Upper-Level Course Offerings for Fall 2013, Including Summer 2013 Classes 

401-01 Special Studies in British Literature
“Old English Language and Literature”
Justin Jackson
MWF 2:00-2:50
Prerequisite: English 310 or Permission of Instructor.

In his classic Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s character says to Annie, “Just don’t take any class where you have to read Beowulf.”  Hah, she should be so lucky.  In this class, students will be introduced to the Old English language (phonology, morphology, and syntax) through the study of Old English prose and poetry.  Yet the course will not be focused exclusively on grammar.  Because this is a literature course, attention will also be paid to Anglo-Saxon culture, literary genres, and various methods of reading (both Anglo-Saxon and modern).  The course objectives are relatively simple: 1) to learn to read and pronounce Old English with relative proficiency and aplomb; 2) to become familiar with Anglo-Saxon culture and literature, including a basic understanding of the fundamental scholarly concerns with the language, literature, and culture of the Anglo Saxons.

401-02 Special Studies in British Literature
“Everybody’s Shakespeare”
Debi Belt
TTh 11:00-12:15

Maynard Mack’s phrase is intuitively appealing, with its nod to “the common reader” and its tribute to what are often called the “timeless” qualities of “the immortal bard.” Such gestures are familiar: they date at least to the seventeenth century, when Ben Jonson declared that “the soul of [his] age” was "not of an age but for all time" and the editors of the First Folio asserted that “if ... you do not like [the playwright], surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him.”

Over the centuries, however, the Shakespeares so designated have varied wildly – an uncomfortable fact that may prompt us to ask what we mean when we say "everybody's Shakespeare."  Is he the figure taken to task for flouting the rules of "classical" practice—or the one whom Cambridge wits deemed lovable but frivolous, leaving an empty enthusiast named GULLio to gush about Homer and “sweet master Shakespeare”?  Is he perhaps the rustic primitive "warbling his native woodnotes wild," whose genius so merited stylistic "assistance" that King Lear was rewritten to let Cordelia survive and marry Edgar and permit Lear to die of old age—leaving Samuel Johnson unsure whether he preferred the original or the "corrected" version of the play?  Is "everybody's Shakespeare" the perpetrator of Thomas Rymer's “bloody farce” (Othello) or the titanic figure whom the Germans dubbed “unser [OUR] Shakespeare"?  The key exemplar of Coleridge’s poetic theories or Keats’ embodiment of “negative capability” (“that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable seeking after fact and reason”)?  The poet fortunate in the age in which he wrote, offering touchstones for "the best that has been thought and said"—but judged by Matthew Arnold as on the whole an unsafe guide for aspiring writers?  The character-driven Shakespeare of A. C. Bradley or of those less judicious enthusiasts who reconstructed "the girlhood of Shakespeare's heroines" – the ones at whom L.C. Knights raised a sardonic eyebrow in "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth"?   Etc. Etc.

This course will ponder such questions as we read selected Shakespearean dramas and consider the strikingly varied ways in which literary critics up to the present day have sought to claim the bard as “everyone's”—from Annabel Patterson’s Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, Robert Weimann’s Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary, and C.L. Barber’s Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy to some of the more recent studies of Stanley Cavell, A.D. Nuttall, and Colin McGinn, of Hillis Miller, René Girard, Marjorie Garber, Stephen Orgel, and Stephen Greenblatt.

IMPORTANT: Many of the pieces at which we shall be looking do not make themselves easy to read. As with Shakespeare's plays, making sense of them requires flexibility of outlook and an open mind, a willingness to read beyond the literal and to come at complex problems from varying perspectives. Students looking only for familiar approaches cannot expect to benefit from such an inquiry. Those unsure that they can muster a strong interest in the dual focus of the seminar should consult with the instructor before enrolling in the course. Students who have not taken ENG 320 may find primary and secondary reading more difficult than will students already familiar with the contexts, preoccupations, and literary practices of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Consultation with the instructor is therefore advised.

