| COURSE NUMBER: |
ENGL 399G |
| COURSE TITLE: |
Special Topics in English - 2013/14 Winter |
| NAME OF
INSTRUCTOR: |
Dr. Connor Byrne |
| CREDIT WEIGHT
AND WEEKLY TIME DISTRIBUTION: |
credits 3(hrs lect 3 - hrs sem 0 - hrs lab 0) |
| COURSE
DESCRIPTION: |
A course on a topic of figure of special interest to a
member of the English faculty and offered on a non-recurring
basis.
Prerequisites: ENGL 204, 205
2013/14 Winter
This course examines literary representations of urban space in
order to investigate the enduring yet evolving role the city has played
in shaping human identities and communities. It will consider
depictions of urban experience from a broad historical and generic
range in order to trace the varied responses to the dynamic social,
cultural, and political metropolitan landscape as it is manifest
through 18 th , 19 th , and 20 th century works of literature. Of
central importance to the course will be an investigation of the
diverse modes of morality, psychology, and spirituality that emerge in
the city and a consideration of the variety of literary forms that
explore and embody them.
|
| REQUIRED TEXTS: |
- Auster, Paul. City of Glass.
- Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent.
- Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton.
- Larsen, Nella. Quicksand.
- Selections of essays, poetry, and fiction.
|
| MARK DISTRIBUTION IN PERCENT: |
| Response 1 |
10% |
| Response 2 | 10% |
| Research Essay | 30% |
| Presentation | 15% | | Participation | 5% |
| Final Examination |
30% |
|
|
|
100% |
|
| COURSE OBJECTIVES: |
- To explore a broad range—historical and generic—of literary engagements with city life.
- To
introduce students to the key concepts, terms, and discourses used to
discuss urban experience and its representation within literature.
- To consider the social, cultural, political, and even economic forces shaping urban space and identity.
- To investigate how different literary forms emerge from and/or are attuned to their urban sites of exploration.
|
| COURSE OUTLINE: |
- January 13
- Wordsworth, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,” Blake, “London”
- January 20
- Gay, Trivia; or The Art of Walking the Streets of London
- January 27
- Sketches of the City: Exteriors and Interiors
- From Wordsworth, The Prelude; Selections from Dickens, Sketches by Boz
- February 3
- From Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
- February 10
- From The Practice of Everyday Life Vol 2: Living and Cooking
- February 24
- The City, the Masses, and the Flaneur
- Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”
- Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”; from Flowers of Evil
- From Benjamin, The Arcades Project
- March 3
- Urban Violence; Urban Opacity
- March 10
- Reading/Misreading the City
- de Certeau, “Walking in the City”
- March 17
- Eliot, from Prufrock and Other Observations; Woolf, “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street”
- Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”; Williams, “The Great Figure”;
- Dos Passos, from Manhattan Transfer
- March 24
- African American Experience and the City
- Larsen, Quicksand; Johnson, from Black Manhattan
- March 31
- O’Hara, from Meditations in an Emergency
- Ferlinghetti, from A Coney Island of the Mind
- April 7
- April 14
|
