Welcome to our Hub-blog for Eh 241, Major British Authors. This website will lead you to all the important information you need this semester. Before we can get started on what is sure to be a very exciting course, there are a few documents you need to read and become familiar with:

1) Course Policy and Procedures

2) Proposed Syllabus

3) Blogging and Eh 241: A User’s Guide

Once you have read these documents, you are ready to move on into our course. You can do so by clicking on the following link. It will take you back to the proposed syllabus page, where you can find the appropriate class information by clicking on the appropriate day.

Best of luck, and I look forward to working with you all this semester.

Assistant Professor Adam Crowley

1)      Journal Entry:    (7-10 minutes)

a.       For the next 7-10 minutes, I want you to write on the following subject:

Describe, in specific detail, an experience you have in which you felt lost. Being lost can happen in a couple of ways: you can be physically lost, emotionally lost, even spiritually lost. What was that experience like for you? What were the strongest sense memories you have from this experience? Did it change how you look at the world?

2)      Group Work:      (5-7 minutes)

a.       In groups of 3-4, I want you to discuss the reading for today. What caught your interest? What did you make of Columbus’ writing? How did you answer the questions I asked you to answer? Are you seeing any of yourself in him? Everyone should have a chance to share.

3)      Class discussion of Christopher Columbus:                                 (5-10 minutes)

These understandings are going to serve as the foundation for our journey this semester, which is going to begin with an examination of Dante Alighieri and a selection from his most famous work, The Divine Comedy.

4)      Lecture on Dante Alighieri (10 minutes)

Our subject today is Dante Alighieri and the first Canto of his Divine Comedy.

Important Facts about Dante:

Remember how, last time, I said that the end of the medieval period was an era of significant cultural transformations?

Well, Dante lived right in the thick of it!

He was born in Florence, Italy in 1265.

Florence, Italy was relatively small town at the time of Dante’s birth. It only had 45,000 people, a little bit larger than Bangor at Christmas time.

Here is the kind of countryside Date might have seen as a child. It may not be all that different from what you saw looking out a window when you were growing up. It’s certainly similar to what I saw, minus the hills.

But Florence was growing rapidly. By the time Date was 35, there were 100,000 people living there, about the size of the Portland region. It was as big as Paris at the time.

The kind of city Florence grew up into while Date was living there 1265-1301:

Like all urban growth, Florence’s rise was tumultuous.

It was spurred on by industry, which radically changed the nature of Florence over the course of Date’s life. Why is this important? Remember I said that our authors were living in very unsettling times?

Well, imagine if your hometown more than doubled in size as you were growing up? What kinds of changes would that create?

Not only did Dante’s city undergo major changes during this time, but so did his family. His mother died when he was a child, and his father died when he was 18.

Dante was alone in a town crowed with people.

As Florence grew, it became the financial and commercial center of Italy.  This transformed the role of the Catholic Church, which became involved in this economic development — a fact that did not sit well with intellectuals like Dante.

Popes and emperors began to get into conflicts and wars all over Europe, and people began and continued to debate the differences between the Church and the Holy Roman Empire. In Florence, two factions emerged, the “White” army and the “Black” army. Dante was affiliated with the White army.

He went with a group to see the Pope to get the Pope to mitigate the fighting between the White and Black armies. Unfortunately, the Pope had already picked a side, the Black army. While Dante was visiting the Vatican, the Black army actually took over Florence, and Dante — on the losing end, here — was exiled on pain of death in 1301

He was charged with forgery, embezzlement, and opposition to the Pope. If caught, he would have been burned at the stake.

The “stakes,” as it were, were quite high for Dante!

So, he fled — but there was no way for him to become a citizen of another nation.

Dante, with no family and no nation, moved out into Europe, which was itself undergoing massive cultural and political transformations.

He was a known intellectual and poet, raised to understand Latin, and influenced greatly by Virgil, Aristotle, and the Vulgate version of the Bible (the Latin bible). He also would have been influenced by the Romance of the Rose, but that is a book we will talk about when we get the Chaucer.

All of this bears on your reading for next time.

This is the context for your reading assignment for Monday (there is a link further down the page), which is the first Canto of The Divine Comedy. While you will get the most out of this if you actually read it, I am here going to include a YouTube video which has several pictures that relate to the reading, and which is narrated. You may want to watch this, as hearing this poetry can greatly improve your understanding of it.

5)  Discussion of journal writing from the beginning of class (10 minutes)

6)   Homework and conclusion

Read: Dante’s Inferno: Canto I (Pages 3-11)Link:

http://books.google.com/books?id=52IrknghBZkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Divine+Comedy#PPA3,M1

This poem was first written in Italian, not English. In this version, you will see a page of English poetry followed by a page of the same poetry in Italian. Obviously, you do not need to read the Italian. However, I want you to see this because I want you to understand that before great works of art were written in English, they were written in other languages, too. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be talking about the growth and development of the English language, so this is an important concept for you to be aware of.

Write: Before next class, I want you to write and post to this page a 1.5 page journal entry on the following topic:

Dante’s writing mixes classical and naturalistic imagery with Christian themes and symbols. Can you detect when and where this is happening in the poem? What might the significance of these symbols be? Also comment on who you think the speaker and audience are in this poem. If you have any insightful comments to make on the situation, they would be welcome as well.

