survey of british literature: romanticism to the present

Professor Nancy West
220 Tate Hall
WestN@missouri.edu
Office hours: TR 1:00-2:30, and by appointment

teaching assistants:
Jessica Garratt [TR 9:30-10:45 a.m., GCB 320] Tate Hall, Room 1 jbgf25@mizzou.edu Office hours: TR 11:30-1:00, and by appointment	Karen Laird [TR 11:00-12:15, A&S 234] Tate Hall, Room 1 karenlaird@mizzou.edu Office hours: TR 2:00-3:30, and by appointment

This course will provide a survey of British literature, dating roughly from the French Revolution to the end of World War I. As a survey course, you might be inclined to think, English 3210 will study authors and their works in very general terms, moving so quickly that you will only be able to glean the most basic facts about the subjects under study.  “Survey,” however, implies much more than a broad perspective; it also means to “explore the unknown” (as in geologic surveys, for example) and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, its primary definition refers to “the act of viewing, examining, or inspecting in detail.”

English 3210 will therefore aim at teaching you to look closely at these works, even as we move quickly.  It will also encourage you to approach those poems, fictional pieces, or works you may know as if you are, in fact, on a geologic survey, searching for the unknown.  This is not to suggest that we wish you to somehow leave aside your own interests, background, and knowledge; what we hope instead is that you leave your presuppositions behind, or better still, that you reflect on how and why you arrived at those presuppositions in the first place. John Keats may have lived a reclusive life during his long illness, but he wrote poetry erotic enough to make even Danielle Steele blush. 

The only definition of survey that will NOT inform this course is “commanding position,” which suggests authority and thus implies that by semester’s end, you will have commanded a mastery over these authors and works.  Instead, we hope that English 3210 will leave you with the sense that you have been carefully introduced to this material, and hopefully, appreciate much of it.