401-03 Special Studies in British Literature
“Varieties of Realism in Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë “
Lorraine Eadie
MWF 8:00-8:50

Our aim is to study the ways in which three great novelists, working with similar subject matter, adapt the conventions of narrative realism for distinct purposes. Given that Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë published within forty years of one another and that their novels share a concern with courtship, love, and marriage, their divergent understandings of the genre is perhaps surprising and certainly meaningful. Thus, while we will consider historical and literary context to some degree, we will devote ourselves to close study of each of the chosen novels with particular attention to the author’s affiliation with realism: how does her adherence to, departure from, or bending of its conventions determine the artistic and moral effects of the work? As we move from Jane Austen’s early parody of the Gothic novel to Charlotte Brontë’s muted reference to the supernatural and on to Emily Brontë’s blurring of the boundary between physical and spiritual realms, pursuing these questions will allow us to better understand each writer’s contribution to the narrative tradition.

The course will be conducted in seminar style with a student presentation component; written work will include a research-based seminar paper (10-15 pages) and annotated bibliography.

Texts (the following editions required):

Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey (Oxford, 978-0199535545); Pride and Prejudice (Norton Critical 3rd ed., 978-0393976045); Mansfield Park (Norton Critical, 978-0393967913); Persuasion (Norton Critical 2nd ed., 978-0393911534).

Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre (Oxford, 978-0199535590); Villette (Oxford, 978-0199536658).

Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights (Oxford, 978-0199541898).

401-04 Special Studies in British Literature (Could count as English 404)
“Arthurian Literature: Gildas & Nennius to Malory & Tennyson”
Patricia R. Bart
TTh 6:00-7:15
Prerequisite: English 310, 320, or Permission of Instructor

The special appeal of the Arthurian legends rests in part on their presentation of a world in which any knight from any land could, on the basis of talent and devotion alone, participate in a voluntary society of high ambitions and higher ideals.  The history of the legends of the Round Table in themselves reflect such a pattern—composed by Celts, developed and popularized by the French, and adopted and augmented by English speakers, only to become in the end a fully international phenomenon. 
 
To what extent do the tales reflect history, and to what extent do they reflect instead the highest ideals and ambitions of the adopting author and his culture?  How does the Grail begin as a sort of cornucopia and end as the chalice of the Last Supper and Crucifixion?  Did the legends always tell of a Round Table and a rex quondam et futurus?
 
We will explore the legends from the earliest surviving accounts to Tennyson’s Victorian interpretation on the formal syllabus, but students will also be encouraged to examine later Arthurian lore and later parallels to the Arthurian cycles in other imaginative literary worlds, assessing merits and demerits of these later works in view of their knowledge of the origins.  Works read will be evenly divided between English works and translations of works from the Latin, Anglo-Norman, Old French, Old High German and Italian, including selections from works by Gildas and Nennius, Wace, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, Thomas Chestre, Béroul, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Francis of Assisi, Chaucer, Malory and Tennyson.  Selections from among anonymous works will include the traditional Welsh Y Tair Rhamant, the Old French Prose Lancelot (Queste del Saint Graal), the Alliterative Morte Arthure and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Students will be mentored throughout the term in a term project leading to the customary 400-level term paper.  There will also be a final, based partly on the reading, lectures and discussion, and partly on each student’s research.

401-05 Special Studies in British Literature (Could count as English 404)
“History of the English Language: Freak, fraud, farad, falafel!  Thral, threat, thrill, threnody, theremin!”*
Patricia R. Bart
W 6:00-9:00
Prerequisite: English 310, or English 320, or English 330, or Permission of Instructor.

This course will explore the development of English from a collection of tribal dialects into the most dynamic social phenomenon of the twenty-first century.  The faculty of language is inscribed within human physiology, so we will first consider how we were made for language.  Moreover, the history of a people is inscribed in its language.  Therefore, we will balance study of historical linguistics generally, in the Indo-European context, with an examination of social, religious, literary, scientific, political and economic history as it is inscribed in the English word-hoard.  This will take us from the prehistoric association of lords and ladies with the kneading and protection of bread all the way to the invention of rigorous scientific nomenclatures and infuriating political spin.  Students will become familiar with the tools and methods of historical linguistics, and with the ways and means of studying literary and non-literary documents from the perspective of language itself.   Throughout the term, we will use one of the classic “HEL” textbooks as a stepping off point, but we will also ground our study in selected passages of writing in English—whether it is English writing, or writing in English by someone else entirely. 
Standard graded writing and assessment: term paper and final examination.

