Upper Level Course Rotation 2011-2013

To provide access to a broader range of upper-division courses, we offer courses on a two-year rotational cycle.

Current rotation: 2011-12.

Next rotation (2012-13).

We also provide past rotations for your information.

Generic course descriptions for all English courses are in the VIU Calendar.

Fall 2012 - Spring 2013

NOTE: The following rotation is subject to change according to budget.

NOTE: Any course descriptions or reading lists here are tentative. Look for full, updated course descriptions in the winter-spring of 2012.

ENGL 300: Background to English Literature: The Epic (Rout)

The course will focus on the epic as a representative genre of classical and medieval literature and as a focus for analysis of major historical and poetological issues, such as the development from oral to written literature, mimesis, allegory, myth, canonicity, and the idea of the “classic.” Starting with Homer’s Odyssey, we will look at the origins of Greek culture and the epic tradition, and we will read Aristotle and Plato to understand the social significance of oral literature. The Aeneid will then allow us to explore intertextuality and the ideological function of the epic as Vergil echoes and rejects the Odyssey. We will study Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a self-conscious, ironic challenge to the epic tradition and Augustine’s Confessions and Dante’s Divine Comedy as medieval Christian responses to, and transformations of, the pagan epic. With each text, we will discuss its continuous presence in literature written in English.

Reading List:
Aristotle, Poetics
Augustine, Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. Penguin Classics.
Dante, The Divine Comedy. Trans. Mark Musa. In The Portable Dante, Penguin Classics.
Homer, Odyssey. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Bantam Classics.
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Trans. A.D. Melville. Oxford UP.
Plato, Republic. Books II, III, X
Virgil, Aeneid. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics.

Requirements:
This course meets the pre-1700 and the theory requirement.

ENGL 315: Advanced Workshop in Composition: Writing the World (Martin) Writing across the Universe

Taking its cue from a star-studded international line-up from Plato to the Dalai Lama, Mohandas Gandhi to Arundhati Roy, George Orwell to Maxine Hong Kingston, and Genesis to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this course encourages students to critically analyze writing and rhetoric. Students will write and workshop a series of short papers and informal assignments modelled on everything from creation myths to resistant-audience arguments. Regular journal responses, short assignments, and ongoing revisions will help sharpen thought processes and quality of expression. We will concentrate on reading critically, using evidence effectively, accommodating different views, structuring strategic arguments, and finding and evaluating quality resources.

   Tentative Reading List:

McLeod, Susan, John Jarvis, and Shelley Spear. Writing About the World. 3rd ed.

Pyrcz, Heather. Writing with Style: Grammar in Context.

What Can This Course Do For You? If, like American writer Joan Didion, you were “out of school the year the rules were mentioned,” this is the course for you. If, like Somali author Nuruddin Farah, yours is “a mind in great disorder,” this is the course for you. In learning some of the tricks of the trade, we will approach writing as a great uneven and messy, convoluted, intuitive, recursive, creative process; and we will learn to take risks in our writing in order to shape our ideas with style and passion.

Contact: Dr. Jeannie Martin
Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Human Rights, Rhetoric jeannie.martin@viu.ca

ENGL 316: Studies in Narrative: Singing Stories: The Ballad Tradition of the British Isles (1700-1900) (Atkinson)

The richness of the ballad tradition in English is profound. Although the earliest extant texts dates to the early 1600s (for example, the Ravenscroft MS, which dates to 1611), it is likely that the ballad tradition existed far earlier than this, particularly when identified with the tradition of minstrelsy (rather than strictly “popular” performance). The antiquity of these texts, and their anonymous authorship, have led to a collective “ownership” of both the words and the narratives they recount. This in turn has led to a huge number of “variants” of many of the ballads—particularly those that are most popular.

