EN256: Myths & Legends of Ireland and Britain

Fall 2009

Monday and Thursday 2:00-3:15

 

Click here for the course syllabus.

Instructor: Robert Epstein

Office: 120 Donnarumma Hall

Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00-12:00 & 1:00-3:00, or by appointment

Office extension: 2787

E-mail: repstein@fairfield.edu

 

DESCRIPTION AND GOALS


This course studies the literature of early medieval cultures of Ireland and Great Britain. The focus is on the surviving, large-scale works – epics, sagas, and tale cycles – that represent major repositories of ideas of nationhood or of the cultural values of the peoples that produced them. The first part of the course focuses on Ireland and the Táin Bó Cuailnge, as well as other Irish legends and their modern retellings, particularly in period of Irish nationalism. We will then turn to the Welsh legends contained in the Mabinogion, to Latin Christian legends of British and Irish saints, and finally to the Old English epic Beowulf. Some of the critical issues we will discuss in relation to these texts include: the relationship between pagan and Christian elements; conceptions of law, kinship, and nationhood; warrior culture and the idea of the hero; the status of art and poetry; oral and scribal literary transmission; the construction of gender.

 

REQUIREMENTS

The most essential component of the course is class attendance and participation. All students are required to read closely the assignment for each class meeting and to attend class prepared to discuss it. Students are expected to be familiar with all of the material in the assigned readings.

Each week, students will write a response paper, about a page in length, on the assigned readings. These will be kept in a portfolio, and evaluated collectively at the end of the semester. There will also be two essays of approximately 5-6 pages each due during the semester, as well as a final exam. Grades for the course will be calculated according to the following formula:

Essays 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. Papers submitted past the deadline may not be revised or resubmitted.

 

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, but 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.

 

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 poems we read, as well as the thesis you are defending when comparing two poems.

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.

 

TEXTS

The required texts for the class are available at the Fairfield Bookstore:

Other reading assignments will be provided in class or made available through the university’s Electronic Reserves.