It may help to begin by considering the following quote, which comes from the end of the Canto when Dante is speaking to Virgil:

And I to him: “Poet, I beg of you,

In the name of God, that God you never knew,

Help me escape this evil and even worse,

And lead me to the place you spoke about

That I may see the gate Saint Peter guards

And those whose anguish you have told me of.”

Then he moved on, and I moved close behind him.

And just for fun, here is a link to the trailer for the new Dante’s Inferno Video Game:

In this course, I will frequently require you to POST your homework assignments directly to this website. All posted material can be read by anyone, anywhere, at any time, so you should do your best to present yourself in a professional manner. This is your work and reputation we are talking about.

The process for doing this should be fairly uncomplicated. If you follow these guidelines, you should not have any trouble.

Write your assignment as you normally would in a word-processing program, such as Microsoft WORD. Next, SAVE THE DOCUMENT as you normally would. The reason we do this is because, should you try to write it directly on the website, you could become disconnected from the internet while you are typing. This would result in you losing all of your hard work. Consider yourself warned.

Cut and paste your writing into the COMMENTS BOX at the bottom of the Syllabus’ page for the class you are working on.

Click on the submit comments button. That’s it! You’re done.

Your writing may not show up on the web page right away, as it will be sent to me for moderation first (basically to protect each of you from spam).

If you have problems, it is always okay for you to simply e-mail me your homework at crowleya@fc.husson.edu. However, over the course of this semester I do expect you to become proficient in posting to the blog, as you will have to do a lot of this in your professional life.  We should all be able to do this by the end of week two.

We will also be using a lot of YouTube videos in this course this semester. You need a high-speed internet connection to watch these. If you do not have one at home, that is okay. We have them here on campus in the computer clusters. I’ll explain to you how you are to use these.

Simply click on the day to be taken to the class page.

Week One:

Wednesday, January 14

Friday, January 16

Week Two:

Monday, Jan 19

Wednesday, Jan 21

Friday, Jan 23

Week Three:

Monday, Jan 26

Wednesday, Jan 28

The Individual Presentation

Friday, Jan 30

Week Four:

Monday, Feb 2

Wednesday, Feb 4

Friday, Feb 6

The Short Academic Paper

Week Five:

Monday, Feb 9

Wednesday, Feb 11

Friday, Feb 13

Week Six:

Monday, Feb 16

Wednesday, Feb 18

Friday, Feb 20

Week Seven:

Monday, Feb 23

Wednesday, Feb 25

Friday, Feb 27

Spring Break

Week Eight:

Monday, March 16

Wednesday, March 18

Friday, March 20

Week Nine:

Monday, March 23

Wednesday, March 25

Friday, March 27

Week Ten:

Monday, March 30

Wednesday, April 1

Friday, April 3

Week Eleven:

Monday, April 6

Wednesday, April 8

Friday, April 10

Week Twelve:

Monday, April 13

Wednesday, April 15

Friday, April 17

Week Thirteen:

Monday, April 20

Wednesday, April 22

Friday, April 24

Week Fourteen:

Monday, April 27

Wednesday, April 29

Friday, May 1

Final Exam TBA

** Dear Class, different groupings of people read at different speeds. In order to accommodate our different reading habits, this syllabus currently has a reading schedule that is completed within the first 12 weeks of our 14 week semester. However, should we require more time for a given text or texts, we will simply – in a controlled fashion – expand our reading time to reasonably accommodate our needs.

**This does not mean that you can expect to ever read less than the full assignment for a given night, only that assignment lengths may be shortened or lengthened over the course of the semester to accommodate the class’ average reading speed.

*** Also note, all course material, notes, and lecture videos can be found on the syllabus page of our blog.

Proposed Syllabus

Week One: Orientation To History

Wednesday, January 15: Context Lecture: The Ancient Fantasies of Foreign Strangers

Read: Selections from the works of Christopher Columbus

Write: Blog posting

Friday, January 17: Context Lecture: Dante and his time

Read: The Divine Comedy: Volume I: The Inferno: Canto I

Write: Blog posting

Week Two: Chaucer and an Expanding World

Monday, January 19: Context Lecture: From Dante to Chaucer

Read: The Canterbury Tales, “The Prologue”

Write: Blog posting

Wednesday, January 21: Lecture: Chaucer and Courtly Love

Read: The Canterbury Tales, “The Knight’s Tale”

Focused Annotation: The Knight’s Tale

Friday, January 23: Lecture: Chaucer and the Human Condition

Read: The Canterbury Tales, “Wife of Bath’s Tale”

Focused Annotation: The Wife of Bath’s Tale

Week Three: The Death of LATIN! The birth of ENGLISH!

