Autumn Quarter ’04– The Age of Romanticism
Assignments and Updates

(Assignments are posted beginning with the most current)

Catalyst

For anytime between now and December 13: Final Examination passage nominations. It's getting to be time for me to put together a final, and I want your help. The final will have the same format as the midterm, which means I will give you a set of passages from which you will choose which to write about, and for which I will ask you to give me a functional analysis.

Your task here: help me create the exam by nominating for inclusion on the exam a passage--prose or poetry--from anything we have read since the first midterm on which you would like to write. Include with your nomination a short but powerful explanation of why this would be a good selection for the Final. The passage can't be too long--but be sure it is substantial enough that it offers rich opportunities for writing. (Both the midterm's passages and the passages we did from Frankenstein would be good examples.)

Then, to help yourselves, post the text you nominate (but NOT the explanatory page) to Catalyst. I guarantee that the passages I use will be from the submissions I receive.

Optional: If you want to be part of the passage selection team (which currently has a single member), scan the nominations that arrive on Catalyst and send me an e-note with your vote no later than noon on the 14th. I don't promise to use the highest vote-getters, but I do promise to take the vote count into consideration in making my final selections!

For December 9:

Reading: No New Reading. We will spend part of our time finishing up Manfred, and we'll spend other parts of our time talking about the course as a whole and what we've been able to accomplish with it.

Writing: 1. The presentation draft of your Romantic Survival project is due, along with 2. your Romantic Age Portfolio. Review the Portfolio Assignment to be sure you understand what elements you will need to include. The most important such element is the Self-reflective Essay--not long, and not difficult to write, but VERY important!

For December 7:

Reading: Byron: Manfred.

Writing: From your assigned act select a passage of from 10-15 lines which you think performs an important function in the play as a whole. Type out those lines, and then give me a functional analysis of your lines. What do they do for the play's over-all project, and how do they do it? (We'll discuss the play's project on Dec 2.)

For December 2:

Reading: Byron: "Written after Swimming...," "She walks in beauty," "They say that Hope," "When we two parted," "Darkness, "So, We'll go no more a-roving," "Stanzas Written on the Road."

Writing: First, read "Darkness"--which many would call a quintessential Byronic poem. Then follow this with the lyrics. Pick one you think is both as far away as possible from "Darkness," and yet still in a way you can identify very deeply Byronic. Explain in terms of its project what makes it seem "anti-Byronic," on the one hand, and yet still "Byronic" on the other.

For November 30:

Reading: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Writing: Romantic Survival Project paper due. 7pm.

For November 23:

Reading: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Writing: So, in what ways does Gods and Monsters extend, reflect, work with--whatever word you want--Frankenstein? Be as specific as you can!

For November 18:

Writing: Full page nomination of a cultural artifact on which to work, along
with a possible analogue work, and a description of the direction you
expect to be going in your analysis. (Submit by email as an embedded
file--i.e., cut and paste, or block and paste).

For November 16:

Reading: Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes; Lamia.

Writing: For the Keats poems: Pick ONE stanza from the Eve that you think is dynamite, write it out, and explain why you like it; and from Lamia pick a passage of from 4-8 lines and do the same.

MID TERM REWRITE OPTION: Anyone can pick one of the two essays they wrote on the midterm and rewrite it. I will re-grade that question, raising your score to a maximum of 38/40, depending, of course, on how well you do. (More information is available on the Blackboard site--don't look if you don't want help, but the help will include government-endorsed [!] project statements for each of the three selections.)

For November 11: NO CLASS—Veterans Day

For November 9:

Reading: Shelley: Mont Blanc. Keats: "When I have Fears"; "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; "Ode to a Nightengale"; "To Autumn."

Reading: Shelley: "To Wordsworth," "Ozymandias," "England in 1819," and "Ode to the West Wind."

Writing: Pick one of the Shelley poems and write a (brief--only two pages remember) "functional analysis"--putting together what we've been doing in-class with noticing, exploring, and explaining. What is the poem trying to do, and how, exactly as you can, does it do it?

For November 2:

Reading: Hemans, "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers," Casabianca," "Homes of England." Landon, "The Proud Ladye," "Love's Last Lesson." We'll also be returning to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"--so you'd do well to re-read it, too.

