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British Literature 6: Cary Honig email: caryh@school-one.org
Welcome to the Brit. Lit. 6 page Hopefully, having an overview of what we will do and roughly when will make the class easier. This also allows me to make the suggested but not required readings available in a context that might make them more attractive. The workload is actually a little lighter again as two of the essays will be done in class, which most students consider easier. There is also less reading, although it is challenging.
Students can take this class for English or history credit. Because the class is so writing intense, there is a different workload for English and history students with history students writing fewer essays (usually those that have more history or sociological content). The reading requirements are the same. The syllabi provide the details.
Every student even considering this class must read and sign the source policy and abide by it. Failure to do so will lead to no credit in the class. I am not interested in what anyone at wikipedia, Sparknotes or Harvard thinks about this literature. I am interested in what YOU think. You must think for yourself in this class. If you don't want to do that and perhaps occasionally struggle, don't take the class. You are always welcome to come discuss your ideas with me before writing if you are worried you are off track. I won't tell you what to write or think, but I am happy to ask you questions that might help you to focus or reorient. This is NOT a research class; it is a thinking class. Please respect that and trust that I respect ideas that may be flawed but original far more than ideas that are on more solid ground but that aren't yours. If you want to improve your reading skills significantly when reading Dubliners this trimester (or want to earn credit), do not cheat, which is what looking for help online or elsewhere amounts to.
Links under the weekly schedule are to note sheets we will use in class as well as to articles that are usually recommended but not required to add to your knowledge about what we are discussing in class.
Essays are due almost every week and just about always on Thursdays at class time except for the King Lear essay, which will be staggered. Revisions should be done soon after being returned but MUST be completed by the Monday after they are returned unless an earlier date is specified at the end of the trimester. On two occasions this trimester, students will do their essays in class on Thursdays to practice for college testing. They should be sure to have read the materials very carefully and to have given them some thought before taking these exams, but the questions are broad and don't require focus on one particular detail in the text(s). Students who are absent on these days will do the essays at home with the amount of evidence expected in an essay done at home. In-class essays are generally not revised unless the student didn't do the reading. Most at-home essays need revision until I approve them as complete.
Late work is not tolerated in this class. If a student is late on one essay, s/he will have to do an additional essay as well as the one that is late. If a second assignment is late, the student cannot earn credit. If a student is home sick, the essay must be emailed on time. Exceptions will only be made in a situation that is completely unavoidable by the student and for which there is clear evidence and in which the extension was pre-arranged.
Students should begin reading Heart of Darkness as soon as they sign up for the class (if not sooner). The first essay is due for most students during the week of March 14-16. (Julius Caesar didn't enjoy that week either.) It would be a good idea to look at the essay assignments related to texts before reading them so that you can look for evidence and ideas as your read. I have plenty of copies, but if you want to write in your book, you should get your own.
Completely updated for 2023
Week 1: We will begin with an introduction to Modernism before beginning to read King Lear in class. We will listen to some Modernist music (Stravinsky) and look at some Modernist art. For a great site with actual documents relating to Shakespeare from his time, go to http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/
Grammar: Comma Review
Class work:
Excellent Fintan O'Toole article about Shakespeare's tragedies: screw the tragic flaw! 24
Recommended:
Resistance to Modernist Rite of Spring 12
Intro to Stravinsky with links 21
Picasso's Guernica initially flopped 22
The Brain and Modern Art13.docx
The Stubborn Genius of Rodin 17
Janet Malcolm on Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell '95
Antony Hopkins's Lear streams on amazon 18
Glenda Jackson's London Lear 17
Frances Yates on Lear and Alchemy
This week's essay is the staggered one based on King Lear. Like last trimester, you will each get your own soliloquy to analyze and teach the class, and they will be staggered so that you're doing them the day before we get to your soliloquy in class. That means you should be doing preparation ahead of time. Until registration is over, the soliloquy assignments aren't firm because I'm guessing who will be in the class. I will update this when I know who is in the class, but so far those in the class last trimester have assignments. This essay is only for English students and is due betwen March 14 and March 16.