The strength and popularity of the ballad tradition, and its importance, is witnessed by the large number of ballads that survived for centuries in a purely oral form—even in a fairly literate culture. However, the ballads and their performance tradition were nearly lost in the urbanization and industrialization of Victorian England (which saw the birth, in real terms, of the “music industry” as well as other industries). However, due to the efforts of collectors such as Cecil Sharp, Maud Karpeles, Olive Dame Campbell and, perhaps most notably, Francis J. Child, many of the texts (complete with variants) were recorded in whole or in part, before the tradition completely disappeared. The importance of these texts is frequently overlooked, in part because of the way the aesthetic tradition of poetry has developed, particularly since the Romantic era.

In this course, we will examine the ballads and their tradition, and explore the depth and richness of the symbolism they contain. We'll look at the difference between “cliche” and “shared understanding” where metaphors and symbols are concerned, and at the role of these story-songs in creating community. We'll also look at the politics of the genre, both internally—in the way that different variants reveal different cultural attitudes and norms—and externally—in the sometimes combative scholarship that has arisen around the texts and their interpretations over the past 110 years.

Furthermore, we'll look at the potential role these story-songs have in our own culture, and at the question of the function of narrative in a society. Even though we are bombarded with entertainment, much of which takes the form of narrative, we'll look at the dearth of variety in the master narratives of our most common pop-culture genres, and at the possible consequences of this, along with the potential of such things as ballads to ameliorate this situation.

Requirements:
This course meets the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 317: Studies in Drama: The Strange Case at Thebes and Other 20th Century Obsessions (Tapping)

This is a course in Drama Studies--it's multicultural as it covers several different world regions, and it's theoretical as it covers post-colonialism and canonical revision. It focuses on how a very small range of Greek narratives in dramatic form influence, affect and shape literature and politics from Pindar to Pound, from Pompeii to Picasso, and even Marxist analysis of alienation and millenarian redemption (paraphrased from George Steiner, ANTIGONES 1984). Texts will include a graphic novel by Ann Carson, poetry, sculpture, opera, poetry and drama.

Requirements:
This course meets the multicultural requirement.

ENGL 320: Literary Theory to 1900 (Whitehouse)

This course will survey the major theoretical statements of literary critics and aestheticians from Plato to the present. It will concern itself with broad theoretical issues and the underlying assumptions of various critical discourses. In moving from the Greeks to the moderns, this study will demonstrate the interrelationship between poetics, politics, philosophy and art. In search of a relevant critical method, the course will examine the changing nature and definition of both literature and criticism.

Course Structure and Assignments:

The course will be flexibly structured to facilitate seminars, lectures, student presentations, and the investigation of topics of interest arising from in-class discussions. Students are expected to participate in the creation of a learning community. Participation, a major research paper, an oral presentation or a smaller research paper, a mid-term and a final exam will constitute the criteria upon which a final grade will be determined.

Major Research Paper   (2500-3000words)     50%

Mid-Term and Final Examination                  35%

Oral Presentation or Smaller Research Paper  15%

Required Text:

Hazard Adams, Critical Theory Since Plato (Revised Edition)

Requirements:
This course meets the pre-1700 and the theory requirement.

ENGL 340: Medieval English Literature: Love, Magic, and Mysticism in the Middle Ages (Masson)

This course will explore various genres of medieval English literature with a focus on the relationships among love, desire, institutionalized religion, and individual expressions of faith. We will begin with Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde as an illustration of the courtly love tradition. We will then compare the exploration of magic and desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with the exploration of faith and desire in The Pearl. Excerpts from mystical texts will be used to examine how courtly love language is used in the contexts of divine love, desire for union with God, and the paradoxical expression of the ineffable. Finally, we will study alchemical literature to explore the relationship between faith and alchemy as well as the rhetorical practices used to explain how one might attain the unattainable philosopher's stone. Through close readings and discussions, students will become familiar not only with themes and genres of medieval works but also with a variety of examples of Middle English.

Requirements:
This course meets the pre-1700 and the theory requirement.

