Literature Pre-1850 Fall 2024
ENGL 309: The British Novel
Instructor: Anna Neill
26516 | By Appointment | Online
If you like true crime, fantasy, horror, comedy, or romantic drama, then you are already interested in the history of the novel. From 17th-century romance to the “social problem” fictions of the 19th century, novels catered to their readers’ longing for adventure and mystery, their desire for social justice, their pleasure in seeing virtue rewarded with love, and the thrill of being transported vicariously to another world. In depicting the desires, terrors, and sensational fortunes or misfortunes of their characters, novels dramatized the historical forces that shaped these lives and those of their readers. Novels could be complicit with structural inequities and abuses, but they could also invite criticism of the social and political forces engendering cruelty or injustice. Texts: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders; Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto; Fanny Burney, Evelina; Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist. (All texts will be freely available online.)
ENGL 312: Major British Writers to 1800
Instructor: Geraldo Sousa
22361| TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4035 – Lawrence
This course will focus on major writers in a survey of British literature from Beowulf to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Some recurring themes emerge: heroes and villains, boundaries of the human, the politics of the normal, monsters and the monstrous, empirical reality and supernatural possibility, adventure and self-discovery, the pursuit of happiness, and journeys of self-discovery. We will read, analyze, discuss, and write about medieval and early modern texts from different genres and authors. In the process, we will have an introduction to literary history, scholarship, and exciting new critical approaches.
ENGL 340: Early Indigenous & African American Literature
Instructor: Laura L. Mielke
26557 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 AM | Wescoe 4076 – LAWRENCE
African American and Indigenous authors prior to the twentieth century produced a wealth of literature, including novels, plays, speeches, life writing, and poetry. The scope and richness of this work—which continues to be recovered—defies racist discourse of the period that associated members of both groups with illiteracy. It also defies conceptions in our own day of Indigenous and African American expression as limited to accounts of trauma. In this course, we will approach the rich and varied legacy of early Indigenous and African American literature through the works of eight writers from the nineteenth century: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, William Apess, Maria Stewart, William Wells Brown, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša), Charles Eastman, and Charles Chesnutt. Students will read works closely, be introduced to critical concepts from Black Studies and Indigenous Studies, participate in class discussions, and complete papers and exams.
ENGL 521: Epic: Heroes, Gods, and Rebels
Instructor: Sarah Van der Laan
28210 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 4076 – LAWRENCE
Epic has lain at the heart of the European literary tradition for twenty-seven hundred years. The most prestigious and the most ambitious of literary genres, epic explores human nature, promotes and questions political ideals and social principles, defines nations and communities, and examines the nature of heroism. Through stories of human heroism and super-human adventures, epic poems ask what it means to be human, how to find meaning in mortality, and how to live within—or overturn—power structures and the rulers who manipulate them. Epic endures because it offers its readers tools for living. In this class, we will encounter four of the greatest European epic poems, culminating in the greatest English epic: Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, and Milton's Paradise Lost.