Lear essay assignment (English) 2023
It would be smart to begin reading Heart of Darkness immediately as its brevity is deceptive. You will want to read it carefully and probably will want to re-read at least some parts of it before next week's in-class essay. You also might have questions for me, but that will require reading it before the last minute.
Week 2: We will continue reading and analyzing King Lear. Grammar: Commas and Initial Words and Phrases and Comma Review
Highly recommended JSTOR link to Angling in the Lake of Darkness: Possession, Dispossession, and the Politics of Discovery in "King Lear" by Dan Brayton in ELH, Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 399-426 http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029882
This week's assignment requires having completed Heart of Darkness. There will be an in-class essay on March 28 for which it is vital to be prepared. It's not a gotcha essay, but you need to be prepared to discuss main characters, events and themes of the book.
Frank Kermode on Conrad's letters
The Contradictions of Joesph Conrad 17
Adam Hochschild on The Cruelties of Empire 22
Belgium Retains Congolese Skulls from the reign of Leopold 24
Week 3: Continue and possibly complete King Lear. Grammar: Quotations and punctuation
You have a revision of exercise one due by Monday, March 27 at 9 a.m. with the marked up draft.
This week's assignment requires completing The Sisters and An Encounter, which are the first two stories in James Joyce's Dubliners. It is due on March 30 by 9 a.m. This one is English only.
If you're frustrated at all, read the New York Times's original review of Joyce's Ulysses here: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/05/28/109337460.pdf
You just have to read the first paragraph to get a good sense of how non-Modernists reacted to Modernism.
Week 4: Complete King Lear. Introduction to James Joyce and Ireland at the turn of the 20th Century. Discuss what Joyce is aiming to do in Dubliners and the trouble it caused. Discuss The Sisters and An Encounter when revisions allow.
Grammar: Colons and Semi-Colons
James Joyce's Odyssey: Ulysses 99
IOriginal NY Times Review of Ulysses
This week's assignment involves the next two stories, Araby and Eveline, as well as An Encounter, which you read last week. It's due on April 6 by 9 a.m. This one is for everyone.
While your revision of last week's essay isn't due until next Monday, we can discuss last week's stories once everyone has his/her revision done, and I think you will want to do that in short order, so don't wait until the deadline. This will be true every week for the rest of the trimester.
Week 5: If we haven't already, we will begin discussing Dubliners, but to be involved in the discussion, your revision must be done well by this time. No one gets to be in on Dubliners discussions without having completed essays about the stories being discussed.
Grammar: Commas with however and though
You should be completing the next four stories in Dubliners: After The Race, Two Gallants, The Boarding House and A Little Cloud. As you should by now be starting to understand how to read a Joyce story, you should be going through these stories with great care and perhaps taking notes. Look for common themes in particular. The last three of these four are among the most brilliant stories in the book. You will have an in-class essay on Thursday, April 13, which might be a bit intimidating, but I promise it will be a pretty broad question. To prepare, think about what the stories might have in common in terms of themes. You should be really familiar with them. This is for everyone.
Week 6: We will continue discussing Dubliners and may start reading Modernist poetry beginning with Thomas Hardy in class this week.
Grammar: Prepositions
Hardy the Darkling Thrush questions
Hardy Convergence of the Twain questions
Hardy Channel Firing questions
He Never Expected Much questions
This week's major essay is based on King Lear. We should have completed it in class by this time, and you will be asked to analyze King Lear's views of causation and justice in comparison to Thomas Hardy's short poem Hap, which can be found on the second page of the assignment sheet. Please don't look up any information about the poem or Hardy (beyond the biographical information in the book review of an excellent recent biography linked below) as I just want your ideas. It is just for English students and is due on April 27 by 9 a.m.
Here's the extra essay for those who earned it:
I will be adding names to it if you have late essays and revisions, so don't.
