Courses
*Offered in 2010. Download the 2010 School of Letters Catalog.
English 500, Dante*
Close study of the three books of The Divine Comedy, with attention as well to
Dante’s literary ancestors including Virgil. (Covers Literature in Translation requirement.)
English 501, Classical Literature in Translation
Close examination of major texts of both Greek and Latin literature, read in
modern English translations. (Covers Literature in Translation requirement.)
English 502, Bible as Literature
Introduction to both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, treating the texts,
as much as possible, as literary documents open to multiple interpretations. Emphasis
is on close reading of important episodes, in several translations. Supplemental
readings will include representations of the Bible by major authors and artists.
(Covers Literature in Translation requirement.)
English 509, Workshop in Poetry Writing*
Discussions center on students’ poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus
on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (Repeatable.)
English 510, Workshop in Fiction Writing*
Discussions center on students’ fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus
on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (Repeatable.)
English 512, Workshop in Creative Nonfiction Writing*
Discussions center on students’ prose. Selected readings are assigned to focus
on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (Repeatable.)
English 513, Writing Pedagogy*
Focusing on imaginative and innovative ways to teach writing, this course offers a
variety of creative writing techniques and exercises which participants can incorporate
into English courses and other courses across the curriculum. It will address various
concerns of writing pedagogy, including constructive criticism, motivation, and the
balance of reading, analysis, exercise, and workshop. Students read some pedagogical
theory, but much of the course time is practice-oriented.
English 555, Spenser
Close study of Edmund Spenser’s major poem, The Faerie Queene, with some
attention to such lesser works as The Shepherd’s Calendar and the Amoretti.
English 557, Shakespeare*
Advanced study of major plays and lyric poems of William Shakespeare, and of
major critical traditions regarding Shakespeare’s work.
English 560, Seventeenth-Century English Poetry
A study of major English poetry of the seventeenth century, from the Metaphysicals
to Milton. Authors covered include George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and several
Cavalier poets, including Robert Herrick and Richard Lovelace.
English 566, Dr. Johnson and the Poets*
Close study of several major English poets (Shakespeare, Donne, Cowley,
Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Gray), through the lens provided by the great critic
Samuel Johnson, who wrote about them all. The course also looks ahead to such
modern writers as Rober Lowell and Samuel Beckett, who read Johnson as a model
and inspiration.
English 567, The Eighteenth-Century English Novel*
Study of the development of the English novel during the “long” 18th century,
including works by such writers as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding,
Lawrence Sterne, and Jane Austen.
English 570, British Romanticism
Study of major literary works and theories of the Romantic period in Britain,
including poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats.
English 577, The American Renaissance*
Studies in the poetry, prose and nonfiction of the remarkable period from
1836 to 1865, when such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Herman
Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman revolutionized American writing.
(Credit, full course.)
English 579, The American Novel
A study of the development of the American novel during the 19th and 20th
centuries. Authors treated will vary from year to year but may include Mark Twain,
Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison.
English 581, Modern British Poetry
Examination of the modern period in British poetry, including close study of
Hardy, Hopkins, Yeats, Lawrence, Auden and others.
English 588, The Classic Russian Novel*
Study of the Russian novel’s development from early nineteenth to mid-twentieth
century, with special attention to the intersection of Russian history and literature.
Novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Pasternak
feature as the center of the course. Topics of particular interest may include the
superfluous man and Russian Byronic hero, Russian Romanticism, representations
of St. Petersburg, Russian intellectual history, and problems of literary translation.
(Covers Literature in Translation requirement.)
English 590, Modern American Poetry
Study of major American poets from the first half of the twentieth century,
including Frost, Eliot, Pound, Stevens and others.
English 591, American Poetry and the Environment
Starting from topics raised in Angus Fletcher’s book A New Theory for American
Poetry, the course examines the development, begining with Walt Whitman, of what
might be called “environment poems,” poems that are themselves environments.
Other poets considered may include Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Laura
Riding, Hart Crane, James Agee, May Swenson, and others.
English 593, Faulkner
Study of the celebrated novels of Faulkner’s major phase—including Sanctuary,
The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and The Hamlet—as well as the author’s significant but often overlooked work in poetry and short fiction.
English 594, Literature of the American South*
Advanced study of the literary tradition of the U.S. South, with emphasis on
such major writers as Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Eudora
Welty, Robert Penn Warren and others of the Agrarian circle, Zora Neale Hurston,
and Flannery O’Connor. Attention also to antebellum and contemporary southern
writing, and to writers associated with Sewanee. (Credit, full course.)
English 595, African American Literature
Advanced study of the major traditions of African American writing from the
nineteenth century to the present, including Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent,
Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison,
and Rita Dove.
English 596, American Environmental Literature and Ecocriticism*
Exploration of the “green theme” and the emerging cross-disciplinary character of “ecocriticism” as reflected in writings selected from the full span of American cultural history. Readings include both traditional literary texts and seminal nonfiction by figures such as William Bartram, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Annie
Dillard, Barry Lopez, and Wendell Berry.
English 597, Contemporary American Poetry
Study of American poetry since World War II, from the generation of Theodore
Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop to contemporaries like Robert Pinsky and Susan
Stewart. A special emphasis on the relationship between these poets and the high
moderns who preceded them.
English 598, Forms of Fiction
How does fiction “work”? This course attempts to answer that question with
close study of stories, novellas, and novels with a special emphasis on issues of form
and technique.
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