Course: English Literature: Survey II (英國文學 II)
Semester: Spring 2008
Professor: Chang-jui Kuo
Credits: 3 (but two two-hour classes a week)
Office Hours: Wednesday 10:00-11:50, Thursday 10:00-10:50
Offices: C2-428
Phone Number: (03) 4227151 ext. 33218 (Leave a message if necessary.)
Textbook: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed.
Course Description
We will begin this survey course with studying nineteenth century English literature,
which covers two great periods: the Romantic Period and the Victorian Age. Thus, we
will first read poetic works by the five Romantic giants, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,
Shelley, and Keats; however, we will also pay attention to prose, for one should not
neglect essays by Charles Lamb, Thomas de Quincy, Wordsworth, Coleridge and the
letters of Keats if he wishes to know what Romantic literature is. If we have time
enough, we may also discuss Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
After the Romantic Period we will move on to the Victorian Age. Our major focus
will be on three important poets—Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. In addition, we
will discuss great Victorian prose writers: Carlyle, Mill, Arnold, Newman, etc. As for
novels and dramas, we may sample at least one representative work.
In the end of the semester, we will move as far as possible into modern and
contemporary British literature. Authors to be discussed may include Yeats, T. S. Eliot,
Joyce, etc. We will relate literary works to this modern world and apply what we have
learned from works to our present life to see whether this is the worst or best of all ages
and whether our age is full of despair or hope.
Though this is one of the must-offer courses, I do not want to give students
unreasonable pressure; nevertheless, there will still be a midterm examination (30%) and
a final (40%), which I believe will not be difficult to students if they attend the class
regularly and review what is read and discussed in class. In the two examinations they
will be required to answer 4 out of at least 8 explication or essay questions, but they do
not need to put down all the points I mention in class. It is my policy not to impose my
viewpoints on my students; on the contrary, I encourage them to have their own.
Besides, I will divide the students into several groups, and each group has to do team
work and take charge of an oral report (15%). Frankly speaking, I hate to fail any of my
students; however, one thing they need to show is that they care about the course.
Regular attendance is mandatory and participation in discussion would be highly
appreciated (15%).
Last but never the least, students may be asked to attend a lecture or workshop in
addition to regular classes. It is also highly possible that, in order to discuss works in
more detail, they have to attend an extra two-hour class.
Syllabus
N.B.
1. Authors and works with an asterisk are recommended but optional reading.
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2. A work with a (R) after it means that it is to be read by students themselves
and will be discussed in class.
3 An @ indicates one hour.
2/20-2/27@
Introduction: The Romantic Period
“My Heart Leaps Up,”
2/27@-3/6
William Wordsworth (1770-1850): “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1802),
“It Is a Beauteous Evening,” “The Solitary Reaper,” “The World Is Too
Much with Us” (R), “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (R), *“Lines
Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” *“Ode: Intimations of
Immortality” (R), The Prelude (selections), *”Strange Fits of Passion
Have I Known,” *”London, 1802,” *”Simon Lee,” *”Expostulation and
Reply,” *”The Tables Turned,” *”She Dwelt among the Untrodden
Ways,” *”Three Years She Grew,” *”A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,’ *”I
Travelled among Unknown Men,” *”Lucy Gray,” *”Michael,”
*”Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802,” *The
Recluse,
*Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855): The Alfoxden Journal, The
Grasmere Journals
*William Blake (1757-1827): Songs of Innocence: “The Lamb,” “The
Chimney Sweeper,” ”Holy Thursday, “ ”Nurse’s Song, “ ”Infant Joy,”
Songs of Experience: “The Tyger,” ”Holy Thursday,” ”The Sick
Rose,” ”The Chimney Sweeper,” ”Nurse’s Song,” ”Ah
Sun-Flower,” ”London,” ”Infant Sorrow,” ”A Poison Tree,” ”The Fly,”
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, A Vision of the Last judgment,
“Auguries of Innocence”
*Robert Burns (1759-1796): “A Red, Red Rose,” “To a Mouse,” “Tam
o’ Shanter,” ”Afton Water,” “For A’ That and A’ That,” ”Auld Lang
Syne”
3/12-3/13
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): “Mechanic vs. Organic Form,”
Biographia Literaria (selections), ”Kubla Khan” (Oral Presentation 1),
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (R), *“Frost at Midnight,” *”The
Eolian Harp,” *”This Limb-Tree Bower My Prison,” *”Christabel,”
*”Dejection: An Ode,” *”Work Without Hope,” *”To a Young Ass”
3/19-3/20@
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): “Ode to the West Wind” (R & Oral
Presentation 2), “Ozymandias,” *“To a Sky-Lark,” *“A Defence of
Poetry” (selections), *”A Song: Men of England,” *”Mont Blanc,”
*”England in 1819,” *Prometheus Unbound, *Adonais,
*”To—[Music,…]”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (1797-1851): Frankenstein
*Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (selections)
3/20@-3/27@
John Keats (1795-1821): “To George and Thomas Keats [Negative
Capability],” “To Richard Woodhouse [A Poet Has No Identity],” “Ode
to a Nightingale” (R & Oral Presentation 3), “La Belle Dame sans
Merci: A Ballad” (R), *“Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou
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Art,” *”When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be,” *”On First
Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” *Lamia, *other odes
3/27@-4/9
Prose and Novel Writers:
Charles Lamb (1775-1834): “A Letter to Wordsworth,” *”Christ’s
Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago,” *”Old China”
Thomas de Quincy (1785-1859): Confessions of an English (R)
*William Hazlitt (1778-1830): “On Shakespeare and Milton”
Opium-Eater (selections), “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth”
*Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Ivanhoe
*Jane Austen (1775-1817: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility,
Emma
4/10-4/16@
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824): “Written after Swimming
from Sestos to Abydos,” “She Walks in Beauty”(R), “So, We’ll Go No
More a Roving,” Don Juan (selections), *”When We Two Parted,”
*”Childe Horald’s Pilgrimage
4/16-@-4/17
Introduction: The Victorian Age
4/22
Midterm Examination
4/24@
Breathing Space
4/24@-5/1@
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892): “The Lotos-Eaters,” “Crossing
the Bar” (R), In Memoriam (selections), “Break, Break, Break” (R),
*“Ulysses,” *“The Eagle,” *Morte d’ Arthur, *”Mariana,’ *”Locksley
Hall,” *”The Splendor Falls,” *”Tears, Idle Tears”
5/1@-5/8@
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888): Culture and Anarchy (selections),
“Dover Beach” (Oral Presentation 4), “The Forsaken Merman” (R),
*“The Scholar Gypsy,” *”Isolation. To Marguerite,” *”The Buried
Life,” *”Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” *Thyrsis, *”The
Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
5/8@-5/15@
Robert Browning (1809-1883): “Porphyria’s Lover” (R & Oral
Presentation 5), “My Last Duchess” (R), *“Meeting at Night,”
*“Parting at Morning,” *”The Last Ride Together,” *”Soliloquy of the
Spanish Cloister,” *”The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s
Church,” *”Fra Lippo Lippi” *”Andrea del Sarto”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861): “How do I love thee?” “The
Cry of Children”
5/15@-5/21
Prose Writers:
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): Past and Present (“Captains of Industry,”
*”Gospel of Mannonism”), *Sartor Resartus (“The Everlasting No,”
“Centre of Indifference,” “The Everlasting Yea”), *The French
Revolution (selections)
John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): The Idea of a University
(selections) (R)
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John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): “A Crisis in My Mental History,” *On
Liberty (selections)
*John Ruskin (1819-1900): “Of the Pathetic Fallacy,” *The Stones of
Venice (selections)
*Water Pater (1839-1894): The Renaissance (selections)
5/122
Novelists and Playwrights:
Charles Dickens (1812-1870): Bleak House (selections), *”Coketown”
(from Hard Times) David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist
*George Eliot (1819-1880): The Mill on the Floss
*William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863): Vanity Fair
*Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894): Treasure Island
*Thomas Hardy: (1840-1928) Tess of the d’Urberbilles, The Return of
the Native
*George Meredith (1828-1909): The Egoist
*Emily Bronte (1816-1855): Wuthering Heights
*Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855): Jane Eyre
*Samuel Butler (1835-1902): The Way of All Flesh
*Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)”: The Importance of Being Earnest, The
Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere’s Fan
5/28
The Twentieth Century: Introduction
5/29-6/4
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965): “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (R & Oral Presentation 6), “The
Winter Evening Settles Down” (R), *“The Boston Evening Transcript,”
*The Waste Land, *”Four Quartets,” *”The Metaphysical Poets,”
*”Hamlet,” *Murder in the Cathedral
Seamus Heaney (1939-): “Mother of the Groom” (R)
*Philip Larkin (1922-1985): “Ambulances,” “Lines on a Young Lady’s
Photograph Album”
*Louis MacNeice (1907-1963): “Sunday Morning”
*W. H. Auden (1907-1973): “An Unknown Citizen,” “Look, Stranger,”
“In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” “Musee de Beaux Arts,” “Lullaby”
*Samuel Becket (1906-1989): “Happy Days,” Waiting for Godot
*Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936): “Recessional,” “The White Man’s
Burden”
War Poets:
*Rupert Brooke (1887-1915): “The Soldier”
*Wilfred Owen (1983-1918): “Greater Love,” “Futility,” “Anthem for
Doomed Youth”
*Edward Thomas (1878-1917): “A Private”
*Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967): “Glory of Women,” ”Attact”
6/5-6/11@
Novelists:
James Joyce (1882-1941): “Araby” (from Dubliners), *Ulysses
*D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930): “Piano,” “Love on the Farm,” “Why the
Novel Matters,” Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers
*Joseph Conrad (1857-1924): Heart of Darkness, The Secret Sharer
*Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936): “The White Mans’ Burden”
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*E. M. Forster (1879-1970): A Passage to India
*Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): To the Lighthouse
6/11@-6/12@
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): “The Second Coming,” “The Lake
Isle of Innisfree” (R), *“A Prayer for My Daughter,” *“Crazy Jane Talks
with the Bishop,” *”Wild Swans at Coole,” *”Sailing to Byzantium,”
*”Leda and the Swan,” *”Among School Children,” *”Byzantium”
*Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): “The Convergence of the Twain,” “The
Darkling Thrush,” “The Ruined Maid,” “Channel Firing,” ”Hap,”
“Under the Waterfall”
*A. E. Housman (1859-1936): “When I was One-and Twenty,” “To an
Athlete Dying Young,” “Loveliest of Trees,” “With Rue My Heart Is
Laden”
*Dylan Thomas (1914-1953): “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good
Night,” “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,”
“Poem in October,” “Fern Hill”
*Gerard Manely Hopkins (1844-1889): “God’s Grandeur,” “Pied
Beauty,” “The Windhover,” “Spring and Fall,” “The Starlight Night,”
“Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord”
Playwrights
*Harold Pinter (1930- ): “The Dumb Waiter,” “The Caretaker”
*John Millington Synge (1871-1909): “Riders to the Sea”
*George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): Major Barbara
*Tom Stoppard (1937- ): “The Real Inspector Hound”
6/12@
Review
6/19
Final Examination
“The picture of the mind revives again; / While here I
stand, not only with the sense / Of present pleasure,
but wth pleasing thoughts / That in this moment there
is life and food / For future years. . . .”
--William Wordsworth
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