ENGL 120 001
Lecture: MW 12:00 – 1:00 PM
BUCH A 102
Discussion: F 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Dr. Vin Nardizzi
Email: nardizzi@mail.ubc.ca
Office: BuTo 509
Hours: Tues 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Literature and Criticism: Imagining Nature
Through the study of drama, fiction, film, poetry, and some of the very best scholarly criticism
and theory about our course materials, students will outline some of the relationships between
criticism and literature. Intended for students who have a strong interest in literature and who
have an ability to write well in an enriched and challenging curriculum, this course will introduce
students to the fundamentals of university-level literary study and will furnish them with the skills
to think and to write critically about literature. In lectures and in discussion groups, students will
explore basic literary concepts as well as methods of literary analysis to enable them to excel in
more specialized English courses at the second-year level and beyond.
The theme for this course, “Imagining Nature,” aims to provide a focus for students who may find
the reading materials unfamiliar or challenging. Our readings and discussions will engage how
literature imagines nature, and how criticism can help us to grasp more fully the consequences
(both negative and positive) of these imaginings. Here are two questions that will centrally
concern our endeavours: how does literature shape our relationship to nature, and can criticism
and literature on nature help us to think and act differently in an era of climate change? Our
syllabus will be divided into six mini-themes, all of which represent a powerful lens through
which literature has imagined nature: “apocalypse,” “pastoral,” “picturesque,” “sublime,”
“sustainability,” and “wilderness.”
Grading Calculus: 2 In-class Essays (15% each); Take-home Essay (35%); Final Exam (25%);
Discussion Group, which includes attendance, participation, and quizzes (10%).
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Discussion Groups
These class meetings convene on Friday afternoons from 12:00 – 1:00 PM, and our four
wonderful teaching assistants will supervise them. Your attendance at, and engaged participation
in, discussion group is mandatory. During these sessions, you will review materials that we
explored in lecture; you will sometimes consider literary materials not explored in lecture; you
may take a very short reading quiz; and, you will write your in-class exams and turn in your takehome writing assignment.
L01
L02
L03
L04
Buchanan D205: Eve Preus
Buchanan D207: Carmel Ohman
Buchanan D229: Maddie Reddon
Buchanan B218: Nich. McElroy
These four capable instructors will mark your exams and essays, keep track of your progress
through the course, and hold weekly office hours. If you have any queries about your mark, I
advise you to meet with your teaching assistant BEFORE you contact me: he or she has done the
grading and can therefore explain the rationale for the mark better than I can. I am, of course,
happy to speak with you during my office hours about any course-related questions you may
have.
Course Materials
Required course texts, all of which are available at the UBC Bookstore:
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
All materials with an asterisk (*) are available through the MLA International Bibliography,
which you can access through the Library; all other materials will be emailed to you as PDFs.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Attendance Policy: http://www.english.ubc.ca/attendance.htm
“Students missing 40% or more of their lectures, seminars, or meetings of a discussion section
associated with a large lecture course, regardless of whether their absences are avoidable or
unavoidable, may be considered unable to meet the ‘learning outcomes’ of the course and may be
excluded from the final examination.”
UBC Plagiarism Policy: http://learningcommons.ubc.ca/resource-guides/avoidingplagiarism/
According to the UBC, “Plagiarism is using another person’s ideas without giving credit and is
considered intellectual theft. If you submit or present the oral or written work of someone else
you are guilty of plagiarism.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Reading Schedule
W 04-09
F 06-09
INTRODUCTIONS
Raymond Williams, “Nature” from Keywords (1976)
“PASTORAL” & “WILDERNESS”
WEEK ONE (09-09 to 13-09)
Virgil, “Eclogue I” (37 B.C.E)
Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst” (ca. 1611)
Raymond Williams, Chapters 1-4 from The Country and the City (1973)
WEEK TWO (16-09 to 20-09) | National Event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: W 18-09
Lecture on F 20-09 in Buchanan A102
Virgil, “Eclogue II” (37 B.C.E.)
Edmund Spenser, “Januarye” from The Shepheards Calendar (1579)
Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (1599)
Bruce R. Smith, Chapter 3 from Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England (1991)
WEEK THREE (23-09 to 27-09)
Andrew Marvell, “The Garden” (ca. 1650s)
Henry David Thoreau, Chapters 2, 5, and 18 from Walden (1854)
William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness” (1995)
WEEK FOUR (30-09 to 04-10)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)
* Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent” (1985)
“PICTURESQUE” & “SUBLIME”
WEEK FIVE (07-10 to 11-10)
William Gilpin from Observations on the River Wye … (1782)
William Wordsworth, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798)
Malcolm Andrews, Chapters 2 and 5 from The Search for the Picturesque (1989)
In-Class Essay Exam #1: 11-10
WEEK SIX (14-10 to 18-10) | THANKSGIVING: M 14-10
Lecture on F 10-18 in Buchanan A102
John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc” (1817)
Kate Rigby, Chapter 4 from Topographies of the Sacred (2004)
WEEK SEVEN (21-10 to 25-10)
Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance (1790)
* David B. Morris, “Gothic Sublimity” (1985)
WEEK EIGHT (28-10 to 01-11)
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (1993)
* Lucy Melbourne, “‘Plotting the Apple of Knowledge’: Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia as Iterated Theatrical Algorithm”
(1998)
“APOCALYPSE & SUSTAINABILITY”
WEEK NINE (04-11 to 08-11)
William Blake, “And Did Those Feet” (1804-10) & “England! Awake! Awake! Awake!” (1804-09)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (1798)
George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Darkness” (1816)
Morton D. Paley, “Introduction” from Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (1999)
In-Class essay #2: 08-11
WEEK TEN (11-11 to 15-11) | REMEMBRANCE DAY: M 11-11
The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004)
Stephen Rust, “Hollywood and Climate Change” (2013)
WEEK ELEVEN (18-11 to 22-11)
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)
* Patricia Yaeger, “Sea Trash, Dark Pools, and the Tragedy of the Commons” (2010)
WEEK TWELVE (25-11 to 29-11)
* Stacy Alaimo, “Sustainable This, Sustainable That: New Materialisms, Posthumanism, and Unknown
Futures” (2012)
* Steve Mentz, “After Sustainability” (2012)
Readings from and presentation by UBC’s Sustainability Campaign
Take-Home Essays Due in Discussion Group: 29-11
FINAL EXAM: TBA