British Literature to 1800

Classroom/Time:        Tuesday and Thursday, 4:20-5:45, in Cedar 10

Teacher:                     Jim Toner

Office:                         Aspen 2

Office Hours:             Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00-3:00

Friday, 2:00-3:00

Phone:             588-5226

E-mail:                        tonerj@yosemite.cc.ca.us

Course Website:        gocolumbia.org/tonerj and then click on the link for British Lit.

Books and other expenses:

·        The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7^th Edition, Volume 1.

·        We’ll be attending two plays this semester:

                  -A Man for All Seasons: Friday, October 7^th, at Stage 3 ($10)

                  - King Lear:   Friday, October 21st, at 8pm at Sierra Repertory                                         Theater. ($12)

Objectives:

·        I want us to read some of the greatest writers in the English language and do our best at understanding them and the times in which they wrote.  Along the way, I want us to get some sense of how our language developed, stage by stage, into the English we speak today; I want us to celebrate the majesty of great writing; I want us to use these texts as ways to illuminate our own lives, right here and right now.

·        I want us to be active and complete learners—full-bodied learners who do the mental work but also utilize the rest of us. My teaching method tends to avoid lectures and highlight the active. This means that we move and play act and draw and pretend and and and…, well, do anything that will nudge these words deeper into our bones.  Maybe for now the best thing is for you to just trust me and my madness.

·        I want us to become better writers.  Part of my job is to be sure that by the end of the semester you can write very good essays. I don’t have an exact number or nature right now, but it will likely be four essays in the neighborhood of five pages each. I know that the word “essay” is a dirty and distasteful word, but remember two things: one, “essay” comes from the French word meaning “to try”; and two, writing is a means by which you can come to understand and discover what might otherwise remain vague. And just as you are very good at something—fixing cars, playing guitar, singing in the shower, skateboarding—I too am good at something: teaching writing. So let’s take advantage of this and learn to write better.

·        I want us to be very flexible with how this course proceeds. I’m not laying out a grid of our week-by-week readings because that will eliminate chance, serendipity, discovery. Think of it this way: Let’s just get our bodies into Italy, and then, without any advance hotel reservations, we’ll roam from village to village according to our pleasures.

Homework Load

Okay, I need to be straight with you.  Yes, I’ll do everything I can to help you, and yes, I want this class to be the love of your life. At the same time, be sure you have enough time for this course, because you will need to…

                        …read a lot of the book, which is full of tiny print;

                        …come to all or nearly all of the classes;

…be prepared for each of these classes and be willing to participate;

                        …write essays, each of which will take many hours;

                        …do the many other shenanigans that are typical of my classes.

The college guideline for a 3-unit class is 6-8 hours of homeplay per week. I’ll do my best to honor that.

Tests and Evaluation

            Your final grade will be a combination of essays, participation, tests, homework, effort, and other intangibles.  My general practice is to put everything into points so that you know that the grade is not some whim. The grading scale itself is pretty typical:

A: 100-91        B: 90-81          C: 80-71          D: 70-61         

            For right now I’d like to resist giving you a breakdown of how each of these areas will be weighted.  Because I work in an institution that requires grades, I will grant them with as much fairness as I can. Still, I must leave this talk of grades with a few honest words: My view is that grades are often a dangerous thing, a thing that impedes education itself. Grades—not always, but sometimes--can kill wonder, enchantment, personal journey. Much of this course resides in the field of ambiguity, grayness, soul, story, play—things beyond the realm of grades.

Course Policies

1.      Come to every class, come on time, and come as an active learner who has done all homeplay and is bursting with ideas.

2.      Be optimistic and fun and inspired and polite.

3.      Yes, polite.

4.      Recognize that you are part of a community of learners, so learn

   everybody’s name and keep an eye out for how everyone is doing.

5.      Plagiarism: In the five previous times that I’ve taught this course at Columbia, I have caught someone plagiarizing every time. So here’s your official warning: The college’s penalty for plagiarizing is immediate expulsion from the class with an “F” grade.

A Final Word

            This syllabus is depressing me.  Okay, I suppose it’s necessary to give you some sense of what you’re in for, but the tone seems so negative and menacing.  The truth is that I’m THRILLED about teaching this course.  I have a soft spot for all twenty of you because you’re willing to take on a big-time English challenge.  So let’s jump into the sandbox and start playing with all these colorful toys, all these words full of wonder and song. 

A few notes:

q       Essays: These tend to be from 4-6 pages (1000-1500 words). I will teach you how to write this type of essay.

q       Reading Assignments: For each of the readings I usually ask you to do something designed to help you understand and feel the selection more deeply.

q       Lectures: In the interest of time, I will deliver one lecture for each unit (5-6 units). These lectures will summarize the movements in history, culture, and literature from era to era. In addition, I will try to explain how the English language grew from a tiny little island language to the universal tongue of today.

q       Exams: I have been known to concoct some creative alternatives to the typical midterm and final. We’ll see how the course progresses and where your own sense of daring rests.

q       The schedule: This schedule is designed to help us, not constrict us. It will remind me that spending seven weeks on Beowulf will result in never reading many other majestic readers later on. So this schedule will help move us along. It will also remind us of the absurdity of the course: to spend a day on an author who is worthy of an entire semester. But this is a survey course, and just as a two-week tour of European capitals is ridiculous, it is also marvelous and eye-opening, and it gives us a taste for places we might want to return for six months at a later date.