ENGL 361: Metaphysical Poets (Lepage)

Instructor: Dr. John Lepage
E-mail: john.lepage@viu.ca
Office: Bldg. 335, Rm. 121A
Office Hours: TBA
Telephone: 753-3245, ext. 2116

Course Description

Like the term “Renaissance”, which was coined in the nineteenth century, the term “Metaphysical Poets” was applied retrospectively. These poets were sometimes also known as the “School of Donne,” in part because of the early and influential role played by John Donne in defining what can otherwise hardly be described as a school or a movement. The designation “metaphysical” is striking in that critics had different reasons for their understanding of the term and its application to the poets who fulfilled it. Herbert Grierson, for example, in his introduction to an early modern edition, which contributed enormously to revival of interest in the poets in the twentieth century, justified the metaphysical aspects of the verse. Helen Gardner, in her major edition, followed in the footsteps of Rosamund Tuve by distinguishing the Metaphysical poets for the functional “wit” of their poetry, in marked contrast to the ornamental wit of most Elizabethan poetry. Notions of the metaphysical threaten to get lost in such considerations of wit. This course will explore the different trajectories of Metaphysical poetry, its relationship with other approaches to poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its role in our literary heritage. Because of the tendency of this poetry to be preoccupied with its own internal metaphorical concerns, it is conducive to “close reading.” The course will thus focus on close readings of complex, puzzling, and fascinating short poems – as if these poems contained autonomous, vaster worlds of meaning than implied by their short length.

The following are typically identified as Metaphysical poets: Thomas Carew, Abraham Cowley, John Cleveland, Richard Crashaw, William Davenant, John Donne, John Hall, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Stanley, Thomas Traherne, Edmund Waller.

Texts: Alan Rudrum et al., eds., The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose, Volume I: Verse (Peterborough, ON: 2001); David Reid, The Metaphysical Poets (London, New York, and Toronto: Longman, 2000).

Course Assessment: Attendance, participation (10%); oral and written close readings (15%); short essay (15%); annotated bibliography (10%); research essay (25%); final examination (25%).

Requirements:
This course meets the pre-1700 requirement.

ENGL 366: Shakespeare (Harrison)

Course Description:

We will explore Shakespeare’s dramatic art through close readings, mini-lectures, oral presentations, and film excerpts. The focus here will be on six of his most prominent works. These plays, which represent in different tones the three broad generic categories of tragedy, history, and comedy will be considered from a variety of interpretive approaches.

Reading List (in order):

Othello
As You Like It
Richard III
Twelfth Night
King Lear
The Tempest

Evaluation:

Oral presentation 15%, short paper 15%, research essay 30%, class participation 10%, final exam 30%

Requirements:
This course meets the pre-1700 requirement.

ENGL 369: Milton (Lepage)

Instructor: Dr. John Lepage
E-mail: john.lepage@viu.ca
Office: Bldg. 335, 121A
Office hours: TBA
Tel: 753-3245, ext. 2116

Course Description

This course will focus on poetry and prose of John Milton, with particular emphasis on Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, selected shorter poems (such as, Lycidas, L’Allegro, and Il Penseroso), and selected prose (such as, Of Education and Areopagitica). The course will take up Milton’s participation in a Renaissance literary consciousness while suggesting something of the legacy of Milton’s work for future generations.

Text: Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, eds., The Oxford World’s Classics John Milton (Oxford: OUP, 2003; reissued, 2008).

Course Assessment: One formal essay (2-3,000 words; 25%) with annotated bibliography (10%), one short essay (1000 words; 15%), two oral “discussion points” (with write-up, one or two pages each; 10% each), and one final exam (25%). Attendance and participation (5%) will be an expectation of the course.

Requirements:
This course meets the pre-1700 requirement.

ENGL 378: Eighteenth-Century Literature: The Pleasures of the Imagination (MacKay)

The aim of this course is to examine the diverse literary productions of the eighteenth-century with a view to developing an understanding of the social, political, philosophical, and cultural contexts of their production. We will leaven our examination of canonical works with non-canonical and “marginal” productions in an effort to acquire a more comprehensive awareness of the varied influences on intellectual life in this age. Accordingly, other prose forms, such as philosophical texts, political pamphlets, memoirs, scandal sheets, and periodical essays, will be studied, as well as works by women. We will also study the art of the period (particularly Hogarth), as well as theatre and other cultural productions.