Monday, January 26: Context Lecture: From the Vulgar to the Vatican

Read: Selections from Imagined Communities

Individual Presentation Assignments

Write: Blog Posting

Wednesday, January 28: Lecture: From the Prophets to the Profitable

Read: Selections from Imagined Communities

Short Paper Assignment (due Feb 13)

Write: Blog Posting

Friday, January 30 Lecture: Context for John Milton

Read: Selections from John Milton

Write: Blog Posting

Week Four: John Milton, His World and the Rise of the Individual

Monday, February 2: Context Lecture: The Nerd Who Spoke to God

Read: Selection from Milton’s poems

Individual Presentations

Short Paper Workshop

Write: Blog Posting

Wednesday, February 4: Lecture: Middle Milton

Read: Paradise Lost: Book One

Individual Presentations

Write: Focused Annotation of Paradise Lost

Friday, February 6: Lecture: Late Milton

Read: Robinson Crusoe

Individual Presentations

Short Paper Workshop

Write: Focused Annotation

Week Five: Daniel Defoe: Writing For Money and Posterity

Monday, February 9: Context Lecture: The Business of Writing

Read: Robinson Crusoe

Individual Presentations

Write: Blog response

Wednesday, February 11 Lecture: Defoe and his time.

Read: Robinson Crusoe

Write: Focused Annotation

Friday, February 13 Short Paper DUE

Lecture: Defoe’s Implications

Read: Robinson Crusoe

Mid-term Review

Write: Blog Post

Week Six: Mary Shelly: A True Genius

Monday, February 23 Context Lecture: The Rise of the Novel

Read: Frankenstein

Individual Presentations

Mid-Term Review

Write: Blog Posting

Wednesday, February 25 Lecture: The Enlightenment and the Novel

Read: Frankenstein

Write: Blog Post

Friday, February 27 Midterm

Spring Break

Week Eight: Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

Monday, March 16 Context Lecture: Context for Jane Eyre

Read: Jane Eyre

Write: Focused Annotation

Wednesday, March 18 Lecture: Humanism and Jane Eyre

Read: Jane Eyre

Write: Blog Post

Friday, March 20 Lecture: What Would Jane Do?

Read: Jane Eyre

Write: Focused Annotation

Week Nine: Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

Monday, March 23 Context Lecture: The Social implication of Jane Eyre

Read: Jane Eyre

Group Presentations Assignment

Write: Blog Post

Wednesday, March 25 Lecture: The Promise of the Novel

Read: Jane Eyre

Long Paper Assignment

Write: Focused Annotation

Friday, March 27 Lecture: Final issues

Read: Jane Eyre

Write: Focused Annotation

Week Ten: Jane Austin Pride and Prejudice

Monday, March 30 Context Lecture: Novels of Convention

Read: Pride and Prejudice

Write: Blog Post

Wednesday, April 1 Lecture: Imagined Communities

Group Presentation

Read: Pride and Prejudice

Write: Focused Annotation

Friday, April 3 Lecture: The Role or Mr. Darcy

Read: Pride and Prejudice

Group Presentation

Write: Blog Post

Week Eleven: Jane Austin Pride and Prejudice

Monday, April 6 Lecture: Austin’s Place in our reading

Read: Pride and Prejudice

Write: Focused Annotation

Wednesday, April 8 Lecture: The social implications of Pride and Prejudice

Read: Pride and Prejudice

Group Presentation

Write: Blog Post

Friday, April 10 Lecture: Reflection on the grand journey

Read: Pride and Prejudice

Group Presentation

\Write: Focused Annotation

Week Twelve [Group Presentations/Long Paper Focus]

Monday, April 13

Wednesday 15

Friday, April 17

Week Thirteen: [Group Presentations/ Long Paper Focus]

Monday, April 20

Wednesday, April 22

Friday, April 24

Week Fourteen [Long Paper Focus/ Final Exam Review]

Monday, April 27

Wednesday, April 29

Friday, May 1 Long Paper Due

Final Exam TBA

Eh 241:           Major British Authors

Dates:             MWF:  1-150

Location:       MW, 228 Peabody;F 127 Peabody

Instructor:      Assistant Professor Adam Crowley

General Catalog Description:

This course provides a study of canonical authors and works of the British Isles from medieval times to the Victorian era. Depending on instructor, texts and authors may include Beowulf, Chaucer, Langland, Malory, Donny, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Austen, Wordsworth, Bronte, and Tennyson.

Specific Description:

This course is intended to introduce students to canonical European authors whose works reflected – and in some cases even instigated – major social and cultural changes within the British Isles and, later, the British Empire from the Medieval to Victorian eras. Students will actively engage both texts and authors with a series of critical enterprises, which will culminate in a final project that demonstrates students’firm familiarity with this general literary period.

Required Texts:

Chaucer, Geoffrey              Selected Canterbury Tales

Defoe, Daniel                         Robinson Crusoe

Shelly, Mary                          Frankenstein

Austen, Jane                         Pride and Prejudice

Bronte, Charlotte               Jane Eyre

*Other supplemental readings to be provided

Attendance Policy:

You will be required to attend this class regularly and promptly in order to pass.  If you show up more than a few minutes late, you will be marked absent. Students are expected to attend all scheduled class sessions for courses in which they are enrolled.  For a MWF course, you can miss 3 classes over the course of the semester. After that, you will lose 1/3 of a full letter grade per missed class on your final grade. For example, a B+ would become a B. An absence is an absence is an absence — thus there are no excused or unexcused absences. Each one counts towards your total.

