READING SCHEDULE FOR E300 ANALYSIS OF LITERARY FORMS
CSU FULLERTON, FALL 2011

*2023 Note. Links and most procedural information have been removed from this archival copy, leaving mainly the assigned edition and the reading schedule.

COURSE INFORMATION. English 300, Course Code 20639, Section 80. MW 4:00 – 5:15 p.m., Irvine Campus (IRVC) 203. Instructor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Office hours: Wed. 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in IRVC 261. Email: e300_at_ajdrake.com. Catalog: “Main literary forms – prose fiction, poetry and drama – are studied and analyzed. English majors should schedule this basic course as early as possible. Units: (3).”

REQUIRED TEXTS AT IRVINE CAMPUS BOOKSTORE

Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter Tenth Edition. New York: Norton, 2010. Paperback. ISBN-13: 978-0393935141.

SCHEDULE: WORKS DISCUSSED ON DATES INDICATED

WEEK 1

M. 08/22. Course Introduction.

W. 08/24. Chapter 1: Plot. Read this chapter’s introductory material (50-58). Edith Wharton. “Roman Fever” (85-95).

WEEK 2

M. 08/29. Chapter 2. Narration and Point of View: read this chapter’s introductory material (96-100). Edgar Allan Poe. “The Cask of Amontillado” (101-05). Jamaica Kincaid. “Girl” (116-17).

W. 08/31. Chapter 3. Character (119-26). Toni Morrison. “Recitatif” (139-52).

WEEK 3

M. 09/05. No classes: Labor Day holiday, campus closed.

W. 09/07. Chapter 4. Setting: read this chapter’s introductory material (163-69). Anton Chekhov. “The Lady with the Dog” (169-80).

WEEK 4

M. 09/12. Chapter 5. Symbol and Figurative Language: read this chapter’s introductory material (208-13). Edwige Danticat. “A Wall of Fire Rising” (239-49).

W. 09/14. Chapter 6. Theme: read this chapter’s introductory material (251-54). Stephen Crane. “The Open Boat” (255-71). Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (271-76).

WEEK 5

M. 09/19. Chapter 7. Exploring Contexts — The Author’s Work: Flannery O’Connor (294-99). Flannery O’Connor. “Good Country People” (310-23). Mary Gordon. From “Flannery’s Kiss” (337-39). Eileen Pollack. From “Flannery O’Connor and the New Criticism” (343-45).

W. 09/21. Chapter 8. Cultural and Historical Contexts — Women in Turn-of-the-Century America (347-52). Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “The Yellow Wallpaper” (354-65).

WEEK 6

M. 09/26. Chapter 9. Critical Contexts: William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (389-91). William Faulkner. “A Rose for Emily” (391-97).

W. 09/28. Critical Contexts on the Faulkner Story (398-425).

WEEK 7

M. 10/05. Chapter 10. Poetry: Reading, Responding, Writing (618-42). Read also from “Romantic Love: an Album” (643-50).

W. 10/07. Love poetry, continued: Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” (704-05) and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” ([http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html|Internet Source: Bartleby]). I may bring in and read aloud a few separate love poems by the ancient Greek poetess Sappho; these are not in the anthology.

WEEK 8

M. 10/10. Chapters 13-16, etc. A Mix: Poetry as Form and Foregrounded Language. Emily Dickinson: “I dwell in Possibility” (739), “Because I could not stop for Death” (886-87); W.C. Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow” (739-40), “This is Just to Say” (740); G.M. Hopkins: “Pied Beauty” (742), “Spring and Fall” (789-90), “God’s Grandeur” (1030), “The Windhover” (1030-31); E.E. Cummings: “in Just” (742-43); “The Twenty-Third Psalm” (756); Wilfred Owen: “Dulce et Decorum Est” (759-60); Robert Frost: “Fireflies in the Garden” (768-69), “Range Finding” (838), “Design” (838), “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1019-20); Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven” (785-88).

W. 10/12. Chapters 13-16, etc. A Mix: Poetry as Form and Foregrounded Language. Shakespeare: “Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame” (814-15); Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (827-28); Elizabeth Bishop: “Sestina” (829-30); Marianne Moore “Poetry” (828-29); Archibald MacLeish: “Ars Poetica” (830-31); George Herbert: “Easter Wings” (847); Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh: “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” (913-15); Alfred Tennyson: “Ulysses” (928-30); Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess” (1009-10). Time permitting, I may bring in a few extra samples of poetic types, so read “Poetic Kinds” (919-20).

WEEK 9

M. 10/17. Romanticism: Poetry of Nature and Self-Consciousness. William Blake, William Wordsworth. Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” (1008-09, both versions from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience); “London” (658), “The Sick Rose” (767), “The Tyger” (1007-08). Wordsworth’s “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” (681), “Tintern Abbey” (1048-51).

W. 10/19. Romanticism: Poetry of Nature and Self-Consciousness, continued. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Walt Whitman. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (1010-11). Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” (817-20). Keats’ “On the Sonnet” (835-36), “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (836-37), “Ode to a Nightingale” (1031-33),”Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1033-34), “To Autumn” (1034-35). Whitman’s “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” (686).

WEEK 10

M. 10/24. Modernist Poetry: W.B. Yeats. William Butler Yeats: an Album (895-908).

W. 10/26. Modernist Poetry, continued: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens. Ezra Pound. “In a Station of the Metro” (1041). T.S. Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1015-19). Wallace Stevens. “The Emperor of Ice Cream” (1042-43), “Anecdote of the Jar” (1043). I may also give and comment on short readings from other poems to be specified.

WEEK 11

M. 10/31. Chapter 19. Cultural and Historical Contexts: the Harlem Renaissance (947-56). Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance (956-64).

W. 11/02. Chapter 19. Cultural and Historical Contexts: the Harlem Renaissance (947-56). Essay excerpts on Harlem Renaissance (966-81). Read also W. E. B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Ch. 1. Of Our Spiritual Strivings.

WEEK 12

M. 11/07. Read “Elements of Drama” introduction (1125-34). Chapter 24. Critical Contexts. Sophocles. Antigone (1490-1523).

W. 11/09. Sophocles. Antigone, continued (1490-1523). Critical Excerpts (1524-39).

WEEK 13

M. 11/14. Anton Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard (1547-83).

W. 11/16. Anton Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard, continued (1547-83).

WEEK 14

M. 11/21. Wed. Fall Recess. No classes.

W. 11/23. Wed. Fall Recess. No classes.

WEEK 15

M. 11/28. Lorraine Hansberry. A Raisin in the Sun (1583-1645).

W. 11/30. Lorraine Hansberry. A Raisin in the Sun, continued (1583-1645).

WEEK 16

M. 12/05. Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman (1646-1711).

W. 12/07. Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman, continued (1646-1711).

FINALS WEEK

Final Exam Date Wed. Dec. 14, 5:00 – 6:50.