Writing: For any one of the Hemans or Landon poems, imagine that you are reading the poem, but without knowing its author a woman. At any level of response you can make, how might you know just by the poem itself that its author was a woman? Could you know? Is "women's" poetry here any different from "men's" poetry?

NOTE: Revision of Schedule as of October 21. We have slowed down! So: for the Midterm on Tuesday, we'll EXCLUDE Wollstonecraft and Barbauld, and we will exclude the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

E-Post Midterm Review: I must be out of town for the weekend, but I'll keep in touch. You can post questions to Romantic Conversations (use the Catalyst link), and we can respond to one another there. The midterm is a reading exam--which means the point of it is to help you focus on how to develop your reading-poetry skills. Review all we've read except what's excluded in the Revision paragraph above.

For October 28:

Reading: Wollstonecraft, Vind of the Rights; Barbauld, Rights (RE 3-4 Quiz) (Yep, the same as for the 21st. We'll have the quiz, and we'll deal with Wollstonecraft, and the Rime.)

Writing: Pick your favorite Wollstonecraft sentence. Write it out, and explain as best you can why you like it.

For October 26: Mid-term Exam. Please bring a bluebook (greenbook, exam book--whatever name you know it by). You will have the full two hours to work, but I will give an exam that would ideally take an hour to do. (No response paper due.)

Due October 21:

Reading: Wollstonecraft, Vind of the Rights; Barbauld, Rights (RE 3-4 Quiz). And re-read Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence." We'll use that for a mid-term practice session.

Writing: Barbauld’s project is to attack Wollstonecraft with a critique of her claims and logic. Having read Wollstonecraft’s pages, respond to that attack. What would she have replied, either to Barbauld herself, or to the public generally? Make sure to draw your argument from your reading of VRW.

Due October 19:

Reading: Coleridge: Dejection, an Ode, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Writing: These two poems, as different as they seem, can be understood as having very similar projects. Develop and write out a project statement for one of the two, and then explain as best you can first how the poem goes about effecting that project (don't worry if this sounds really difficult--we'll be talking more about project statements on Thursday), and second, locate a place in the other poem that seems to be doing the "same" sort of thing.

(We have already done this exercise with "Lines Written..." and "Expostulation and Reply" in class on Tuesday. Both poems argue the necessity of reintegrating nature and its common sense into our consciousness if we are to realign man's currently malign [or "dead"!] relationship to other men. Each poem makes its argument in a different way, but both can be seen to be engaged in the same basic project.)

See the Blackboard for more on Project Statements.

Due October 14:

Reading: Coleridge: Eolian Harp, Kubla K; RE Chap 1 Quiz. (Start RE Chaps 3-4)

Writing: For either poem--make it your own! Find three key noticings, and explore possible whys for each of them. Hard copy.

Due October 12:

Reading: Ww: Preface; Nutting; Resolution and Independence. (RWRA, Appendix 1: “Wordsworth on Poetry”)

Writing: From your reading of RWRA pp 33-37, relate what you saw in Pirates to Romantic Themes and Issues. Pick two different short segments of the film, and describe as best you can how they represent survivals of the Romantic Age. Be specific: What's and Why's are as essential to "reading" film as they are to reading poetry!

Due October 7:

Reading: RWRA: pp. 33-37. In class: Pirates of the Caribbean

Writing: Pick one of the poems we read for Tuesday, but were not able to talk about in class. 1. Post to the Catalyst site before Thursday a noticing and an exploring--a What, and a Why. Before you post, read the site rules (e.g., word limit of 200 words per post). Pseudonyms (which are in fact pseudo-pseudonyms, do remember) are perfectly appropriate. 2. Before class, return to the Catalyst site, read what others have posted, and revise your own contribution in view of what you have read. You can add, replace, rearticulate--whatever seems most appropriate.

Due October 5:

Reading: Wordsworth, Lines Written; Expostulation; Strange fits; She dwelt among; Three years; A slumber; Lucy Gray; I wandered; My Heart Leaps.
RE: Start Intro and Chap 1. RWRA: pp. 3-32. (Quiz on RWRA).

Writing: In the rush and crush of Thursday's class, I managed to forget to assign the writing--ironic, given how much I told you about its value and so on and on. Ah well. We will have to make up for that!