When a student is absent for more than 15% of the scheduled class time for a semester, I will award the grade of X and deny course credit for excessive absences.

For classes that meet MWF – no more than 6 absences

NOTE!

I will mark you as absent if you are more than 5 minutes late.

I will mark you absent if your cell phone disturbs the class.

I will mark you absent if you are caught using electronic devices (cell phones, computer, ect.) for non-class room related activities.

I will mark you absent if you do not come to class with your basic supplies (pen, paper, book, ect).

I will mark you absent if you pack up to leave class before class has finished.

SNOW DAYS AND SICK DAYS:

Class will only be canceled if the university is closed or I am ill. As your driving instructor taught you, YOU are responsible for deciding whether or not it is safe to drive to Husson, and only YOU are responsible for what happens to you on the road. If class is in session and you do not think it is safe to drive, YOU should make the informed decision to stay home or come to school. If you don’t think it’s safe to drive, then, certainly DO NOT DRIVE. On average, there are typically one to two major winter storms during the winter semester, but with global warming today, it’s anybody’s guess how many we may see.

If you are sick, stay home! Don’t make your classmates sick. Three absences should be more than enough to cover potential sick/snow days in a given semester.   Do not waste them!

DUE DATES

Papers and assignments are due in person at the beginning of class on the day specified.  They must meet all the requirements listed on the writing prompt, including those of length and format. All papers must be accompanied by previous drafts.   Late papers will receive a penalty of one-third of a grade for each class period that passes, assessed from the final grade of the paper. All revisions are due within one week of the receipt of the paper. Late papers can be turned in no later than one week after the due date. Failure to do so will result in a grade of F on the paper, and you will lose the chance to revise.

Grading:

Journal                                           10%

Individual Presentation           10%

Group Presentation                    10%

Short Paper                                    20%

Midterm                                           10%

Long Paper                                     30%

Final Examination                      10%

Brief description of graded activities:

Journal:

We will be journaling every day in this class, and missed journal assignments cannot be made up. Entries will generally be on the topic of the reading that was assigned for our meeting. While I do not believe in trick questions, you can expect to be asked specific questions about the text. You will be “on call” to demonstrate a basic understanding of the material at all times.

Individual Presentations:

During our second week of classes, we will all be signing up for our individual presentations for the semester. These presentations will be 10 minutes long, and will occur throughout the semester. You will be presenting to the class on a particular aspect of a story or poem that interests you.  As part of your presentation, you will be facilitating classroom discussion. Specific instructions on the exact specifications for these presentations will be delivered to you shortly.

Group Activities:

During our third week of classes, we will all be signing up for our group presentations for the semester. These presentations will be 20 minutes long, and will occur throughout the semester. In groups of 4, you will be presenting to the class on important historical and cultural information that you believe contextualizes a specific book or books that we will be reading this semester.

Short Research Paper:

Your short research paper will be 4-5 pages in length. It will offer a literary argument on one of the texts we have read by mid-semester. The paper will need to follow MLA conventions, and have at least four secondary sources.

Midterm:

The midterm examination will be an essay exam that asks you for meaningful reflections on specific texts that we will have read by the middle of the semester.

Long Research Paper:

This paper will build on your short research paper. It will propose a mature literary argument capable of sustaining the critical scrutiny of your peers. The length will be 7-8 pages, and you will need to use 8-10 secondary sources.

Final Exam:

The final examination will be an essay exam that will ask you to write detailed answers to questions that are focused on the materials we have covered since the midterm.

Grading Policies

• All assignments will be graded on a standard letter-grade scale.

• Late assignments will be downgraded one letter-grade per day late [including weekends].

• Once assignments are handed back to students, no further late assignments will be accepted.

• The student must complete all assignments to pass the course.

• All papers must be typed.

• An act of plagiarism or other forms of cheating will result in an F for the course grade.

• Students MUST contact the instructor prior to the due date of an assignment if they have any problems with the assignment.

Equal Opportunity Policy:

If you require any specific assistance with regard to a physical or mental disability, please let me know right away. I will make every reasonable effort to accommodate your specific classroom needs.

Writing Center:

The writing center is a resource you should use to help you improve your writing. The writing center is not for remediation; both inexperienced and experienced writers are encourage to take full advantage of the center’s services. The writing consultants the center employs can help you invent, organize, and revise your documents to meet the specific requirements established during class. Take the time to become familiar with this resource and use it regularly. Please note: To improve the effectiveness of the writing consultation, please set up an appointment with a tutor at least 2 days before the assignment is due. Also, bring 2 copies of your paper with you to the tutoring session. Also note that the writing center is not an editing service. When you attend a session, you will sit down with the consultant and have a 15 to 30 minute conversation with him or her about how to improve your writing.

Writing Center Hours:

Tutors will be available between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. (and by appointment) Monday through Friday. However, hours will be adjusted to meet the needs of the Husson community.