Week 7:
We will continue discussing Dubliners and reading Modernist poetry in class this week.
Introduction to Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish political history. This is absolutely necessary for understanding Ivy Day in the Committee Room, which is the story you are reading for next week's homework. If we finish with Hardy's poetry, we will move on to Yeats. Grammar: Adverbs
Yeats and "sexual rejuventation
This week's essay focuses on the central story Counterparts along with the two that follow it. Your first mission will be to figure out which meaning of "Counterpart" Joyce is emphasizing here. In line with the Modernist focus on structure and/or lack of same. The article about the Magdalene Laundries is very relevant to the first part of Clay. This essay is due on Thursday, May 9 at 9 a.m. It's just for English students.
Magdalene Laundries with Clay - BL6.doc
What to do with the last of the Magdalene Laundry Buildings (as depicted in Clay) 18
You have a revision of exercise 4 due on Monday.
Week 8: If we are roughly on time, we will read selections by the war poets and T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Grammar: Parallel Structure
War poets questions.dohttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sv2Iq7jZLPbRRUak-BRm9mzfkOvoiZKpzOz40dNicLU/edit
Eliot Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock notes
This week's essay focuses on the central story Ivy Day In The Committee Room, which is the most overtly politically focused story in the book. You have the option of a creative assignment, which is to write a short story in the style and tone of Joyce's Dubliners but about Rhode Island. There is an assignment sheet with criteria that must be met to complete this assignment properly. This essay/story is due on Thursday, May 16 at 9 a.m. History students must do the Ivy Day essay.
As there is only one story to read this week, you would be very smart to read A Mother and Grace to prepare for next week's final essay as the final story, The Dead, is much longer, and Grace isn't short.
Creative alternative assignment
Luke 16 for reading Grace - unless you know the Bible by heart, refer to this during the sermon
You have a revision of the Hap/Lear essay due by Monday at 9 a.m. with the marked up draft.
Site is up to date to this point for 2023
Week 9: This week we'll focus on Joyce's idea of counterparts and how this structural device ties Dubliners together and where we see it at work in various stories we have read. How does this device in effect make a book of short stories into a novel? We're likely well behind by this point, but if not, we will look at a couple of poems by Robert Graves that focus on language and meaning. Grammar: Me/I
Graves The Naked and The Nude notes
You have a revision of exercise six due by Monday at 9 a.m. with the marked up draft.
We have reached the final essay of the year. I don't know whether that is better news for you or for me. There is a lot of reading for this week, so I hope you took my advice and began it last week. You need to read A Mother, Grace and The Dead carefully to complete this essay successfully. The Dead is a masterpiece, and Grace is hilarious. A Mother is no slouch either and is open very different interpretations. Don't even think about reading less than all of these stories.
This essay is due on Thursday, May 18 at 9 a.m. It's only for English students, but everyone must read the stories or the God in whom the Modernists lost faith will prove Its existence in punishing you.
Week 10:
We will dissect Ivy Day this week, and if last week's essays were in good shape, we can deal with A Mother as well on Thursday as revisions of last week's essay must be in. If your essay isn't, you aren't invited to the discussion. We will turn to the poetry of Stevie Smith. There are few better ways to finish a class about Modernism than with her poem Not Waving But Drowning. Grammar: Split Infinitives and Additional Usage
Smith Not Waving But Drowning.notes
Homework is to revise the final essays (and any re-revisions) fully by Thursday, May 26 by 9 a.m. if you plan to earn credit.
Week 11: I imagine we will be finishing up what is listed under week 10, but we will also discuss Grace and The Dead and look back over the wonder that was Dubliners. We can also share students' short stories with their permission. We'll finish up with Jeopardy and perhaps a special award.
Here's an article about the next book you should read: Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I suggest getting a copy of the old Viking Critical edition, which you can find on a site like abebooks or betterworldbooks, as it has good notes about the details of Dublin 120 years ago that Joyce's audience knew and you don't.
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