"I like to think of this class as a tour of a great museum: there’s too much to see in one day (or one semester), so we could either rush through and click off each painting (“yes, there’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and here’s Donne’s Holy Sonnets; now onto a page of Pepys’ diary”), OR we could pick a painting in each room and say, “okay, let’s really sit down and examine this painting.” I’ve chosen six “paintings” for us to read this semester, hoping that our discussions will teach us about the people who wrote them, the time that shaped them, and the legacy of literary criticism that makes these texts relevant in the 21st century."
So instead of lugging around a fat anthology and reading one work a day before moving on, we're going to linger a bit, questioning each work and really getting to know it before leaving the room. The books I've chosen for this class are a mix of the "standards" and some lesser-known works that are just as deserving of attention. We'll read a lot of poetry, two plays, and two novels throughout the semester, charting how each form changes over time and grows with the English language itself. Be sure to buy all six works as soon as possible, particularly since the bookstore will send unpurchased texts back within a few weeks. The book list follows along with specific editions I require:
Anonymous
Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight (Penguin Classics or other)
Chaucer The Canterbury
Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra (Norton
Critical required)
Defoe A Journal of the Plague
Year (Penguin Classics or other)
I look forward to meeting with you this semester and discussing what makes these works specifically literary, British, and still worth knowing after hundreds and hundreds of years. Please feel free to visit me in my office (HM 348) or e-mail me at jgrasso@ecok.edu with any questions. See you soon!
[Note: the posts below this one are from the Fall 2014 semester, and are not work for this semester--so don't worry. However, feel free to browse them if you're curious].
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