Course Syllabus: English 527

Romantic Narrative: Educating Mary, Governing Emile

Fall 2007 Professor Gary Handwerk
Tu/Th 1:30-3:20 Office: A-101Padelford
Balmer 305 Phone: 543-2690
Office Hours: Mon 1-3 PM and by appt. E-mail: handwerk@u.washington.edu

About the course:

In Britain, as elsewhere, the revolutionary period was an era of widespread debate and experimentation in the field of education. This was likewise the period when the notion of "literature" as a tool of education took on much of its current meaning, and when distinctly modern theories of reading began to be formulated. We will begin by looking at some of the pedagogical background of the era, from Locke and Rousseau to the Dissenting Academies and the Madras system. We will then move on to a selection of texts representing these educational debates—both theoretical formulations such as Rousseau's Emile and Wollstonecraft's Vindication and narrative accounts of childhood development contained in early Bildungsromane such as Fleetwood, Frankenstein and the Prelude. We will be considering how these various texts played out contemporary educational debates and responded to the highly charged political climate in which they were written.

Our main goal in this course is to work toward reading the texts we will be covering—a set including fictional narratives, non-fictional essays, critical essays, and a bit of poetry—more closely and more carefully. As we read them, it is important to remember that even the literary texts among them are not simply descriptive accounts of what particular authors see around themselves. They are acts of persuasion, implicit arguments about how people should think and feel and behave that are often all the more effective for the implicitness of their positions. Such texts play an important role in how particular societies think about educational issues; they helped shape the deep base of beliefs and values that framed political debates about public policies in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras...and continue to do so to this day.

Besides dealing with the specific topic of education in a particular historical context, this graduate seminar is also intended to increase your general familiarity with scholarly discourse and academic research methodology. So we will be taking up as well some basic questions about the nature and purposes of literary and cultural analysis as practiced in the university. This quarter we will be experimenting with group research projects; you are the guinea pigs...but then, so am I. We'll divide up into groups of three, each group dealing with one of the four British writers we will be covering (Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Wordsworth, Shelley). Each individual student will be responsible for finding and reading both a second primary work by that author and a major (i.e., book-length) piece of secondary criticism that deals with that author. I can suggest some avenues to pursue; you are welcome to consider working with any texts and critics, as long as you consult with me. There is, believe me, plenty of recent and interesting criticism on all four of these writers—ranging from biographical and psychoanalytic approaches to gender theory, reception theory, queer theory, lit/science approaches, and many more.

Course Requirements:

1) Group Project/Seminar Paper: Each group will be responsible for a one-hour presentation; dates are on the course calendar. I expect you, in the course of your research, to be in conversation with the other people in your group about how best to use this time and how to link your respective research activities. I will provide some class time for you to have these conversations; I am also available to meet with groups outside of class. Individually, you will write a 15-page paper that draws upon your outside reading; I will provide a fuller description of this assignment later in the quarter, but the basic point will be to explore how the text we will have read in class looks different, opens itself to different interpretations, when those outside works are brought to bear upon it. The papers, that is, will be both critical and comparative in orientation.

2) Response Papers: Writing is, of course, a process best practiced with some regularity, so I am asking you to do two additional kinds of writing as well. Everyone will submit four response papers (ungraded, informal papers, about two pages in length) during the quarter, one on each of the writers you are not dealing with in your group. These papers have several purposes. They are meant to help you focus in a preliminary way your reaction to specific texts and to help me gauge how you are responding to them collectively. They give you a chance to practice your analytical skills and to get some sense of how I respond to writing. These can be submitted on any of the days on which we are dealing with the individual writers...but no later than that. I will suggest topics for some day's reading assignments, but choice of topics on these papers is ultimately up to you.

3) Collaborative Critical Essay: Your second smaller assignment will be a collaborative writing exercise, due during either our work on The Prelude or Frankenstein. You will be responsible, in pairs, for producing a one-page, single-spaced, no-margin analysis of one of the contemporary critical essays included in the back of the Norton editions of these works. Your first objective in this paper should be to summarize as thoroughly and clearly as you can the main claims and the sequential presentation of arguments in that essay. Your second objective is to discuss how plausible and how helpful you consider those claims and arguments to be in interpreting the text. More details on this, too, will be forthcoming.

