Syllabus: 18th-Century British Literature: Humans, Animals, Things

18th-Century British Literature: Humans, Animals, Things ENGL-XXXX Fall 2016 TR 12-1:15 p.m., Building X Room X Course Website: Professor: Julia K. Callander Office: Mailbox: Email: Office Hours: Required Texts (correct editions required)            Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Norton) Frances Burney, Evelina (Broadview) Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Penguin) George Etherege, The Man of Mode (Norton) Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative (Penguin) Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (abridged Broadview) John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Selected Works (Penguin) Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Penguin) Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto (Dover) David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, eds., Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Blackwell; 3rd ed.) Additional readings posted on course website In eighteenth-century Britain, the very definition of a person was profoundly unstable. On the one hand, enlightenment thought and scientific revolution fueled a great deal of optimism and faith in the individual’s rights, abilities, and autonomy. On the other hand, some of those same scientific concepts threatened to undermine the individual—if “man” is just another animal made out of atoms, people reasoned, how do we delineate what it means to be human? These questions were further complicated by the unprecedented contact among different groups of people due to class mobility; improved literacy and education; and the expanded reach of commerce, empire, and the transatlantic slave trade. Questions about the very nature and interrelation of humans, animals, and objects intrigued and troubled writers throughout the period. In this course, we will focus on Restoration and eighteenth-century texts about animals, women, slaves, the poor, and other groups seen as having marginal claims to subjectivity (as well as objects, which were often also accorded provisional subjectivity!). We will see that many of these texts also attempt to theorize the relationship between objects and beings—that is, they address desire and disgust, sexuality, and economic transactions (alternate course title: “The Dirty, Greedy, and Horny Eighteenth Century”). We will explore these literary texts in their political and philosophical contexts, including intellectual and cultural movements such as materialism, epicureanism, posessive individualism, sympathy, and abolitionism. 1 Grading Participation and In-Class Assignments: 15% Twitter Assignment: 10% Paper 1 (2-3 pgs.): 15% Paper 2 “Packet” (4-5 pgs.): 15% Paper 3 (6-8 pgs.): 25% Final exam: 20% In order to pass this class, you must complete all class requirements. Participation and In-Class Assignments Active participation in discussion is the backbone of this course. To actively participate, you will need to have done all of the reading. The reading load for this course is sometimes heavy, up to 300 pages per week. Before committing to this course, look ahead at the readings and make sure that you’ll be able to complete all of the readings on time. You’ll earn a daily participation grade between 0 (absent) and 10 (prepared, engaged) for each class meeting, which will reflect the degree to which you are regularly engaged with the material and with the ideas of your classmates. It is of course not just about the number of comments you make in a given class period or getting “the right answer.” Answering questions is not the only way to participate; asking questions, respectfully disagreeing, pointing us to a new passage, or making connections with other texts are all forms of participation. Although I will have specific activities for us to do in class, at times I will want you to take the lead in using class discussion for the issues and problems that interest you. To this end, I expect you to come to every class with at least one topic or question about the readings that you wish to discuss. Coming to class with copies of all the assigned readings, having done the reading, is the bare minimum for a passing participation grade. If you are absent or Names and contact info of two classmates: late, you are responsible for finding out about ___________________________________________ assignments and turning them in on time. _________________________________________ In-class assignments include writing activities and quizzes which cannot be made up. A Note About Technology: Discussion can be hard to follow if you are digitally distracted. For this reason, please keep laptops and phones out of sight in the classroom. When PDFs are assigned, tablets or e-readers may be used in lieu of printing out the assigned reading. 