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Student Learning Outcomes -

• Students will be able to analyze period literature within the contexts of critical theoretical lenses, including theories of literary structure, history, gender and sexuality, socioeconomic class, race and ethnicity.
• Students will be able to contextualize the period literature within the historical continuity of globalization and colonialism from the end of the 18th century to the present.

Description -

A survey of canonical literature spanning the Romantic Period, Victorian Period, through Modernism and Postmodernism, to the present. Texts discussed and analyzed within historical, sociocultural, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts. Specific to this honors course: A higher level of sophisticated scholarship through extensive research and literature review, critical essays, and opportunities for scholarly presentation, student-generated discussions, and self-directed projects. Rigorous application and analysis of theoretical paradigms as applied across these contexts in analysis of canonical works.

Course Objectives -

1. demonstrate knowledge of major writers, key texts and documents of British literature from the Romantic period through the present.
2. identify major literary genres, analyze the connections between these genres, and trace the emergence and development of literary forms during these periods.
3. apply relevant critical and theoretical frameworks to evaluate the literature within historical, (multi)cultural, and philosophical contexts.
4. demonstrate orally, and in college-level writing, sophisticated analytical understanding of the literary texts via a range of theoretical paradigms.
5. demonstrate appropriate formatting and documentation.

Special Facilities and/or Equipment -

1. When taught on campus, no special facility or equipment needed.
2. When taught via 17³Ô¹Ï Global Access, ongoing access to computer with email software and capabilities and current internet browser, email address.

 

Course Content (Body of knowledge) -

1. Major writers and canonical texts
1. Early nineteenth-century literature, including Romantic poetry (e.g., Wordsworth, Keats, Percy Shelley), the Gothic (e.g., Mary Shelley), and others writers, such as Blake, Austen
2. Victorian literature (e.g., Dickens, Carroll, Seacole, Wilde, Browning, Tennyson, the Brontes)
3. Twentieth and twenty-first-century writers, including modernism (e.g., Conrad, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Lawrence, Yeats), postmodernism (e.g., Beckett, Rushdie), and beyond (e.g., Kureishi, Murdoch, Lessing, Heaney, Hughes, Walcott)
2. Literary genres and forms
1. Romantic poetry forms
2. Nature writing
3. The Victorian novel
4. Pre-Raphaelite literature
5. Modernism ("free" verse, stream of consciousness)
6. Postmodernism (fragmentation, pastiche)
3. Relevant critical and theoretical frameworks
1. Historical perspectives, including dominant ethical, philosophical, political, religious, social, and aesthetic perspectives in the literature of this period
2. Gender studies
3. Queer theories; sexuality studies
4. Psychological theories (Freudian, Jungian)
5. Marxian and other socioeconomic frameworks
6. Theories of race and ethnicity
7. Postcolonial and neocolonial studies
8. Formalist theories
4. Analytical understanding of the literary texts
1. Class discussion regarding analytical reading of literary texts
2. Composition of extended, theory-driven literary analysis essays on the literary texts
5. Formatting and documentation
1. Modern Language Association (MLA)
2. American Psychological Association (APA)

Methods of Evaluation -

1. Examinations as determined by instructor
2. Composition of at least two formal literary analysis essays of at least 1500 words each, these essays must be theory-based and research-based in nature
3. Informal assignments as determined by instructor
4. Class discussion
5. Formal presentations (at instructor's discretion)

Representative Text(s) -

Disciplines -

Method of Instruction -

1. Reading and discussion of texts in the British literary canon
2. Lectures on the literature and its historical, social, and theoretical contexts
3. Group projects and presentations
4. Literary analysis, oral and written

Lab Content -

Types and/or Examples of Required Reading, Writing and Outside of Class Assignments -

1. Reading from representative literary texts as assigned by instructor
2. Quizzes on reading comprehension of assigned literary texts
3. Analytical and reader response journal assignments on readings
4. Composition of extended, theory-based, research based literary analysis