Brit Lit I- Spring 07

EN251: BRITISH LITERATURE I

Spring Semester 2007

Monday and Thursday 2:00-3:15

Click here for the course syllabus.

Instructor: Robert Epstein

Office: 120 Donnarumma Hall

Office Hours: Wednesday 1:00-4:00, or by appointment

Office extension: 2787

E-mail: repstein@mail.fairfield.edu

DESCRIPTION

This course is intended to introduce students to the major styles, periods, and topics of English literature from its origins through the eighteenth century. No course could comprehensively cover the immense and various literary output of this 1,500-year era; the following syllabus selects texts that are both rich and representative of their times. The course is divided into two parts. The first part is entitled “Other Worlds” and focuses on English literary depictions of alternative worlds, real and imagined, in texts from the late-medieval "Travels of Sir John Mandeville" to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The second part, "Beauty, Love, and Sex,” focuses on the language and poetry of beauty and gender in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will be attentive throughout, however, to ways in which these two themes interconnect and inform each other.

REQUIREMENTS

The most important requirement for the course is that students carefully read the texts assigned for each class and attend class prepared to discuss them.

There will be ten response papers due during the term. These are short written assignments, about a page in length. They are due at the beginning of the class on the day assigned. If for some reason you are unable to attend class, send the response paper to me as an e-mail attachment before class time. These response papers receive no grades other than a check or a check-minus, but they are required and count towards the final grade. Their purpose is to help you organize your thoughts on the readings and to facilitate class discussion. Late response papers, therefore, cannot be accepted.

There will be two 5-6 page essays due during the semester. There will also be a final exam during exam period, the format of which will be described as it approaches. The exam will cover the entire semester’s material.

FORMAT OF ESSAYS

All submitted papers should follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting a paper. These guidelines can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., which is available in the Reference Section of the library and in the Writing Center. They are also summarized on pp. 148-150 of Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual, with sample pages on pp. 151-154. When commenting on your essays, I will refer to Hacker on matters of format and style.

GRADING

Papers are due at the beginning of class on the day indicated on the syllabus. Unless I have explicitly granted an extension before the due date, late papers will be penalized one-third of a letter grade per day. (A paper that would have earned a B+ will receive a B if it is one day late, a B- if it is two days late, and so on.)

After essays are submitted, I will read them and return them with grades and with comments and suggestions. Students will then have one week from the day the graded papers are returned to revise the papers in light of my comments and to resubmit them for re-grading. The grade may be improved by as much as a full letter grade. The grade may not go up at all, but it will not go down. This is to encourage you to think of every essay as a work in progress and to revise your work as thoroughly and as frequently as possible. As you write and revise your essays, please keep in mind that there are peer-tutors in the Writing Center trained to help students of any level develop work at any stage.

ACADEMIC HONESTY

No secondary critical sources are required for the essays and written assignments assigned in this course, and in general I would prefer that you not use any. I am most interested in your own analysis of and response to the literature we read, as well as the thesis you are develop and defend.

You are, of course, always free to consult other sources. But any source that you use in writing an essay must be fully cited. The source must appear in the list of works cited at the end of the essay, and each source must be cited on every occasion that you make use of its words or ideas. This is true if the source is your primary source (the poem you are studying) or a critical source (an analysis of the work published elsewhere), and it is true if the source is printed or electronic, including internet sources. Follow the MLA style of in-text citation and lists of works cited described in A Pocket Style Manual, pp. 128-148.

The failure to fully cite sources within your submitted work is a form of plagiarism. Plagiarism is the appropriation of ideas, data, work, or language of others and submitting them as one’s own to satisfy the requirements of a course. Plagiarism constitutes theft and deceit. Special care should be taken, when cutting and pasting materials or when paraphrasing, to cite sources correctly and to use quotation marks around exact words from source materials. Actions that result in plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. Consequently, students must understand the concept of plagiarism. When reading, processing, or using materials from any source, appropriate documentation is always essential.

Resources such as the library (ext. 2178) and the Writing Center (www.fairfield.edu/writingcenter) are available on campus to assist you in your academic endeavors. You are encouraged to take advantage of these resources.