UPPER-LEVEL COURSE OFFERINGS FOR SPRING 2010

English 401-01 -- "Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase"

Dr. Daniel Sundahl --  MWF 1:00    

* This course may also satisfy a 403 category requirement.

During his lifetime, Joseph Conrad was considered almost alternatively a realist and a romantic.  Also during his lifetime, the biographical details of his life have come to arrest the attention often at the cost of the novels themselves. Over the years, or since then, Conrad has been cast in an almost absurd number of more or less incompatible roles:  impressionist, symbolist, as a Jungian or Freudian allegorist, and more recently as a political moralist or reactionary, conservative organicist, existential, and, yes, even revolutionary tendencies.  Intractable questions, it would seem, raised by the Conrad phenomenon.  Suppose, then, we do something like this:  Let's approach the fiction from the opposite direction by attempting to understand it from Conrad's own understanding of himself.  Here one is on firmer ground, for Conrad has left us a major work produced at the height of his creative powers, and devoted in its entirety to an effort of self-discovery:  his autobiography, "A Personal Record," written in 1908 at the age of 51.

So, at semester's beginning we survey that autobiography.  We follow that survey into Conrad's major phase by reading in order "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'," "Heart of Darkness," Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes.  Our conclusion might be the argument that Conrad the artist is able to discover even in the humblest existence the elements of a tragic grandeur.

ENG 401-02 -- "Shakespeare"

Dr. John Freeh -- Th 6-9 p.m.

The course will study 12 or more of Shakespeare’s plays, with selected works from each of the periods (early, middle and late) and from each of the genres: history, comedy, tragedy and “romance.” The approach will be part lecture, part seminar. The lectures will touch on such areas as Elizabethan and Jacobean historical contexts, the intellectual climate of the English Renaissance, Shakespeare’s source material and various critical approaches to the plays. The seminar portion calls for an innovative engagement with the text and a willingness to add something of value to our discussions. There will be occasional required video viewings of plays outside of class meetings, as well as the option to attend one or more live performances.  The single required text is The Riverside Shakespeare. Additional secondary readings will be provided. The course requires frequent assignments over and above our readings, such as explications of selected passages, answers to reading questions, memorized recitations and one-page reaction papers. Additionally, there will be two papers and a final exam.

ENG 401-03 -- "Old English Language and Literature"

Dr. Justin Jackson -- MW 2:00 - 3:15

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.  So we’ll do Woody one better.  We’ll learn to read it in Old English, and then we’ll be amazed at the subtlety and sophistication not only of the language but of Anglo-Saxon literature itself.  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.

Prerequisite: English 310 or permission of instructor.

ENG 401-04 -- "John Henry Newman: Life and Literature"

Dr.  David Whalen -- MWF 10:00 - 10:50
 
Students in this course will read widely in the works of John Henry Newman and study as well the biographical, intellectual and cultural contexts of his work. While he was the author of verse and novels, Newman is justly regarded as one of the greatest stylists of non-fiction prose in the British tradition. The course will study Newman as a prose stylist, but also as a thinker of the first rank in a century of exceedingly able thinkers and writers. We will study his defense of orthodox Christianity in a day of waning faith, his outline of traditional educational principles in an age of burgeoning specialization and technical learning, his pastoral practices and theological inquiries in an era of fundamental religious redefinition. The course will probe Newman’s supple use of language—the rhetorical demands and consequences—in his combination of original thought with traditional convictions. Texts read will include the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, The Idea of a University, Parochial and Plain Sermons, The Oxford University Sermons, Historical Sketches, The Development of Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, and others.

ENG 401-05 -- " 'Any Action Is a Step to the Block': The Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More"

Dr. Stephen Smith -- T-Th 2:30 - 3:45    

*This course may also satisfy a 403 category requirement.

This course will examine More's life and writings from his earliest works to his final days in the Tower of London. Subjects to be explored will include:

•   the education and experience that formed More's character, imagination, judgment, and wit
•    the question of More’s humanism, especially its roots and ends
•    the controversies of More's public career as Lord Chancellor and the debate surrounding his handling of heresy
•    the revisionist debate over More, with special consideration of Elton, Guy, Marius, Martz and others
•    the influence of More on Shakespeare’s history plays, specifically on Richard the Third, Henry the Fifth, and Henry the Eighth, or All Is True

Background readings, in the form of a course reader, will provide students with a taste of the classical and patristic texts most important to More’s own formation and education. Primary readings will focus on More and his contemporaries, especially Erasmus.

ENG 402-01 -- "Updike Seminar"

Dr. John Reist -- T 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.*

Born in 1932, John Updike has been one of the most prolific of American writers.  This seminar will examine his corpus -- his novels, selected poems and short stories and his literary criticism, to discover how his aesthetic achievement has poetically and prophetically expressed and addressed our modern culture from the early 1960s to today.  The main focus of the study will be two-fold:  1.  his excellence as a craftsman and  2.  his religious - theological - ethical vision.

* Subject to change based on class preferences.

