ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update
English 302: Advanced Composition for the Humanities
Studies of Place: Ireland
Spring Interim Study Tour 2006
Dr. Marguerite Helmers, instructor
Radford Hall . Room 226 . 424-0916, office
helmers@uwosh.edu
www.english.uwosh.edu/helmers
http://www.uwosh.edu/oie/LIREL.html
James Joyce Cultural Centre, Dublin
Mark these dates on your calendar. All room locations and times will be announced in advance.
March 25
April 1
May 15-18
First group meeting, 9:30-12:30am. Swart 3.
Family Orientation (please check with OIE)
4pm-7pm, Class sessions, UW Oshkosh.
Book Purchases
Georgia Heard. Writing Toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Find Your Way Home.
Rebecca Solnit. A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland.
William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory. Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore.
Poems on E Reserve, noted in daily syllabus below.
Course Focus
The emphasis of this course is on keeping a writer’s notebook; reading and revising in order to
turn your notebook into prose works; and on exploring the connections between language and
place. Georgia Heard’s book of poetry and prose contains writing prompts that will help you
explore your thoughts about travel and about Ireland. W. B. Yeats’s work on Irish myth is a
classic that shapes the way we think about Ireland today. Rebecca Solnit is a contemporary
essayist whose travels in Ireland to find her ancestral “home” leave us all wondering what
“home” is.
1
ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update
Normally, in a writing class we would draft our prose, share it with others, and revise. Given our
condensed time frame and rather unusual situation for practicing the writing craft, we will have
to rely on our own assiduousness: write often, write carefully, and write as much as you can. Use
the Writing Center at UW Oshkosh to help you discuss your writing – and come to visit me with
drafts.
Writing Assignments
Writer’s Notebook. Begin by reading Writing Toward Home.
Part I (due May 18 or before). Using Georgia Heard’s prompts in Writing
Toward Home, prepared a portfolio of 9 required responses. Each response should
be 2-3 typed pages. You may include illustrations. While you may do more than
the 9 required responses, since Heard includes many thought-provoking prompts,
here are the prompts that are required:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
Querencia (page 6)
Education of the Eye (page 37)
Digging (page 46)
Incarnadine Seas (page 49). Try also to write a “mirror” entry while in
Ireland for Part II, as well as completing this first one at home.
Onion (page 63). Try this exercise with an Irish word or place name for
Part II, as well.
Ten Observations (page 68). Note that this asks you to keep track of
observations for one week. Try to write “mirror” entries in Ireland for Part
II.
Visual Archaeology (page 79). Again, try a “mirror” entry with an image
of Ireland for Part II.
Found Writing (page 111). This is always fun to do while traveling, so
think of this as another “mirror” exercise for Part II.
The Family in the Next Booth (page 94). Should you listen in on other
tourists’ conversations in Ireland to write an entry for Part II?
Part II (due August 7 or before). You will keep a notebook daily while
traveling. Purchase a notebook that is large enough to write, keep photographs, do
sketching, and collect postcards). All entries should be dated. Try to focus, in
particular, on the relationship between literature, culture, and place rather than on
your dreams, innermost feelings, escapades, adventures, and misadventures
(although if they are on topic, feel free to include them). In other words, no
drinking stories, please.
Select at least two of the prompts from Heard’s Writing Toward Home to “mirror”
in your travel journal. These are listed above, but, in short, these prompts will
work well:

Incarnadine Seas (page 49).
2
ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update




Onion (page 63).
Ten Observations (page 68).
Visual Archaeology (page 79).
Found Writing (page 111).
Research essay (7-8 pages). Due May 17 or before. Insights may be presented on
tour.
You will select a topic to research using peer-reviewed sources in the humanities.
You may use as your foundational text for research Rebecca Solnit’s Book of
Migrations, the fairy stories or legends collected by Yeats and Gregory, or any of
the poems from the Pierce anthology.
Use MLA formatting for citations, which should number six or more.
You might consider researching the relationship between a writer and their
“place” of writing, combining biography, critical resources, and a discussion of
the literature. Some other topics are these, drawn from Pierce’s anthology
Twentieth Century Irish Writing. You are not restricted to using one of these:
o “Irish writers give us access to the minutiae of the everyday in order to
expose the processes by which place becomes a fact of identity.” Critically
examine the relationship of place and identity in one or more works
studied in the light of this remark.
o Critically explore the role that literature or legend (oral tales and musical
song) has played in the developed of an Irish national identity.
o How do modern Irish writers make use of songs in their work? Or,
compare traditional and modern Irish songs to the literature of Ireland.
o Compare and contrast the evocation of rural Ireland in a selection of
poems and/or short stories.
o Write an essay exploring the visual impact of modern Irish writing. Use
two or more texts for comparison.
o “It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but the
images of the past embodied in language” (Friel’s Translations). Discuss
with reference to two or more writers.
Travel Narrative (7-8 pages). Due August 7 or before.
Based on your notebook, you will explore your reactions to place and how
they are influenced by literature and folklore.
3
ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update
Grading
15%
15%
15%
15%
5%
25%
Writer’s Notebook Part I (9 required entries from Writing Toward Home)
Writer’s Notebook Part II (2 required entries from Writing Toward Home)
Research Essay
Travel Narrative
Presentation to group while on tour
Participation in scheduled events
Writing Center
The Writing Center will help you conceptualize your essays (for this class and others). The
Writing Center is not a proofreading or editing service. All Writing Center services are free, but
you need to schedule an appointment. The Writing Center is located in the basement of Radford
Hall. The phone number is 424-1152; you may also email them at wcenter@uwosh.edu.