* Henry Fitz Empress, Geoffrey Chaucer, Bartolomaeus Anglicus, William Shakespeare, Neil Armstrong, Elvis.  Wifman, werman, chairman, Man and Superman.  Osama/Usama, Khadaffi/Ghadaffi/Qadaffi.  Moslem/Muslim, Peking/Beijing, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Bombay/Mumbai.  Weird, nice, blond, churlish, pencil.  Parsi, Farsi, Paradise, jungle, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dinner jacket.  Shall, she, shampoo, Shangri-la, shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo.  Regime change, police action, insurgency, terrorism, incursion, invasion, War Department, Department of Defense.  DoD, OSS, MI6, CIA, FBI, NSA, FEMA, U.N.C.L.E., C.H.A.O.S.  XML, DTD, CSS, WWW. 007, .223, 9mil, 16d, 45, 33lp, 2000ppi, 1080p, 4G.  LCpl, Spec, Adm (ret.), KCBE, Bart., Ph.D., MBA, Mrs., Esq., M.D., D.O.  Croissant, crescent roll, scone/scone, tomato/tomato. Clique, gang, threat, Viking, pirate, privateer.  Wassail!  Skoal!  L’chaim!  Hasta la vista, baby!

401-06 Special Studies in British Literature (Could count as English 404)
“Victorian Lyric Poetry and Formal Poetics”
Dwight Lindley
TTh 1:00-2:15
Prerequisite: English 340 or Permission of Instructor

In this course, we will study six of the great Victorian lyric poets with the care their craft deserves, working our way up from the ground level of poetic form, to the upper flights of synthetic imagination. We will begin the semester with a general study of meter, verse-form, figures, and tropes, for the sake of paying particular attention to the technical aspects of prosody and rhetoric that were the finely-wrought tools of these poets’ trade. What C.S. Lewis wrote of the Early Modern poets is in some degree also true of the great Victorians: “The ‘beauties’ which they chiefly regarded in every composition”—its formal poetic and rhetorical aspects—“were those which we either dislike or simply do not notice. This change of taste makes an invisible wall between us and them.” It follows that, if we can surmount this wall by developing a fluent sense of poetic form, we will stand a much better chance of understanding the Victorians as they understood themselves. As we learn to read their lyrics closely, we will also learn to look with these poets’ penetrating gaze at the great challenges of developing modernity.
Grades will consist of at least three formal poetic analyses, at least six poem memorizations, a final, and a major essay.

Reading List:

Adams, Stephen. Poetic Designs: An Introduction to Meters, Verse Forms, and Figures of Speech. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview, 1997.
Arnold, Matthew. Selected Poems. Ed. E.K. Brown. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2011.
Browning, Robert. Robert Browning’s Poetry. Ed. James F. Loucks & Andrew M. Stauffer. 2nd. Ed. New York: Norton, 2007.
Hardy, Thomas. Selected Poetry. Ed Samuel Hynes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. The Major Works. Ed. Catherine Phillips. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009.
Rossetti, Christina. Poems and Prose. Ed. Simon Humphries. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.
Tennyson, Alfred. Tennyson’s Poetry. Ed. Robert W. Hill, Jr. New York: Norton, 1999.