Location:

Peabody 210

Email: writingcenter@husson.edu

Phone ex: 1097

Academic Integrity:

Simply put, I will absolutely flunk you for plagiarism, no matter who you are. Academic honesty is expected of all students. Any work that is not the student’s own is a violation of Husson College policy and of the student’s own integrity.  Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated.  The penalty for cheating or plagiarism will be failure of the course.  Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Copying from another student’s papers, quizzes, exams or reports

• Copying sections from books or articles or any other source

  without proper citation

• Allowing work to be copied by another student

Written Work Preparation:

Students’ papers should meet the following guidelines:

• ALL work should be typed

• Font size should be 12

• Margins should be 1″ (do not justify the right margin)

• Text should all be double spaced

• First page should include students’ name and assignment identification

• Citations to material must be in MLA Style

GRADING SYSTEM:

The system of evaluating a student’s achievement at Husson is by letter grade with the following percentage equivalents:

A                     95-100                         C                     73-76

A-                    90-94                           C-                    70-72

B+                   87-89                           D+                   67-69

B                     83-86                           D                     63-66

B-                    80-82                           D-                    60-62

C+                   77-79                           F                      Below 60

Other grades you may encounter include:

E          Exited without withdrawing (student disappeared from class during first four weeks of semester)

WW     Withdrew before midterm (no grade is given)

WP      Withdrew Passing

WF      Withdrew Failing

X         Credit Denied for Excessive Absences

WA     Administrative Withdrawal

I           Incomplete

Q         Audit

1)      Presentation

2)      Journal Work

For the next ten minutes, I want you to write on the following subject:

How do you know the difference between right and wrong? Where do you get your “moral compass” from? Is it from your family, your friends? Or a combination of these and/or other sources? I want you to explain to me to the best of your ability your ethical and moral development.

Group Discussion:

For the next five to seven minutes, I want you to discuss the following:

At one point or another in our lives, we have all done things that we regret. What is the experience of regret like for you? How does it manifest itself physically (i.e. how do you FEEL)? How does it manifest itself in your understanding of the world, and your expectations of the world? While you do not need to talk about what you regret, specifically, I do want you to discuss what the experience of regret is like for you.

Group Discussion (5-7)

Mini-Lecture (10 mins):

• We have discussed changes to Language and Time
• Notice that there is no real discussion of evil – at least not as we might understand it – in this writing
• For example: Dante, Columbus, and Chaucer.

So, as of last week, we had discussed the major changes in language and time that shaped the period between the death of Chaucer and the early life of John Milton. One of the things you may have noticed in our reading so far is that there has been very little in it about either evil or villains.

For example, while many people would call Columbus evil, his writing is nowhere concerned with villainy or evil. The same might be said of what we have seen of Chaucer. The prologue presents despicable characters, but it does not directly address the evil or villainy of these characters. In terms of Dante, one could certainly argue that all of the Inferno is, itself, concerned with evil characters and their punishment – and this is true, but we need to notice that, in the 1^st canto, evil is something that Dante will only have to face if he continues on the wrong path alone. Once he knows that he had a guide, he readily charges into Hell – as if he felt that he were protected from it. Evil is a place that has a HOME, and it is the job of the reasonable person to AVOID that home.

—

• Europeans began to fear for their souls
• People no longer certain that they had a bead on “where” God was in the universe or “where” the Devil was.

Well, as a result of the massive chances we thought about last week, many Europeans began to actively fear for their souls in ways that they had not before. People could no longer be certain that God was a fixed force in the universe, and so they could no longer assume that the Devil was a fixed force, either.

—

• People began to fear that the Devil was walking the Globe, looking for souls.
• The Witch Hunts
• Women and other minorities targeted.
• Sell their soul through an exchange of commerce.

In fact, it is during this exact period when people first began to believe that the Devil was actively walking the Globe, looking for souls to corrupt and destroy. This belief is most spectacularly represented in the beginning of the “Witch Hunts,” that plagued Europe for most of this period. Women — who were generally believed to be more difficult to instruct in Religious matters than men – were targeted as having “sold themselves to the devil.” The devil was believed to actually appear to such woman, and to take them through some ceremony – typically through dancing naked in the woods and signing their names in his book (the ironic fact that most of these women could not read seems to have not been considered by their prosecutors).

–

• Catholic Church no longer seen as an adequate shield from the Devil (Exorcisms)
• Various weird factions and witch hunters begin to emerge.

Fear of a walking, talking Devil drove many people in this era to devise all kinds of particular religious habits, and indeed this is a period in which the power of the Catholic Church to maintain order and influence across the continent begins to wane considerably. For some religious groups, such as the pilgrims who landed near Plymouth Rock, fear of the devil and damnation was an all consuming force in their lives. The question of what was wrong and what was right became a central public debate.

We need to understand this development, because it will help us understand our next writer a bit better. Milton takes us this issue specifically.

Let’s begin to consider John Milton:

J. Milton’s Early Life

1608: Born to a middle-class British family

1626: Expelled from Cambridge (he wrote a dirty poem in Latin)

1632: Begins to publish poetry — first poem “On Shakespeare”

1635: Lives at home

1637: His mother died

1639: Returns to England and lives and teaches in England

J. Milton’s Mid-Life

1641: Major political troubles begin to England. Milton begins to write “political tracks”

1642: Civil War breaks out in England/ Mrs. Milton gets fed up and leaves John. He quickly writes a track defending divorce. But he and his wife continue to see each other. We know this because he had several daughters — who we will come back to shortly.