Some representative readings: Astell, Serious Proposal; Behn, Oronooko; Burney, Letters; Congreve, The Way of the World; Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel," "Mac Flecknoe"; Gay, Beggar’s Opera, Trivia; Johnson, "Milton," "Preface to A Dictionary," "Preface to Shakespeare"; Locke, "On Property"; Montagu, Letters; Pope, Letters, Rape of the Lock; Rochester, "Satyr on Charles II"; Swift, "A Modest Proposal", Gulliver’s Travels; Wycherley, Country Wife.

Requirements:
This course meets the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 382: Romantic Literature: Walking, Touring, and Romanticizing Nature (Burgoyne)

So much of what we think of as the Romantic obsession with nature is bound up in walking--from walking tours of the Swiss Alps to the picturesque garden. To grasp this point, we need only look to the Lake District, which becomes a sort of hiking tourist destination because of Coleridge and the Wordsworths. This course will focus on the romantic representation of walking on how walking frames and figures nature. We will begin with the Wordsworths, with a specific focus on William’s Salisbury Plains, Evening Walk, and Descriptive Sketches and Dorothy’s The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals. Elizabeth Inchbald’s novel Nature and Art will then initiate a series of investigations into second generation writing, including Leigh Hunt, John Keats, Thomas De Quincey, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. We will then conclude with the peasant poet John Clare’s second volume of poetry.

Texts:

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Volume 4: The Age of Romanticism (Broadview, 2010)

Elizabeth Inchbald, Nature and Art

Dorothy Wordsworth The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals

William Wordsworth, Salisbury Plains

John Clare, The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems

Requirements:
This course meets the 1700-1900 requirement.

ENGL 401: Studies in North American Regional Literature: Contemporary Atlantic-Canadian Fiction (Torkko)

What is commonly called Canadian Literature today started in the Maritime Provinces, and while some of its most important and beautiful works were written here, they have been peripheral to most of the history of Canadian literature. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland comprise a distinctive and vital literary region, one that has garnered increased critical attention since the publication of Janice Kulyk Keefer’s landmark study Under Eastern Eyes: A Critical Reading of Maritime Fiction (1987). This course will explore a representative selection of works published since the mid-1970s for how they communicate the complex social, economic, and cultural realities which shape the lives of the region’s inhabitants. We will read literature that is candid, accurate, sometimes funny, sometimes grim, but always deeply felt and powerfully moving, written by writers who are fascinated with things Atlantic Canadian – the geography, the cultural ways of knowing, the customs, the language, the music, the ceilidhs, and the kitchen table. We will examine the construction of images received as typically Maritime and consider the forces that defend and promote or that seek to erode the mythology of a regional culture, as well as those forces that might create new mythologies and idyllic impulses. We will explore the complex interplay between family generations, sea and land, life and death, personal memory and communal memory, mythic past and present day, fantasy and reality, and develop skills in describing and critiquing the fiction’s aesthetic and social complexities. We will also consider the place of an Atlantic Canadian literature within a Canadian literary mainstream. Our reading list may include some of the following: Ann Compton, Ed., Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada; Lesley Choyce, Ed., Atlantica; Alistair MacLeod, the Lost Salt Gift of Blood; M.T. Dohaney, the Corrigan Women; Wendy Lill, the Glace Bay Miners’ Museum; David Adams Richards, River of the Brokenhearted; Nancy Bauer, the Irrational Doorways of Mr Gerard; Michael Crummy, Galore; Lisa Moore, February; Kevin Major, New Under the Sun.

Requirements:
This course meets the Canadian requirement.

ENGL 406: Post Colonial Literatures: Contact Narratives (Tapping)

This course is multicultural, trans-global, and theoretical--representations of the meetings of European expansionist and settler cultures with indigenous/aboriginal peoples from across the contemporary world. Theoretical issues include otherness (the regard on and of "native" peoples), race, cultural affirmation and the dislodgement of metropolitan certainties of god, the human worlds' realities, and the natural world. