ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
ENGL212 – English Literature 1800-Present:
Romanticism and its Revolutions
Over three-and-a-half months we will read
and discuss some of what Matthew Arnold might
have called “the best of what has been thought and
said.” We will read with analytical focus, looking
closely at the form of each assigned piece, and
trying to understand the arguments and meaning
produced by it. We will also read for a sense of the
culture reflected and created by this literature. With
these goals in mind, I begin with a hypothesis: the
Romantic era, whose authors and historical
concerns we will continually look back to, had a
similar concern to ours. They ask whether we can
set aside an exclusive space for art, or whether that
space will inevitably be informed by historical
“Shelley at the Baths of Caracalla” by Joseph Severn.
conditions. Let’s test this hypothesis together.
Our class’s reading will be divided into seven different units, each with varying length.
These units will provide a light frame to our inquiry and discussion. While they emphasize
certain historical or contextual similarities about the assignments, each unit also corresponds
with one another. We are reading a wide variety of authors this semester. Hopefully, these units
will make our discussions more connected and more nuanced. They should make it easier for us
to recollect many different voices across nearly two hundred years.
“Revolutionary Politics and Romantic Sentiments” focuses on the poetry and non-fiction
directly following the French Revolution, a major date for politics and literature. Here, our
authors—called Romantics—ask deep questions about human nature and governance. They
combine ideas about political revolution with those of artistic revolution. Some will gain
aesthetic inspiration through political speech, through nature, and even through intoxication.
“Beauty and Truth, Truth and Beauty” paraphrases its title from John Keats’s famous poem. In
this unit, we will look to the “second-generation” of Romantic
authors. Writing in the wake of the revolutionary conflict, these
authors explored new avenues for expression, expression which
some have said deliberately removes itself from history, and sets
aside a rarefied place for art. “Hideous Progeny: Frankenstein”
will be a unit dedicated to the single novel we read in the course.
Mary Shelley’s book has been read as an outgrowth of and a
reaction to the Romantic movement. We will try to understand
both sides.
"The Romantic Hangover and Victorian
Society/Sobriety" encapsulates those authors called Victorians.
Writing during Queen Victoria’s long reign, these authors look
back to their Romantic predecessors. But they also look
Holmes and Watson.
forward, articulating new forms of expression and identifying
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
their environment’s growing urbanism and mass culture. "Decadents and Detectives: The Fin de
Siècle" will be an epilogue to the Victorian era, a unit marked by controversial verse and perhaps
the first modern super-hero, Sherlock Holmes.
"Modernism: Romanticism Renounced or Redeemed?" returns us to questions about art
and society. Through an investigation of their manifestos and poetry, we will ask whether
Modernists reject Romantic art or whether they subtly re-write it, calling for artistic revolution
and responding to the conditions of their time. Finally, “Contemporary Voices and Colonial
Responses” looks at our most recent British authors. In particular, we will read authors who have
written back from former British colonies, and look at those who address old conventions and
new developments in a more global, inclusive literary canon.
Texts:
1.) Abrams, M.H. and Stephen Greenblatt, eds.. The Norton Anthology of English Literature —
Eighth Edition: Volume D, E, F. NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006.
ISBN: 0393928349
2.) Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text. Ed. Marilyn Butler.
NY: Oxford, 1998.
ISBN: 0192833669
3.) Handouts as needed.
~
Grade Categories:
Participation, including reading quizzes……….…20%
Commonplace Book……………………………...10%
Paper 1……………………………………............20%
Paper 2……………………………………………30%
Final Exam..………………………………………20%
Learning Outcomes
This course fulfills the General Education requirements for Humanities courses. At the
completion of this course, students will be able to:
1) Demonstrate familiarity and facility with fundamental concepts in the study of various
literary genres—poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
2) Demonstrate how to apply those fundamental concepts to the analysis of different texts.
3) Describe how literature can be seen as both universal and historical.
4) Demonstrate the ability to formulate an argument, and to support that argument strongly
with evidence from the text.
Assignment Schedule
Note: The following assignments are subject to change. You, the student, are responsible
for all of these changes. If you are not in class, or are unclear about an announced change, please
contact a fellow classmate to fill you in.