1647: John’s father dies

1649: King Charles is executed

J. Milton’s Late Life

1652: Milton becomes blind

1663: He gets married again

1667: Paradise Lost is first published.

1674: Expanded version of Paradise Lost is published. Milton dies.

Homework: Read Book One of Milton’s Paradise Lost

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/index.shtml

Paradise Lost, Book One

1)      Take you your journals. (10 Min)

a.       For the next ten minutes, I want you to write in response to the following prompt.

i.      Describe the process by which you have been taken into a community: i.e. a group of friends, a group of co-workers, a sports team, artistic group, or community-based organization. What was it like for you to be taken into this group. Describe how you were introduced to the important members, and how this introduction shaped your immediate expectations of this body.

b.      Group Work: (5-7)

i.      In your groups, I want you to have a good conversation on the following topic.

1.       Are you judgmental people? If so, how do you know this? If not, then how do you know that?  Describe how and why you once passed judgment on someone. An easy way to begin thinking about this is to recall an extremely eccentric person that you have met in your life. What was it like to meet this person? How did your initial judgment of them shape your expectations of them?

2)      Class Discussion (5-7 mins)

3)      Transition from Dante TO Chaucer

a.       An ongoing Spiritual, Emotional, and Geographic crisis

b.      From the Bible To the Romans to …your friends?

4)      Context For this Week: Geoffrey Chaucer

Introduction to Chaucer:

Geoffrey Chaucer: (1345-1400): The Father of English Poetry

If you’ve ever gone on a date, Chaucer is important! And you OWE HIM! I’ll explain later…

Fast facts about “G.” Chaucer:

• Born in 1345 to an English-Speaking Merchant family with  connections to the court.
• He lived an eventful early life, which included:
• Military Service in France
• Imprisonment
• Employed on diplomatic journeys to Italy
• Marriage
• Eventually assymed the position of Comptroller of Customs for the Port of London.

• Major Point: He was familiar with chivalric culture, and the cultures of most major European countries.

Chaucer the Artist:

He was a man of many interests

• He was very pious man, very concerned with spirituality
• He understood the major European languages, including Latin, French and Italian literature (Dante!).
• 
  
• He was extreamly interested in human intellect
• 
  
• He was a jack of all trades, and was interested in rhetoric, theology, philosophy, and several medieval science.

So, to sum up, he was interested in all lot of stuff

For our purposes, he was really interested in THREE particular books

• The Bible
• Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy

He was so interested in Boethius that he translated The Consolation of Philosophy into French. Now, we don’t need to know this book in-detail, but we do need to know what it’s message was, which was that that man is doomed if he becomes obsesses with worldy attractions, and needs to focus on God Himself. Very famous image of the world as Wheel with God in the Middle. The Wheel of Fortune.

Man has no ability to control the turning wheel of fate, but can find eternal peace if he turns his thought and love to God, who sits at the center of the wheel who’se “circumfrence is everywehre and center is nowhere.”

• Roman de la Rose: Very famous work concerned with the folly of unreasoning lust. Very funny. Allegorical characters. Ask the reader be beguiled by characters while recognizing their FLAWS – their world flaws.

So, as an artist, Chaucer struggles with these issues in a number of texts, but for us, the most important text is The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales:

It is a work about a group of travelers who meet at the Tabard Inn at Southwark and go on a journey together to the tomb of Sir. Thomas A. Becket at Canterbury.

They agree to each tell a story on the way there, and to tell a story on the way back (a HUGE project). Of course, as you may be able to tell by the dates, Chaucer died before he could finish his work.

For our purposes, there are three very important parts To The Canterbury Tales: The Prologue, The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Knight’s Tale. Notice that these are ALLEGORICAL characters who are dealing with WORLDY ISSUES, and how they are only saved when they turn their attention away from these issues and to God, or some sense of spirituality.

Homework:

Read: The Prologue to Canterbury Tales

Write: One and a half page response to The Prologue.  Write on important themes, motifs, or symbols that become apparent in the Prologue. How do these subjects relate to aspects of our classroom conversations?

1)      Introduction to the Course

3)      Our Policy and Procedure Sheet

3)      Our Hub-Blog

4)      Our Syllabus

5)      A Brief Introduction to Blogging and Eh 241

6)      Who are you?

7)      Who am I?

Listen,

“Why are we studying old-school British literature, anyway?”

Well, let’s break that question down into three more fundamental questions.

Question One:   Why do we study literature?

Question Two:   Why do we study British literature?Question Three: Why do we study British literature from the 14th-19th centuries?

Question One: Why do we study literature?

As an American, average or otherwise, living in the 21^st century, you may think that it would make more sense to spend your time looking at the  job-oriented, political or scientific events of your own world. After all, that is where you will be working and making money, right?

You may even come to this class with the presumption that most literature is “old,” and was produced by people who held extremely naive beliefs, beliefs that have no meaningful place in your 21st-century go-go-go American word!

You may be right — partly!

For example, there is an enormous intellectual, moral, and psychological gulf between YOU and many of the authors on our syllabus.