ENG 402-02 -- "After Faulkner: Southern Fiction of the Mid- and Late-Twentieth Century"

Dr. John Somerville -- M-W 11:00 - 12:15

The great works of William Faulkner, published largely before 1940, occupy a position of preeminence in 20th century southern fiction.  Those often brilliant novels and stories have also created a kind of anxiety in those southern writers who have followed Faulkner; in the words of Flannery O’Connor, “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down."

In the course of this semester, we will read a number of southern writers who have published in the years since Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (1942), perhaps his last great work of fiction.  Among those whom we will read are Eudora Welty (The Golden Apples or The Optimist’s Daughter), Walker Percy (The Moviegoer), Flannery O’Connor (A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories), and Cormac McCarthy (Suttree or The Orchard Keeper).  We will also read shorter works by a number of other figures, including William Styron, Peter Taylor, Robert Penn Warren, Fred Chappell, Reynolds Price, Elizabeth Spencer, Wendell Berry, Lee Smith, and Barry Hannah.

Prerequisite: English 370

ENG 402-03 -- "The Life and Writings of Willa Cather" 

Dr. Christopher Busch -- T-Th 1:00 - 2:15

This course will be devoted to a careful study of the American writer Willa Cather.  Our readings will include a balanced selection of novels, stories, and literary criticism.

Reading List:   Woodress, James.  Willa Cather: A Literary Life, 1987

The Troll Garden, 1905
O Pioneers!, 1913
The Song of the Lark, 1915
My Antonia, 1918
Youth and the Bright Medusa, 1920
The Professor’s House, 1925
Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927
Shadows on the Rock, 1931
Obscure Destinies, 1932
Not Under Forty, 1936
The Old Beauty and Others, 1948
Five Stories, 1956
Willa Cather on Writing, 1949

Students will be responsible for leading some discussions, critical reports, exams, and one or two significant papers.

ENG 403-01 -- "Dostoevsky: The Madman and the Prophet"

Dr. J. A. Jackson -- T 6:00-9:00 p.m.

In this seminar, we will investigate the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky.  While emphasis will be placed on his short stories and novels, we will also spend time on his letters and on the literature of some of his Russian contemporaries (Turgenev, Pushkin, Tolstoy).  We will look at various aspects of Russian culture and politics (and his response to them).  We will also spend time investigating the impact the mystical theology of Russian Orthodoxy has on his vision of literature and man.  Because this is a year-long seminar (3 credits/semester, 6 credits total), students who sign up for the Fall semester will be expected to continue in the Spring.

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor

"Dostoevsky II: The Mantle of the Prophet"

“The more you practice love, the more you will be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.  Should you attain total renunciation of self in your love for your neighbor, then your faith will be absolute, and no doubt will ever assail your soul—” Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov. 

In the second semester, we will move from the Dostoevskyan “underground” (though one never really leaves it) to his vision of redemption—indeed, of paradise itself.  We will continue to read through some of Dostoevsky’s shorter works—The Eternal Husband and The Meek One (both of which were written after Notes from Underground)—and we will read many of the stories from his Diary of a Writer.  These shorter works will complement nicely the novels we will cover in the second semester: Devils (continued from the first semester), The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, his masterwork.  

Requirements: on the first night of class, students will be given an exam covering all of the reading for the second semester; students will participate regularly on a message board; annotated bibliography; seminar paper of 25+ pages; final exam.

ENG 404-01 -- "Prose Style"

Prof. Tracy Simmons -- T-Th 2:30-3:45

Permission of instructor required.

A course directed primarily to experienced writers on the brink of careers in journalism, public relations or similar fields where the sophisticated use of words is demanded.  Stress will be placed on the formal elements of diction, syntax, rhythm and other stylistic devices that convert coherent writing into pleasant writing. 

ENG 404-02 -- "Seminar in Creative Writing:  Poetical Forms/Short Fiction"

Dr. Daniel Sundahl -- T-Th 11:00 with bi-weekly half-hour individual tutorials
 
This course is limited to ten students.  Students will not be encouraged to write reams of material;  rather, as is the usual case, each student will be encouraged to develop a metaphorical center, as it were, and then create a portfolio of work that develops in and around that metaphorical center.  Two texts to supplement this activity:  a collected volume of poems by a single writer of each student's choosing; or a collected volume of short stories by a single writer of each student's choosing.  Students interested in this course should solicit the instructor's permission and should note that this course originates through student interest.  Of the ten slots available, six are already committed. 

ENG 404-03 -- "Theology of the English Poets"

Dr. Michael Bauman -- T 2:30 - 5:00
 
"English literature is one of the finest literatures in the entire world: a thing to be proud of and to enjoy.  To be brought up speaking and reading English is to be presented with the key to a massive and incorruptible treasure.  Our literature from Chaucer to Eliot contains enough to make a man happy, thoughtful, and eloquent through an entire lifetime."
                          Gilbert Highet, Man's Unconquerable Mind

   We will study in depth the life and religious verse of several of our language’s greatest poets, including John Milton, William Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert and Walter De La Mare, among others. We also will examine the poetry of some of Britain’s distinctively secular poets, like Housman and Larkin. In so doing, we will discuss the issues of enduring theological, spiritual and cultural significance that recur throughout their works.