 

401-07 Special Studies in British Literature
“John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement”
Dwight Lindley
MW 2:00-3:15
Prerequisite: English 340 or Permission of Instructor

In this course, we will examine the philosophical, historical, theological, and literary thought of John Henry Newman, one of the Victorian period’s great sages. In particular, we will appreciate and analyze the works he wrote during the first half of his career (1826-45), works which he wrote in association with the Oxford Movement. During this period, Newman strove to imagine vividly and understand critically the relations between faith and reason, Church and State, freedom and authority, history and truth. He did so in a startling array of genres, writing sermons, histories, philosophical lectures, treatises, magazine articles, poems, and novels. Reading along with Newman, we stand to learn how to face the bewildering challenges of developing modernity as he did, with wit, fortitude, elegance, and deep theoretical intelligence.

Grades will consist of reading quizzes on each book, a midterm, a research paper, and a final examination.

Books to Buy:
Newman, John Henry. Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford, Between A.D.1826 and 1843. Ed. Mary Katherine Tillman. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1996. ISBN 978-0268009960.
---. Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Ed. Ian Ker. New York: Penguin, 1995. ISBN  978-0140433746.
---. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Ed. Ian Ker. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1989. ISBN 978-0268009212.
---. Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles. Ed. Geoffrey Rowell. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 2010. ISBN 978-0268036072.
---. Loss and Gain. Ed. Trevor Lipscombe. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012. ISBN 978-1586177058

Recommended Books, from which I’ll pass out selections:

---. Arians of the Fourth Century. Ed. Rowan Williams. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 2002. ISBN 978-0268020125.
---. Parochial and Plain Sermons. San Francisco: Ignatius P, 1996. ISBN 978-0898706383.
---, et al. Tracts for the Times.
---. Meditations and Devotions. London: Baronius P, 2010. ISBN 978-1905574582.

402-01 Special Studies in American Literature
“American Fiction Since 1980”
John Somerville
MW 11:00-12:15

This course will examine the novels and stories of various recent American writers.  Among those whose work we may read are Nicholson Baker, Don Delillo, Louise Erdrich, Richard Ford, Barry Hannah, Denis Johnson, Cormac McCarthy, Cynthia Ozick, Mark Richard, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, John Updike, and Larry Woiwode.

403-01 Special Studies in Western Literature
“The Fire and the Rose: Reading and Experiencing Dante’s Commedia”
Stephen Smith
MWF 9:00-9:50

The class will make a canto by canto reading (in translation) of Dante's great poem and pilgrimage, from dark wood to Paradiso.

Course Books

Dante, Vita Nuova, trans. Mark Musa
Dante, Inferno
Dante, Purgatorio
Dante, Paradiso
Dante, selected literary criticism, including the Epistle to Can Grande (PDF)
Dante, Convivio (PDF)
Dante, On Monarchy (PDF)
Dante, selected lyric poems (PDF)

Cambridge Companion to Dante (PDF via Cambridge Collections)

"And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

403-02 Special Studies in Western Literature
“The Fire and the Rose: Reading and Experiencing Dante’s Commedia”
Stephen Smith
MWF 10:00-10:50

The class will make a canto by canto reading (in translation) of Dante's great poem and pilgrimage, from dark wood to Paradiso.

Course Books

Dante, Vita Nuova, trans. Mark Musa
Dante, Inferno
Dante, Purgatorio
Dante, Paradiso
Dante, selected literary criticism, including the Epistle to Can Grande (PDF)
Dante, Convivio (PDF)
Dante, On Monarchy (PDF)
Dante, selected lyric poems (PDF)

Cambridge Companion to Dante (PDF via Cambridge Collections)

"And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

404-01 Special Studies in Genre, Criticism, and Writing (Could count as English 403)
“Menippean Satire”
Dutton Kearney
MWF 9:00-10:00

Menippean Satire is the anti-genre genre, and as a result, its status has always been problematic for literary scholars. It mixes languages, genres, history, and criticism as it challenges our assumptions about literature. Its insistence upon low seriousness offends, delights, confronts, and inspires. On the one hand, it is a celebration of the body, emphasizing its capabilities and its limitations. On the other hand, it is a celebration of the soul, the unsinkable source of all human dignity. Our task will be to uncover consistency within a genre that claims not to have any.

Students will be responsible for a substantial term paper of 20+ pages, an annotated bibliography, and a final exam.