For everyone’s convenience, I have created a Google Calendar listing all of the
assignments. Everyone in the class can access it. If you have not already done so, sign up for a
Google account using the email address you officially provided to the university. If you access
Google Calendar you will see our class as a green-highlighted option on the left. Click on it, and
assignments should appear across the calendar.
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
"Revolutionary Politics and Romantic Sentiments"
Tu, 1/25:
Introduction, syllabus overview, course policies and expectations.
Th, 1/27:
Olaudah Equiano (1745-97)
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano…(Handout)
Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) “Epistle to William Wilberforce” (32-5), “The Rights of
Woman” (35-6))
William Blake (1757-1827)
“The Little Black Boy” (84)
Tu, 2/1:
William Blake
Edmund Burke (1729-97)
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Th, 2/3:
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Tu, 2/8:
William Wordsworth
“A Song of Liberty” (121-2)
From Reflections on the Revolution in France (152-8)
From Rights of Man (163-7)
From Book 9-10 of The Prelude (368-74), “We Are
Seven” (248-9), “The Tables Turned” (251-2)
“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey…”
(258-62), “Ode: Intimations of Immortality…” (306-12)
Th, 2/10:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (430-46)
Tu, 2/15:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859)
“Kublah Kahn” (446-8)
From Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (559-69)
"Beauty and Truth, Truth and Beauty"
Th, 2/17
George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824) “She Walks in Beauty” (612), From Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage – From Canto 3: Waterloo and Napoleon”
(622-8)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) “England in 1819” (771), “Ode to the West Wind” (772-5)
Tu, 2/22
John Keats (1795-1821)
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (880), “Ode on
a Grecian Urn” (905-6)
"Hideous Progeny: Frankenstein"
Th, 2/24
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
Frankenstein: Volume 1
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
Tu, 3/1
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein: Volume 2 and 3
Th, 3/3
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein
"The Romantic Hangover and Victorian Society/Sobriety"
Tu, 3/8
Felicia Dorethea Hemans (1793-1835) “The Homes of England” (870)
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92)
“Mariana” (1112-4), “Ulysses” (1123-5)
Paper 1 due at 11am.
Th, 3/10
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-61) “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” (1085-92), From
Aurora Leigh – From Book 5: Poets and the Present Age
(1104-6)
Tu, 3/15
Robert Browning (1812-89)
“My Last Duchess” (1255-6), “Andrea del Sarto” (1280-6)
Th, 3/17
Friedrich Engels (1820-95)
From The Great Towns (1565-72
Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
From Culture and Anarchy (1398-1404)
Commonplace Book due at 11am.
Tu, 3/29
Christina Rossetti (1830-94)
“Goblin Market” (1466-78)
"Decadents and Detectives: The Fin de Siècle"
Th, 3/31
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) “Hymn to Proserpine” (1496-8)
Michael Field (1846-1914, 1862-1913) “Maids, not to you my mind doth change” (1638)
Tu, 4/5
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Th, 4/7
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“The Red-Headed League” (Handout)
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1697-8), From De
Profundis (1740-3)
"Modernism: Romanticism Renounced or Redeemed?"
Tu, 4/12
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (2025), “No Second Troy”
(2029), “Easter, 1916” (2031-3)
Th, 4/14
T.E. Hulme (1883-1917)
From Romanticism and Classicism (1998-2003)
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
“A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” (2004-7), “In a Station of
the Metro” (2008)
“The Metaphysical Poets” (2325-32)
Tu, 4/19
T.S. Eliot
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (2289-93)
Th, 4/21
Mina Loy (1882-1966)
“Feminist Manifesto” (2015-9), “English Rose” (Handout)
Tu, 4/26
W.H. Auden (1907-73)
Stevie Smith (1902-71)
“The Shield of Achilles” (2437-8)
“Thoughts About the Person from Porlock” (2375-7)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
“Contemporary Voices and Colonial Responses”
Th, 4/28
Phillip Larkin (1922-85)
“Church Going” (2566-8)
Tu, 5/3
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
Jean Rhys (1890-1979)
Paper 2 due at 11am.
“Old England” (2463-4)
“The Day They Burned the Books” (2357-61)
Th, 5/5
Kamau Braithwaite (1930-)
Derek Walcott (1930-)
“Nation Language” (2523-7)
“A Far Cry from Africa” (2587-8)
Tu, 5/10
Carol Ann Duffy (1955-)
“Warming her Pearls” (2874), “Anne Hathaway”
Commonplace Book due at 11am.
