ENGL 292 - Topics in British Literature

FDR: HL
Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring
Planned Offering: Fall, Winter

Prerequisite: Completion of the FW requirement. Studies in British literature, supported by attention to historical contexts. Versions of this course may survey several periods or concentrate on a group of works from a short span of time. Students develop their analytical writing skills in a series of short papers. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2014 Topic:

ENGL 292: Topics in British Literature: Representing Queen Elizabeth (3). This course focuses on the figure of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) and the ways in which she has been represented in literature and film. We read works written during her lifetime that address her, or that directly or obliquely represent her, by authors such as Shakespeare and Spenser. However, the majority of the course examines works about the public and private Elizabeth since her death; those works include dramas, poems, fiction, operas, films (starring actors such as Helen Mirren and Bette Davis), children’s books, etc. A key component of the course is a large group project to research and collect such representations, organize the data and write commentaries, and ultimately construct a website–employing exciting, new tools of the digital humanities–as both a learning exercise and a resource for interested students and scholars. (HL) Dobin.

Fall 2013 Topic:

ENGL 292-01: Topics in British Literature: Romanticism and Landscapes (3). This class is an introduction to Romantic poetry through a focused attention to one of its central themes, the natural world and its landscapes. The course begins with some examples of important precursors to the Romantic landscape in Milton, Pope, and Cowper, but the bulk of our attention is to how the Romantic theme of imagination was grounded in the personal experience of the natural world and emphasizes the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats. We conclude with how these themes were later transformed in Mary Shelley’s gothic horror fiction Frankenstein and Jerome K. Jerome’s comic travel novel Three Men in a Boat. (HL) Adams.