompanied by a written handout, to the class on an assigned date.  The paper itself will be due within one week of the presentation.
• Analytical/interpretive essay of approximately six pages or 1500 words on an approved topic relating to one or more of our texts (30%)--This essay will be due within two weeks of our completion of the work(s) that your essay explores.  You must submit this essay no later than Friday, April 23.
• Final exam (20%)--Date and format will be announced.
• Active Participation (10%)--This includes regular attendance, oral and possible written contributions to in-class discussions, performance on occasional reading quizzes, and other demonstrations of conscientiousness.  To be present, you must be on time to class; you must have the assigned text with you; and you must stay awake. The English Department does not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences.  Miss more than six classes for whatever reason and you will fail the course.