Th, 5/12
Final Exam. 8am, HBK 2208.
Imbibing and rebelling from tradition: George Gordon Lord Byron, Mina Loy, and Kamau Braithwaite.
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
Course Policies and Expectations
One of the aims in this course is to spark your appreciation for language itself. Perhaps
the best way to cultivate that appreciation is to practice close reading, to patiently and repeatedly
engaging with a text in order to highlight its complexities and ambiguities. Think about close
reading as a conversation between you and the poem, the short story, or even the non-fiction
piece. It is way to engage with, expand upon, and question the language in front of you. But
close reading can and will be difficult. For this reason, our in-class conversations will
supplement the one you have with our assignments
To prepare for our weekly conversations and written assignments, you must read the
assignment in full. I have assigned a lot of poetry. This means most of our class meetings don’t
require you to read that many words. Consequently, everyone should read each poem not just
once, but two or even three times. This is a requirement. For prose, I ask that you revisit
important sections. You may want to take some light notes on passages you want to engage. Note
your reasons for engaging them. This will prepare you to offer commentary and interpretation.
Evaluation: Quizzes, Commonplace Books, and Papers
Come to expect a short quiz every week. The quizzes will be unannounced. Some weeks
I may not give you a quiz. But you should prepare like they will always occur. This will simply
assure that you have been keeping pace with the reading—and taking your time with it. A small
part of your grade will be determined by these quizzes. Never fear: you may drop the two lowest
quiz grades at the end of the course (this includes missed quizzes, which count as a 0).
Our commonplace book will be a semester-long, portfolio-style assignment. Please be
diligent about it. You will receive an assignment sheet today.
Your first paper will address a single work of literature from the first six weeks of class. It will
require approximately 1000 words (or 3-4 pages). Your final paper will address two works of
literature from across fourteen weeks of study. It will require 1500-2000 words (5-7 pages). I
will hand out individual assignment sheets for major papers as needed. Adhere to the guidelines
on those sheets unless we make changes as a class, or discuss alternatives. Stick to a single paper
format across the semester: twelve-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins and double
spacing.
You must include a full header for your papers. The header should include your name
(obviously), my name, the class mnemonic (ENGL212), your section number (0201), and the
date. Number your pages, please.
Take the time to spell check, grammar check, and content check your work. This means
going beyond the requisite MSWord operation (click! done!). Carefully read through each paper
twice before submission, marking errors and making changes. To some this may sound
excessive. But it usually means an entire letter-grade difference.
For your convenience, I do electronic submission of work. All of your assignments
should be turned in electronically to my email address (jkantor@umd.edu). Submit them as an
attachment to an email. Do not provide me with an additional hard copy. The arrangement saves
both of us time: you don’t have to go through the extra step to print, and I can give you more
comprehensive feedback and turn papers around quickly.
Always include your name as the first part of the filename when you save the assignment
(i.e., “Jamison Kantor – Paper1.doc”). This way, there will be no confusion about submission.
The name on the file is the name on the assignment. If you do not include it, I have effectively
been given an anonymous paper—you may not get your assignment back for a while.
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
This next part is super-important: For absolutely every email you send to me regarding
this class—especially your emails containing assignments and absence notices—you should
include the word ENGL212 in the subject heading. That means ENGL212 spelled exactly that
way, all caps, no spaces. This allows the email to filter to a special folder for our class. You can
include other words in the subject heading as well. Just make sure you type in ENGL212. Don’t
freak out if you forget to include that line in the subject heading. I will still get the email. But it
will float amongst a sea of other email, and I will likely pass over it. And I certainly don’t want
to miss an important paper or any last-minute, burning questions you might have.
Participation and Classroom Etiquette
I expect you to attend every discussion section and for everyone to participate. Come to
class instilled with ideas, those you had during your quiet reading hours, or that you couldn’t
quite fit in to the class before. A good participation strategy is to make sure you have prepared at
least one thing to contribute to each discussion.
Here’s the rub: participation does not just mean being in a seat. I know this can be
especially tough towards the halfway point of the semester. But we will actively engage in
classroom discussion. And, yes, there is such a thing as negative participation. I think we all
know what this means—texting, dozing, facebooking, ipoding, chatting in person or on the
internet, eating chips, crunching ice, generally zoning out. Devote our seventy-five minutes to
positive participation, and active discussion. Those who are simply “present” each week might
be shocked later on to see a very mediocre participation score.