4) Regular attendance and participation are, of course, taken for granted as an expectation in a graduate seminar. I will expect you to have read and to have thoughtful questions and comments to make about whatever material we are dealing with on a specific day.

Course Grading:

1) attendance, class participation, response papers 20%

2) group project/presentation 20%

3) collaborative critical essay 10%

4) final paper 50%

Course Calendar: English 527

Romantic Narrative: Educating Mary, Governing Emile

Course Calendar:

September 27 -- Introduction: Romantic Education

October 2 -- Richardson, Chapters 1, 2 & 6

October 4 -- Rousseau, Emile, Bk. 1-2

October 9 -- Rousseau, Emile, Bk. 3-4

October 11 -- Rousseau, Emile Bk. 5

October 16 -- Group work day

October 18 -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. 1-3 (101-165)

October 23 -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. 4-8 (166-276)

October 25 -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. 9-13 (277-343)

October 30 -- Wollstonecraft Group; Richardson, Chapter 3

November 1 -- Godwin, Fleetwood, Vol. 1 (47-171)

November 6 -- Godwin, Fleetwood, Vol. 2-3 (175-376)

November 8 -- Godwin, Fleetwood, Vol. 3 (376-423)

November 13 -- Godwin Group; Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 version), Bk. 1-2

November 15 -- Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 version), Bk. 3-8

November 20 -- Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 version), Bk. 9-13

November 22 -- THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

November 27 -- Wordsworth Group; Richardson, Ch. 4

November 29 -- Shelley, Frankenstein, Vol. 1-2 (7-101)

December 4 -- Shelley, Frankenstein, Vol. 3 (103-156)