Comprehensive Syllabus
Links
How to read poetry,
www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/poetry/readpoet.htm
www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReadingPoetry.html
www.brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.html
On Reserve
Howie the Rookie, a play by Mark O’Rowe. This play is being performed at the Abbey
Theatre, Dublin. [This is optional reading]
Notebook
Keep a notebook with summaries in it, organized so that you can access it easily. Write a short
summary and a short comment on each poem.
All Readings indicated with * will be copied for ENG 302 and placed on E Reserve unless noted
May 15: Places
READINGS TO BE DISCUSSED
PIERCE, IRISH WRITING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (ENG 225, ENG 350, ENG 550)
The Aisling [Ash-lynn] Poem
Mangan, James Clarence “Dark Rosaleen” [www.bartleby.com/101/664.html]
Corkery, Daniel (288) “The Aisling”*
Longley, Edna (1074) “From Cathleen to Anoerexia”*
Boland, Eavan (1063) “Mise Eire”*
4
ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update
Poems
Yeats, W. B.~
“The Wild Swans at Coole” (274) [tour site, Coole Park]*
“Meditations in Time of Civil War” (349)*
“Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931” (428)*
The Lake Isle of Innisfree [www.online-literature.com/yeats/] [tour site, Sligo]
The Tower [www.online-literature.com/yeats/] [tour site, Thoor Ballyle]
Kavanagh, Patrick (780-1) [tour site, Dublin]~
“On Ragland Road”*
“Canal Bank Walk”*
“Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal”*
Muldoon, Paul (960) “Ireland”*
O’Callaghan, Julie (992) “A Tourist Comments on the Land” [tour site, Dublin]*
May 16: History and Politics
SCREENING (OPTIONAL FOR 302, BUT RECOMMENDED)
The Dead (on your own, prior to this date)
Michael Collins (on your own, prior to this date)
LISTENING (CD)
The Boys of Wexford
Kevin Barry
Roddy McCorley
Valley of Knockanure
The West’s Awake
READINGS TO BE DISCUSSED
PIERCE, IRISH WRITING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (ENG 225, ENG 350, ENG 550)
Hyde, Douglas (2) “The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland”*
Devlin, Denis (694) “The Tomb of Michael Collins”*
Montague, John (854) “A Lost Tradition” from The Rough Field*
Hewson, Paul [Bono] (935) “Bono: The White Nigger”*
Fiacc, Padraic (1034-5) from Missa Terribilis*
Carson, Ciaran [See-ar-an] (1063) “Belfast Confetti”*
McKitterick, David et al. (1160) Lost Lives*
Yeats, W. B.
Easter 1916 (270)*
Leda and the Swan (353)*
Sailing to Byzantium (370)*
Lapis Lazuli (475)*
5
ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update
Heaney, Seamus
Listen to the BBC Interviews with Heaney at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/heaneys1.shtml
May 17: Myths and Legends
LISTENING (CD)
The Leprechaun
READINGS TO BE DISCUSSED
Yeats and Gregory, Treasury of Irish Myth (selections) (ENG 302)
The Trooping Fairies, Changelings (1-60)
The Lepracaun (80-83)
Tyeer-Na-n-Oge [Tear na noag] (200-213)
Cuchulain of Muirthemne [Koo-hulin of Myuer-hev-na] (327-364)
Witches, Fairy Doctors [optional] (146-199)
PIERCE, IRISH WRITING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (ENG 225, ENG 350, ENG 550)
Campbell, Joseph (203-4) “I am the Mountainy Singer” and “Night, and I Traveling”*
O’Loughlin, Michael (1236) “Cuchulainn”*
O’Malley, Mary (1239) “Lightcatchers”*
Yeats, W. B. “The Harp of Aengus” and “The Stolen Child” [www.onlineliterature.com/yeats/]
Heaney, Seamus [Sham-us Hanny]~
The Tollund Man
Bogland
You may read these poems and listen to Seamus Heaney read these poems online
at http://www.ibiblio.org/dykki/poetry/heaney/
WHAT PAPERS ARE DUE?
English 302: Research Essay
May 18: Memoirs & Questions of Gender
READINGS TO BE DISCUSSED
Solnit, Book of Migrations (ENG 302, ENG 550)
PIERCE, IRISH WRITING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (ENG 225, ENG 350, ENG 550)
Women Writers
Boland, Eavan [Avan]~
6
ENG 302 6/15/2016 Update
The Emigrant Irish, Tirade for the Lyric Muse (1063-65)*
The Achill Woman (1165)*
That the Science of Cartography is Limited. Read and listen at
http://www.wwnorton.com/trade/external/nortonpoets/ex/bolandeinatime.
htm
Higgins, Rita Ann (1228) “Remapping the Borders”*
Ní Chuilleanáin, Eiléan [Eileen nee Killan-ayn] (85) “Early Recollections”*
Smyth, Ailbhe [Alva Smith] (1118-1128) “Declining Identities”*
Ní Dhomhnaill, Nuala [Noola Khovnal]~*
The Unfaithful Wife (1163)
The Language Issue (1164)
Cathleen (1174)
Máire Bradshaw (1172) “High Time for all the Marys”*
WHAT PAPERS ARE DUE?
English 302: Writer’s Notebook, Part I
7