After all, while most of us would believe that these people were “smart,” it is also true that that believed that the ENTIRE universe consisted of the Earth and the other plants and stars that were VISIBLE with the naked eye.

How stupid is that!

Turns out…pretty stupid.

Today, of course, we know that this is simply not true, and that the Universe is many billions of times larger than this.

You will come across specific example of the astounding limitations of economic, political, and scientific reasoning in our upcoming readings by Christopher Columbus.

So, yes, if we are looking at literature as a source of information on the physical world or our own economic marketplace, we will certainly find that it is less accurate than a scientific or economic text. You’ll get no argument on that from me. However, our topic in this class is not the study of science and geography, but, rather the Humanities!

Q: What are the humanities? I’ve never studied them before? Why would I want to?

A: Hey, that’s three new questions. But, okay, think about it this way:

The humanities are area of studies that looks back on and considers the past, to cultures that are less technological and capitalistic than our  own. We do this to find out how we got to where we are as a civilization. The humanities do nothing less than help us make sense of the world as we find it — and what we might do with it!

Literature, like all forms of art, falls under the broad category of the humanities. We study literature because it is the most perfect subject the human race has devised for taking up issues related to critical thinking — a subject that you will all need to engage before you can graduate from his university, no matter what your major may be.

And that, at least to me, seems to be a pretty good “nuts and bolts” answer to the question of why it is we study literature.

Q: Okay. I buy it, Assistant Professor Crowley. But, but there are a lot of different literatures I could look at, right? Why British Literature? After all — need I remind you — I am an AMERICAN! Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to study literature that asks American questions? And did you just say that we were going to read Christopher Columbus? He was not even English? Do you even know what you are doing? Are you qualified to teach this course?

A: Those are all good questions, and let me try to answer them, or at least most of them, with the following claim: which I am going to ask you to take on faith right now.

Much of what it means to be an AMERICAN today was first established by BRITISH writers almost eight hundred years ago, who were, themselves, writing in response to massive social upheavals that were upending Europe. If you don’t believe me,  I hope that over the course of this semester you will give me an opportunity to PROVE this to you.

Consider: George Washington was British by birth, and American by choice. As was John Adams. And even though these men were British, they were also influenced by the many cultures and peoples of Europe.

Q: Okay, that’s hard to swallow. But seeing as how I’ve already walked all the way over to this classroom, I’ll take it on faith. But you’ll have to prove it! I’ll hold you to your promise. But — hey — even if that is true, then why are we looking at British literature written from 200 to 800 years ago!

A: We are looking back at this writing because it points towards the most important cultural transformations that shaped the entire second millennium, from an American perspective. Let’s take just a quick look at what the world was like 700 years ago:

To understand our subject, you need a little context. The medieval world…

Our earliest authors: Columbus, Dante, and Chaucer, lived in an era during which people widely believed that the Classical world of Homer was generally superior to the modern world.

It is for this reason that people turned to the philosophy and writing of the classical world and tried to use it to make sense of the world as they found it.

It was a vast intellectual effort to translate the historical records of a previous time and make them fit into the modern world. This was the beginning of the Humanities as we know it today, by the way.

At the same time, there was the MASSIVE shock of discovering North and south American continents.

The English people of the time didn’t call these new continents the “New Countries,” the “New Land.” They called them the NEW WORLD.

This “new world” was populated with plants, animals, and people — not to mention totally new forms of government — that HAD NEVER been seen in the “old world.” The many  exciting possibilities of the new world suggested that human affairs might be organized differently, which was a HUGE relief to Europeans who’d been looking back on the age of Homer for inspiration! (not that the age of Homer was all that bad.)

It was the beginning of a true era of Cultural Diversity for the people of Eastern and Western Europe.

This leads us to our first writer, a man who was English and didn’t even speak English, Christopher Columbus. What do you know of Christopher Columbus?

For next time, I want you to read the following excerpts from Christopher Columbus’ diary.

Read:  Christopher Columbus, Jounrnal of the First Voyage to America, 1492-1493.

Read Pages 54-76 (October 21 1492 through November 12 1492) Link: http://books.google.com/books?id=2mvK60VAdCcC&dq=christopher+columbus+Journal+of+the+first+voyage&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=WWpufFZjo1&sig=YpzUGPhdMBtkeRoqT8FuYErUmWs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPA54,M1

Read Pages 6-8: This is an excerpt from the Narrative of Columbus’ third voyage to the new world, and it is an excellent example of how someone can hold simialr view you YOU and also be TOTALLY wrong in their physical understanding of thr world.

http://books.google.com/books?id=o-WM0YbURzoC&pg=PA6&dq=%22Ptolemy+and+the+other+geographers%22#PPA6,M1

Write: 1.5 Page entry: After reading the jounral, I want you to write a 1.5 page entry on the following topic: Citing specific examples from the text, explain how Christopher Columbus is like you, and also how he is different from you. Also, consider some of the specific details in this document, and explain to me why you think they are important. Post your writing directly to this page, though the comments box located at the bottom of the page. You must post BEFORE our next class meeting, not during or after. Please e-mail me if you have any problems.