December 6 -- Shelley Group

DECEMBER 6-- COLLABORATIVE ESSAY (PRELUDE OR FRANKENSTEIN) DUE

DECEMBER 12 -- FINAL PAPER DUE

Course Syllabus: English 527 Romantic Narrative: Educating Mary, Governing Emile Fall 2007 Professor Gary Handwerk Tu/Th 1:30-3:20 Office: A-101Padelford Balmer 305 Phone: 543-2690 Office Hours: Mon 1-3 PM and by appt. E-mail: handwerk@u.washington.edu *About the course:* In Britain, as elsewhere, the revolutionary period was an era of widespread debate and experimentation in the field of education. This was likewise the period when the notion of "literature" as a tool of education took on much of its current meaning, and when distinctly modern theories of reading began to be formulated. We will begin by looking at some of the pedagogical background of the era, from Locke and Rousseau to the Dissenting Academies and the Madras system. We will then move on to a selection of texts representing these educational debates—both theoretical formulations such as Rousseau's Emile and Wollstonecraft's Vindication and narrative accounts of childhood development contained in early Bildungsromane such as Fleetwood, Frankenstein and the Prelude. We will be considering how these various texts played out contemporary educational debates and responded to the highly charged political climate in which they were written. Our main goal in this course is to work toward reading the texts we will be covering—a set including fictional narratives, non-fictional essays, critical essays, and a bit of poetry—more closely and more carefully. As we read them, it is important to remember that even the literary texts among them are not simply descriptive accounts of what particular authors see around themselves. They are acts of persuasion, implicit arguments about how people should think and feel and behave that are often all the more effective for the implicitness of their positions. Such texts play an important role in how particular societies think about educational issues; they helped shape the deep base of beliefs and values that framed political debates about public policies in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras...and continue to do so to this day. Besides dealing with the specific topic of education in a particular historical context, this graduate seminar is also intended to increase your general familiarity with scholarly discourse and academic research methodology. So we will be taking up as well some basic questions about the nature and purposes of literary and cultural analysis as practiced in the university. This quarter we will be experimenting with group research projects; you are the guinea pigs...but then, so am I. We'll divide up into groups of three, each group dealing with one of the four British writers we will be covering (Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Wordsworth, Shelley). Each individual student will be responsible for finding and reading both a second primary work by that author and a major (i.e., book-length) piece of secondary criticism that deals with that author. I can suggest some avenues to pursue; you are welcome to consider working with any texts and critics, as long as you consult with me. There is, believe me, plenty of recent and interesting criticism on all four of these writers—ranging from biographical and psychoanalytic approaches to gender theory, reception theory, queer theory, lit/science approaches, and many more. *Course Requirements:* 1) Group Project/Seminar Paper: Each group will be responsible for a one-hour presentation; dates are on the course calendar. I expect you, in the course of your research, to be in conversation with the other people in your group about how best to use this time and how to link your respective research activities. I will provide some class time for you to have these conversations; I am also available to meet with groups outside of class. Individually, you will write a 15-page paper that draws upon your outside reading; I will provide a fuller description of this assignment later in the quarter, but the basic point will be to explore how the text we will have read in class looks different, opens itself to different interpretations, when those outside works are brought to bear upon it. The papers, that is, will be both critical and comparative in orientation. 2) Response Papers: Writing is, of course, a process best practiced with some regularity, so I am asking you to do two additional kinds of writing as well. Everyone will submit four response papers (ungraded, informal papers, about two pages in length) during the quarter, one on each of the writers you are not dealing with in your group. These papers have several purposes. They are meant to help you focus in a preliminary way your reaction to specific texts and to help me gauge how you are responding to them collectively. They give you a chance to practice your analytical skills and to get some sense of how I respond to writing. These can be submitted on any of the days on which we are dealing with the individual writers...but no later than that. I will suggest topics for some day's reading assignments, but choice of topics on these papers is ultimately up to you. 3) Collaborative Critical Essay: Your second smaller assignment will be a collaborative writing exercise, due during either our work on The Prelude or Frankenstein. You will be responsible, in pairs, for producing a one-page, single-spaced, no-margin analysis of one of the contemporary critical essays included in the back of the Norton editions of these works. Your first objective in this paper should be to summarize as thoroughly and clearly as you can the main claims and the sequential presentation of arguments in that essay. Your second objective is to discuss how plausible and how helpful you consider those claims and arguments to be in interpreting the text. More details on this, too, will be forthcoming. 4) Regular attendance and participation are, of course, taken for granted as an expectation in a graduate seminar. I will expect you to have read and to have thoughtful questions and comments to make about whatever material we are dealing with on a specific day. *Course Grading:* 1) attendance, class participation, response papers 20% 2) group project/presentation 20% 3) collaborative critical essay 10% 4) final paper 50% Course Calendar: English 527 Romantic Narrative: Educating Mary, Governing Emile *Course Calendar:* September 27 -- Introduction: Romantic Education October 2 -- Richardson, Chapters 1, 2 & 6 October 4 -- Rousseau, Emile, Bk. 1-2 October 9 -- Rousseau, Emile, Bk. 3-4 October 11 -- Rousseau, Emile Bk. 5 October 16 -- Group work day October 18 -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. 1-3 (101-165) October 23 -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. 4-8 (166-276) October 25 -- Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. 9-13 (277-343) October 30 -- Wollstonecraft Group; Richardson, Chapter 3 November 1 -- Godwin, Fleetwood, Vol. 1 (47-171) November 6 -- Godwin, Fleetwood, Vol. 2-3 (175-376) November 8 -- Godwin, Fleetwood, Vol. 3 (376-423) November 13 -- Godwin Group; Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 version), Bk. 1-2 November 15 -- Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 version), Bk. 3-8 November 20 -- Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 version), Bk. 9-13 November 22 -- THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY November 27 -- Wordsworth Group; Richardson, Ch. 4 November 29 -- Shelley, Frankenstein, Vol. 1-2 (7-101) December 4 -- Shelley, Frankenstein, Vol. 3 (103-156) December 6 -- Shelley Group DECEMBER 6-- COLLABORATIVE ESSAY (PRELUDE OR FRANKENSTEIN) DUE DECEMBER 12 -- FINAL PAPER DUE
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