2 Papers and Formal Assignments Each of your writing assignments will be based on readings from the course, and will ask you to engage critically with those readings and advance a specific claim (or “thesis”). Please adhere to the page restrictions (both minimum and maximum; a 4-5-pg. paper should be neither 3.5 pages nor 5.5 pages). Adapting your ideas to fit different lengths is a skill in itself. As is true in most English courses, successful papers neither merely present the “lessons” or “big issues” of a text, nor simply provide a descriptive list of the text’s formal, structural, and stylistic features. Rather, they draw upon the specific literary aspects of one or more specific passages in order to make larger, debatable claims about the text. Additionally, your work in this upper-division seminar should also involve contextualizing your readings based on material presented in class. In the Twitter Assignment, you will select 15-20 of the most important letters in Clarissa and rewrite them as tweets—more about this later. Paper #1 (2-3 pgs.) is a short but focused and polished close reading of a single passage. It should advance one central claim about the text, but this claim can be a problem or a paradox. Paper #2 (4-5 pgs.) is a reading of a single text, focused around a central thesis or set of questions. The Paper #2 “Packet” grade includes a paper conference and write-up: to receive a grade on Paper 2 (and therefore, to receive a grade for this course), you must meet with me during [range of dates]. We will discuss the paper’s strengths and weaknesses and set goals for your final essay and other future writing. A brief written summary of the meeting is due one week after the meeting. You may schedule a similar conference after Paper #3 if you wish, but it is not required. For Paper #3 (6-8 pgs.), you can choose whether to write on one or two primary texts. One word of caution: strong comparative essays require some rationale for bringing together the primary texts that you choose other than the fact that they are similar and/or different. We will talk more about this as the semester progresses. We won’t be taking time for formal peer review in class this semester, but I am more than happy to organize (and potentially facilitate) working groups for you throughout the class. Paper Policies [information about where and how to submit papers]. Late papers may be turned in any time in the week after they are due (to the minute) with a penalty of 1 full letter grade (A->B-; B>C; etc.). After that point, the assignment receives an F. Papers should have a title page that includes your name, ID number, my name, the class title and number, and date. Papers should be double spaced, formatted in Times New Roman, size 12 font, and with 1-inch margins. 3 Policies Email Please feel free to contact me via email with questions or concerns throughout the quarter. I will respond to emails within twenty-four hours during the Monday-Friday work week, except in the 24-hour period before a paper is due or before the final. Office Hours Office hours are for your benefit. During these times, I am available for help, consultation, and discussion. If you are not available to meet during my normal office hours, I am happy to make alternate arrangements to meet with you. Plagiarism Presenting another author’s words or ideas as your own, whether intentionally or not, is a serious offense, both in academia and in the professional world. The course can be verbal, textual, or electronic: taking material from a book or an article, your textbook, a class lecture or interview, the Internet, or any other source, and failing to attribute and document that source properly, constitutes plagiarism. Any paraphrase of another author’s words or ideas also must be documented properly. [official college policies, links here] Additional Resources Tutoring Resources [information here] Students with Disabilities [information here] Counseling and Psychological Services [information here] Resources for Student Survivors of Sexual Assault, Intimate Partner Violence, and Stalking [information here] 4 Schedule of Readings and Assignments UNIT ONE: Human Bodies, Fashion, Trash Week 1 T 8/30 Dryden, MacFlecknoe R 9/1 Etherege, Man of Mode Week 2 T 9/6 Behn, Oroonoko R 9/8 Oroonoko ctd. Week 3 T 9/13 Rochester, “A Satire Against Reason and Mankind”; Locke on personal identity, Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (excerpts) R 9/15 Rochester, “The Imperfect Enjoyment”; Aphra Behn, “The Disappointment” and “On Desire” UNIT TWO: Commerce, Women, Disgust Week 4 T 9/20 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe R 9/21 Crusoe ctd. F 9/22 Paper #1 due at 5 pm Week 5 T 9/27 Pope, The Rape of the Lock R 9/29 Rape of the Lock ctd.; Anne Finch, “The Spleen” 5 Week 6 T 10/4 Pope, “Epistle to a Lady”; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu poems “This once was me” R 10/6 Eliza Haywood, Fantomina Week 7 T 10/11 Swift, “A Modest Proposal,” “Description of a City Shower,” “On a Beautiful Young Nymph, Going to Bed,” “Strephon and Chloe,” “The Lady’s Dressing Room”; Montagu response to “Lady’s Dressing Room” R 10/13 Swift, selected poems to Stella Week 8 T 10/18 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels R 10/20 Gulliver ctd. UNIT THREE: Class, Land, Estates Week 9 T 10/25 Clarissa (abridged Broadview) (OR Sterne, Sentimental Journey AND Boswell, Life of Johnson [excerpts]) R 10/27 Clarissa ctd. F 10/28 Paper #2 due at 5 pm Week 10 T 11/1 Clarissa ctd. R 11/3 Clarissa ctd. Week 11 T 11/8 Clarissa ctd. 6 R 11/10 Clarissa ctd. Week 12 T 11/15 Gray, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” Eton Ode, “Ode on the Spring,” Sonnet on the Death of Richard West R 11/17 Walpole, Castle of Otranto F 11/18 Twitter assignment due UNIT FOUR: Sentiment, Irony, Representation Week 12 ½ T 11/22 Frances Burney, Evelina R 11/24 No Class Week 13 T 11/29 Evelina ctd. R 12/1 Charlotte Smith, Elegaic Sonnets (excerpts); Smith and Hume on sympathy Week 14 T 12/6 Equiano, Interesting Narrative R 12/8 Equiano ctd.; Phillis Wheatley selected poetry F 12/9 Paper #3 due at 5 pm Final Exam info: 7