Possible works to be considered, some in full (*), most in excerpt, all in delight:

Lucian, A True Story*
Petronius, The Satyricon and The Apocolocyntosis*
François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub*
Alexander Pope, The Dunciad*
Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy*
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell*
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet* and The Dictionary of Received Ideas*
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland* and Through the Looking Glass*
James Joyce, Ulysses
Jorges Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

One contemporary Menippean Satire*:
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
Thomas Pynchon, V., or, Gravity’s Rainbow
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

404-02 Special Studies in Genre, Criticism, and Writing (Cross-listed as JRN 404; Permission of Instructor Required)
“Advanced Composition”
John Miller
TTh 11:00-12:15

This course is for good writers who want to become great writers. We will read examples of excellent writing, both old and new, but primarily we will produce and examine our own work. Expect weekly writing assignments and come prepared to give and receive constructive criticism. Enrollment is limited to eight students and instructor permission is required.
 

404-03 Special Studies in Genre, Criticism, and Writing (Cross-listed as JRN 302)
“History of Journalism from Guttenberg to the Muckrakers”
John Miller
TTh 2:30-3:45

This course will combine a survey of journalistic literature with practical lessons on how to write well, in which we will aspire to bring historical subjects to life through vivid prose. Along the way, we will examine the story of journalism from the advent of the printing press in the 15th century to the birth of investigative reporting at the turn of the 20th century. Assigned authors will include well-known journalists: John Milton, Daniel Defoe, Addison & Steele, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, Frederick Douglass, William Howard Russell, Mark Twain, Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Henry Morton Stanley, and Ida Tarbell. We will pay special attention to the American Founding and assigned books will include William Safire’s novel Scandalmonger.

 IDS 300-01 (Cross-listed as English 402)
“’We the People’:  An American Journey”
Dan Sundahl
TTh 2:30-3:45

This English 402 and IDS 300 course serves as an introduction to American Studies as a "discipline."  The course is inter-disciplinary in that it crosses other "disciplines" for its relevance.  In this case, the course will consider the "We the People" portion of the Preamble to the Constitution as an interpretive technique to identify the "spirit" of our "American Journey" from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century.

As the following reading list suggests, the readings are diverse and extensive:

 Perry Miller, The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry.
 Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia.
 James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat.
 Shelby Foote, Shiloh.
 Henry Adams, Democracy.
 Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom.
 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned.
 Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy.
 

IDS 393-01 (Cross-listed as English 402)
"Clio's Cowboys: The Way West with A. B. Guthrie and Others"
Dan Sundahl
MWF 2:00-2:50

"Clio's Cowboys" is an English 402 and an American Studies IDS 393 class which intends to enrich the scholar's desire for a common context of thought about the American migration west by focusing on the literary, the historical, and the political organization of Manifest Destiny ideas.  It's a story of prime quality and significance and carries three-hours of academic credit in (1) American Studies, (2) American Literature cross-referenced as English 402. The readings are diverse but include

Washington Irving, "A Tour on the Prairie."
Memoir of Meriwether Lewis  (Preface, Chapters I, XV, XX, XXXVII).
Silvio Bedini, "With Compass and Chain."  (VIII, "The Survey of the Federal Territory, and the Surveyors, George Washington, Thomas
          Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln.") 
James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie.
John G. Neihardt, The Splendid Wayfaring: Jedediah Smith and the Ashley-Henry Men.
A. B. Guthrie, The Way West.
Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion.
Susan Shelby Magoffin, Down the Sante Fe Trail.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West (Chapter I).
John C. Freemont, Memoirs of My Life (Chapters IV, IX, XII).
William Gilpin, Mission of the North American People;  (Introduction, Chapters V, VI, X, XI, XII).
Thomas Hart Benton, "Thirty Years View" (selected chapters from 1820 to 1850).
Theodore Roosevelt, "Thomas Hart Benton" (Chapters I, II, III, XI).
Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (Chapters I-IV, X).
 Andy Adams, The Log of a Cowboy.
 Mari Sandoz, Miss Morissa.
 Owen Wister, The Virginian.
 Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Summer School Offerings

First Session: May 13—May 31

401-01 Special Studies in British Literature (Could count as English 404)
“Shakespeare’s Sonnets”
Dutton Kearney
Daily 1:00-4:00

This course is an intensive study of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence. It will also serve as a thorough introduction to the study of poetics. Students will learn the art of scansion and how to recognize fundamental rhetorical schemes and tropes. Students will become more proficient at close reading all lyrics, not just sonnets. In addition to a term paper of 15 pages and a final exam, students will be required to memorize a sonnet.

