ENGL 292 - Topics in British Literature

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

Prerequisite: Completion of the FW requirement. British literature, supported by attention to historical and cultural contexts. Versions of this course may survey several periods or concentrate on a group of works from a short span of time or focus on a cultural phenomenon. Students develop their analytical writing skills through both short papers and a final multisource research paper. May be repeated for degree credit and for the major if the topics are different.

Spring 2022, ENGL 292-01: Topics in British Literature: Mary Shelley’s Monster (3). Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was only eighteen years old: one night, during a gloomy summer in Geneva, the idea came to Shelley in a dream, and her unusual story has captured our cultural imagination ever since. The past two hundred years have witnessed countless adaptations of Frankenstein (albeit with varying degrees of faithfulness); indeed, from Penny Dreadful (2014), to Victor Frankenstein (2015), to Mary Shelley (2017), it seems that practically every year brings a new take on this classic tale. But while many are familiar with the now-iconic face of Frankenstein’s monster, the rich history of this text often goes unexamined. Written in the early nineteenth century, Frankenstein is a startling intersection of gothic horror, political philosophy, and science fiction. This class will begin by considering the historical and literary contexts that gave rise to Shelley’s novel, before going on to examine how Frankenstein echoes throughout nineteenth-century science fiction, twentieth-century film, and twenty-first century novels and comics. (HL) Walle.

Winter 2022, ENGL 292A-01: Topics in British Literature: All About Eve (3). Prerequisite: Completion of the FDR FW requirement. Heavy hangs the head of the first woman. From Genesis to the femmes fatales of film noir, the figure of Eve—cunning, seductive, and treacherous—is arguably the most powerful and enduring image of woman in Western literature. Though brief, Eve’s story and its permutations encapsulate several fundamental dilemmas in the representation of women, from Milton to the present day. Does a woman’s sexuality make her blameworthy? Does her influence make her dangerous? Does her “disobedience” make her criminal? Looking at a variety of media—novels, poetry, and comics—this course examines shifting portrayals of Eve and her implications for womanhood and female sexuality. Anchoring our conversation in Genesis and Milton, and then moving to Shelley, Hardy, Carter, and others, we will consider what each era’s version of Eve reveals about the perception of women, whether the depiction of Eve changes over time, and how Eve’s legacy of guilt and temptation informs modern discussions of femininity. (HL) Walle.