Video Lecture for this class: Here you will find a three-part video lecture from this class. It may be helpful to watch these, or simply watch parts of these videos, before the next class to get a “re-cap” of the material we covered. It is not mandatory to do so, but my students generally find that it helps to touch base with the material again before they come to class.  Good luck! [Videos will be up after next lecture]

Presentations

A: Albert: The Wife of Bath’s Tale

B: RadKliffe: The Knight’s Tale

Transition from Robinson Crusoe (1719) to Frankenstein (1818)

For our purposes, the two most significant transformations that occurred between the writing of Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein were the American and French Revolutions.

I’m going to presume that you know something about the former, as you were undoubtedly taught about the war for independence in High School. I think, for now, it would be enough to say that the war was, in general, a war against oppressive governance. But it was also founded in a philosophical presumption that we need to consider, namely, that the United States was to be something very different than the the theocratic monarchies that ruled Europe.

Let’s consider three quotes from three early presidents, all of whom were major players in the American Revolution:

John Adams

“The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on theChristian religion.”

Thomas Jefferson

“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world and I do not findin our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

James Madison

“What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyrrany. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.”

Now, one may be tempted to read these as simply indictments of religion, and you will often hear atheists uses these quotes as evidence the the founding fathers simply did not believe in God. Nothing could be further from the truth. These quotes express a weariness with orgnaized relgion: specifically with the long and by this time bloody battle between Protestants and Catholics that had upended England, and the long wars between various Christian, Jewish, and Islamic sects in Europe.

And it is this dissatisfaction with religiously inspired political conflict we need to consider today, as we approach Frankenstein.

Now let’s turn our attention to the French Revolution, which sought to reproduce in France a similar revolution against authory that occured in America. For a time, it unseated the monarchy and attempted to install governance based on enlightenment principals, but in the end deteriorated into chaos and mob rule and the emergence of a new olgarchy — as did the American Experiment, by the way.

Well, if you were in England at the time, you could look at these revolutions in one of two ways. You could see them as the natural failures of dissatisfied peasants, or you could perhaps hope to bring something like these revolutions into England itself. Mary Shelley’s parents were strongly aligned with people who wanted to bring this to kind of change to England.

Mary Shelley

Born: August 20 1797

Mother:               Mary Wollstonecraft

Father:                 William Godwin

Her parents belong to a group of radical thinkers and artists, including Thomas Paine. Their goal was to take the revolutionary ideas that had unsettled France and the US and bring them to England.

While one could teach a course on either Wollstonecraft or Godwin, for our purposes it is enough to know that both writers wrote very powerful works, that, in their essence, argued that if people could be somehow stripped of their superstitions and emotionalism, and their respect for custom and tradition, they would become free and virtuous and find total pleasure in their existence. This was a very radical notion that, in part, gave birth to the early United States.

Mary Shelley’s mother, Wollstonecraft died eleven days after Shelly was born.

Godwin was left to care for his daughter. He wasn’t very successful as a ladies’ man, but fortunately he had a sympathetic neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont (notice all the Mary’s).

Unlike the other authors we have read this semester, Mary Shelley was raised with step-brothers and sisters. Her father was generally depressed, and her step-mother was generally ‘disagreeable.’ So, like a lot of smart kids in similar situations, Mary turned to books for escape.

She also grew up surrounded by artists, which is significant because artists tend to have far more exposure to different classes of society that most people.  While they tend to be poor, they also tend to entertain the very rich, so they have a social perspective that many people do not.

When she was 17, she first encountered Percy Bysshe Shelley – a very famous English poet. Though he was married, he started to “court” her. They would frequently “hang out” at Mary’s mother’s grave.  Eventually, they fled and went on a tour of Europe.

In addition to Percy, she had a number of other significant male relationships, which may or may not have been sexual.

Her step sister, Clair Clairmont, was jealous of Mary’s relationship with a famous poet, and so she set out to get her own, the extremely famous Lord Byron.

Mary had a child in, in 1815,who died.  And, essentially to escape the media of the era, the Byron and Shelley families fled to a place called Lake Leman. (they were spied on by people with telescopes, and rumors of orgies began to circulate)

While they were there, Mary had a dream of the monster, which we will actually encounter in the actual text. Byron proposed a “ghost-story contest,” and Mary responded to the contest with the story that would become Frankenstein.

Watch these three Youtube clips and be ready to coment on them on Friday

Frankenstein in Pop Culture:

A Clip from the famous 1931 verions “It’s alive!” (note: there is nothing in the book like this)

An old “Frankenberry” cereal ad. Notice that in this ad he is friendly with kids.

A Clip from Mel Brook’s great film ‘Young Frankenstein’ (a comedy)

1)      Presentation

2)      Reading Response

a.       Journal

b.      Discussion

3)      Writing workshop

a.       Your groups are challenged to come up with answers to the following five questions

1) Explain one way in which an understanding of theory can help you understand the literary element you are focusing on?

2) Identify one source you think will be helpful to you as you compose your paper (name of author and title)

3) Identify one difficultly you are having with the current draft

4) Identify a source you have used to find out more about the theory that you will be using

5) Teach your group one interesting thing about the relationship between your selected element and theory that they might not be aware of right now.

Homework: Read to chapter 30, find and record 5 sources for yourself in MLA citation style.