Texts:

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Stephen Booth.
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Richard Lanham.
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Lewis Putnam Turco.

Recommended Reading: Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

402-01 Special Studies in American Literature (Could also count as 401 Special Studies in British Literature)
“Three Weeks of Companionship:  The Life, the Times, the Works of T. S. Eliot”
Dan Sundahl
Daily, 9:00-12:00

First, since Eliot is anthologized in both American Literature and British Literature Surveys, no reason why students cannot option either 401 or 402, depending.

Second, students will come to know some of the biographical details of T. S. Eliot’s life, as well as the Modernist era in which he flourished.

Third, however, will be the device of learning to read Eliot, who argued, as everyone knows, that poetry is not the expression of personality but the “escape” from personality.

Which leaves us wondering, then, about the personality, the character, inside the poems, the prose, and the dramatic works.  Why not learn to read the works by assuming the character is a companion of sorts, inviting us companion-like to spend some time together, especially deep and meditative communal time. What would we learn?

At the beginning of Eliot’s career, say with our “Prufrock companion,” as readers we would become aware that such a companion is just of the type the modern era welcomed and required.  But in time, let’s say to the “Ash Wednesday” poem, as readers we would become aware that such a companion is just of the type the modern era rejects.  One might say there’s a process here in which our companion is at first a modern sensualist, someone in Kierkegaard’s aesthetic phase.  As that process develops, our companion develops ethically and religiously.

English 403-01  Special Studies in Western Literature
“Reading Biblical Narrative”  
Justin Jackson
Daily, 9:00-12:00

This course is designed to give the student a solid literary foundation in a broad range of texts from the Hebrew Bible and will provide the student with various examples of Biblical exegesis—from New Testament sources, from early rabbinic sources, and from sources from the early Christian Church.  While the focus in the course is primarily on biblical narrative, we will also focus on the art of biblical poetry as well—since much of biblical narrative is comprised of biblical poetry.  Additionally, we will study the physical setting of the biblical narratives, cultural/historical settings, and important mythic and anti-mythic narrative patterns throughout.

Course requirements: Daily participation; Final exam (both in-class and out-of-class).

404-01 Special Studies in Genre, Criticism, and Writing
“Lyric Poetry”
David Whalen
Daily, 1:00-4:00
 
 This course is an intensive study of English and American lyric poetry, including such facets of the genre as prosody, verse form, the history or development of the lyric, some of its more characteristic thematic concerns, its relation to other genres as well as its own, distinguishing characteristics. Poems studied will range from Anglo-Saxon and medieval lyrics through and into the 20th century. Much, though not all, of the material will be organized chronologically. While more emphasis will be given to British poems, American lyrics and some lyrics in translation will be covered as well. Texts are likely to include Alfred Corn’s The Poem’s Heartbeat and John Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason in addition to a hefty anthology.

Second Summer Session: June 3-June 21

402-01 Special Studies in American Literature
“American Renaissance”
John Somerville
Daily, 9:30-12:30

In this course we will take a close look at that remarkable moment in mid-nineteenth century during which America experienced the first great flowering of its literary culture.  Though we may read brief selections from various minor writers of the period, our primary focus will be on Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature and selected essays), Henry David Thoreau (selections from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden, and one or two essays), Walt Whitman (selections from Leaves of Grass), Nathaniel Hawthorne (selected stories and The Scarlet Letter), Herman Melville (Typee and Moby-Dick), and Edgar Allan Poe (selected poems, stories, and essays).