English 206: Modern British Literature, Section MA Brian T. Murphy

Monday/Wednesday, 2:00-3:15 pm, Bradley Hall, Y-203
M Building, Room 211 Office Hours TBD

Class web page: www.Brian-T-Murphy.com/Eng206.htm
516-572-7185, ext. 25686

Projected Schedule of Readings and Assignments

All readings below are required, and must be completed by the day indicated; the only exceptions are those indicated with an asterisk (*), which are recommended additional readings or resources.

This schedule is subject to revision according to the instructor’s discretion, the Academic Calendar for the semester, school closings due to inclement weather or other reasons, and the progress of the class. Additions or changes will be announced in class, and they will also be posted on the class Announcements page.

Mon., 19 Jan. / Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: College Closed
Tue., 20 Jan. / Day, Evening & Distance Education (online) Classes Begin
Wed., 21 Jan. / Introduction: Syllabus, texts, policies, assignments
Mon., 26 Jan. / Last Day Drop/Add Class cancelled
Wed., 28 Jan. / The Romantic Period (2-30): The Revolution Controversy and the “Spirit of the Age” (183-4), Edmund Burke: from Reflections on the Revolution in France (187-94), Mary Wollstonecraft: from A Vindication of the Rights of Men (194-99) and from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (208-239), Thomas Paine: from Rights of Man (199-203)
Mon., 2 Feb. / Class cancelled again
Wed., 4 Feb. / William Blake (112-116): From Songs of Innocence (118-125): “Introduction,” “The Lamb,” “The Little Black Boy,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “Holy Thursday”; From Songs of Experience (125-135): “Introduction,” “Holy Thursday,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “The Sick Rose,” “The Tyger,” “London”
Mon., 9 Feb. / Blake, continued; William Wordsworth (270-72), from Lyrical Ballads: Preface - 1802 ed. (292-304); “We Are Seven” (278-9); “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned” (280-282); “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold” (335); Samuel Taylor Coleridge (437-9): “This Lime-tree Bower My Prison,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan” (441-462); “Frost at Midnight” (477-79)
Wed., 11 Feb. / Essay 1 Topic Proposals due
Coleridge, continued; George Gordon, Lord Byron (612-18): “She Walks in Beauty”; Percy Shelley (748-52): “Mutability,” “To Wordsworth”; “Ozymandias” (776); “To a Skylark” (834-6)
14–19 Feb. / Classes do not meet
Mon., 23 Feb. / John Keats (901-3): “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (904); “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (923-4); “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (927-931)
Wed., 25 Feb. /

Essay 1 Due, Mary Shelley (981-3): Frankenstein. Read at least Preface, 1818 ed; Introduction, 1831 ed; Vol. I.

Mon., 2 Mar. / Frankenstein continued: read at least through Vol. II
Wed., 4 Mar. / Frankenstein continued: finish Vol. III
Mon., 9 Mar. /

The Victorian Age (1016-1043): Thomas Carlyle (1044-48): from Past and Present (1067-76), John Stuart Mill (1086-88): from On Liberty (1095-1104), Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1156-59): “Ulysses,” “Break, Break, Break” (1170-74)

Wed., 11 Mar. /

Robert Browning (1275-8): “Rabbi Ben Ezra” (1322-8); “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1300-09); “My Last Duchess” (1282-3); Matthew Arnold (1369-73): “Dover Beach” (1387); Gerard Manley Hopkins (1546-48): “God’s Grandeur” (1548); “Pied Beauty” (1551); “Spring and Fall” (1553-54)

Mon., 16 Mar. / Arnold, Hopkins continued (as needed); William Morris (1512-22): “The Defence of Guenevere”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from The Idylls Of The King (1236-59): “The Coming of Arthur,” “The Passing of Arthur”
Wed., 18 Mar. / Midterm Exam
Mon., 23 Mar. / Industrialism: Progress or Decline? (1580-81): Friedrich Engels: from The Great Towns (1589-97), Henry Mayhew: from London Labour and the London Poor (1601-3), Annie Besant: The “White Slavery” of London Match Workers (1603-5); The “Woman Question”: The Victorian Debate about Gender (1607-10): Sarah Stickney Ellis: from The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits (1610-12), Harriet Martineau: from Autobiography (1616-19), Anonymous: “The Great Social Evil” (1620-24), Dinah Maria Mulock: from A Woman’s Thoughts about Women (1624-26), John Stuart Mill: from The Subjection of Women [Chapter 1] (1105-15), Charles Dickens: Hard Times Introduction, Book I
Wed., 25 Mar. / Hard Times, Book II-III
30 Mar.– 5 Apr. / SPRING BREAK – Classes do not meet
Mon., 6 Apr. / Hard Times, continued (as needed)
Wed., 8 Apr. / Essay 2 Topic Proposals due
Late Victorians (1668-1671); Oscar Wilde (1720-1721): The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1-2 (1733-1777)
Fri., 10 Apr. / Last Day Automatic W
The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2-3 (1733-1777)
Mon., 13 Apr. /

The Twentieth Century and After (1886-1913), Empire and National Identity (1636-40): Anonymous: Proclamation of an Irish Republic (1646-47), James Anthony Froud: from The English in the West Indies (1649-52), John Jacob Thomas: from Froudacity (1652-54), Joseph Chamberlain: from The True Conception of Empire (1662-64), John Hobson: The Political Significance of Imperialism (1665-57)

Wed., 15 Apr. / Voices from World War I (2016-18): Siegfried Sassoon (2023-24): “They”; Isaac Rosenberg (2029-31): “Break of Day in the Trenches,” “Louse Hunting”; Wilfred Owen (2034-37): “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Mon., 20 Apr. / Essay 2 Due
W. B. Yeats (2082-2099): “The Stolen Child,” “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “When You are Old,” “Easter 1916,” “The Second Coming”
Wed., 22 Apr. / James Joyce (2276-2311): “Araby,” “The Dead”
Mon., 27 Apr. / T. S. Eliot (2521-2547): “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Hollow Men,” “Journey Of The Magi”
Wed., 29 Apr. / W. H. Auden (2677-2687): “Musée des Beaux Arts,” “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”
Mon., 4 May / Voices from World War II (2704-2706): Virginia Woolf (2706-2710): from Three Guineas, “[As a Woman I Have No Country]”, Pablo Picasso, “Guernica” (2711-2712), Henry Reed (2714-2715): from Lessons of the War, “Naming of Parts”; Nation, Race, and Language (2718-21): Claude McKay (2721-23): “Old England,” “If We Must Die”; “America” (handout); Grace Nichols (2751-54): “Epilogue,” “The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping,” “Wherever I Hang”
Wed., 6 May / Margaret Atwood (2967-82): “Death by Landscape,” “Miss July Grows Older”
Mon., 11 May / Seamus Heaney (2951-2967): “Digging,” “The Grauballe Man,” “Casualty,” “Clearances,” “Anything Can Happen”
Wed., 13 May / Final Exam
Mon., 18 May / Day & Distance Education Classes End

Last Revised: Thursday, 19 February 2015

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