Turn off your cell phone. Turn off your cell phone. Turn off your cell phone. We don’t
even want to hear vibrations.
No laptops. I’m not anti-technology: I feature multi-media during many of our classes.
But it’s simply become too difficult to ascertain what and what is not a learning device (laptop,
cellphone, tablet?). New technology has also wired us to multitask. We just can’t help having
open multiple windows. We’re going to avoid temptation altogether.
I have a liberal two-absence policy. This means everyone can miss two classes. You may
do so unexcused, without worrying about any impact it may have on your grade. The third
absence will require an email with legitimate circumstances received at least a day in advance.
These circumstances include illness, religious observance, and family emergencies. All other
absences will adversely affect your participation. All other absences will adversely affect your
participation.
If you happen to be absent for one of our classes, it is entirely your responsibility to find
notes for that day. Please contact a classmate to fill you in. I’m always more than happy to
answer questions about our discussion, but I’m very hesitant to recap the day’s events.
If you are feeling ill, it is especially important that you do not come to class. Please write
me a short email before class if you think you’re not well enough to attend. Unfortunately, if I
receive your email after class begins, you will not be excused. Again, I expect everyone will
have to miss a single discussion section for this reason. So it’s good policy to save your
absences. We’ll talk if you start missing frequently, or haven’t adequately informed us of your
absences. But, please don’t sacrifice your health or the health of those around you for
participation.
Students with disabilities should see me during the first week of class with the
appropriate paperwork.
We have a single “Major Scheduled Grading Event”: our final. Be there. Be prepared.
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ENGL212 - 0201
Jamison Kantor
1/25/11
TTh 11-12:15. Hornbake 2208
Late Work
Turn your work in on time, before class that day. This should be made all the easier
because of electronic submission. Don’t forget to backup your work on a portable drive, or send
it to yourself over email. If there are extraordinary circumstances prohibiting you from turning in
assignments, send me something in writing within a reasonable amount of time. If you have
made a concerted effort to contact me, and provided good reasons, I will try to provide a very
short extension.
If it is clear you have made little to no effort to contact me, you have no tenable excuse,
or you are dragging your feet on an extension, I will start deducting points. For every three days
the assignment is overdue, I will deduct 10% (and 3% for one day, 6% for two days, etc.). There
is no grade “floor.” If you turn in a paper two weeks late, you start with a 58%. Please be
responsible. I promise to turn assignments around efficiently, if you promise to do your work on
time.
Intellectual Honesty
Although I always encourage discussion of ideas outside of class, your written work
must be entirely your own.
Lazy plagiarism occurs when you have unintentionally missed a citation or paraphrase.
Please work to accurately cite your papers. Citational proficiency is part of the technique in
writing a good paper. If you have citation questions, please consult the MLA style manual online
(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/), in print, or talk to me. Best rule: if there is
any doubt whether something should be cited, err on the side of caution—cite it.
Intentional plagiarism, which is deliberately passing off another entity’s words or ideas as
your own, is entirely prohibited and entirely discreditable. Assignments found to be intentionally
plagiarized will result in course dismissal and further disciplinary action. Please consult the
University’s honor council website for more information: (www.studenthonorcouncil.umd.edu.).
Grades
Your assignment grades will always be posted on elms, so you shouldn’t need to ask
about them. I also don’t discuss grades arbitrarily, ever. However, I love to discuss the contents
of the course and how you can improve your writing and thinking about literature. I am always
open to that.
If you have an imminent grade concern, make sure you have calculated your grade
accurately, and framed your concern positively and proactively. Remember: grades are earned,
not assigned.
Office Hours and Contact
I will hold office hours on Wednesdays from 11-1, in Tawes 2200. Feel free to come talk
with me about the reading, your commonplace books, or other college conundrums. If you want
me to review an assignment with you, please make sure you come in prepared to talk about
specific issues in that assignment. Be prepared to lead our discussion when you have something
specific to review. If you want to informally discuss readings or chat about collegiate/academic
life, no such specificity is necessary. I recommend that you stop by at least once this semester.
My email address is jkantor@umd.edu. I will try to promptly respond to emails. Please
give me at least a day to turn them around.
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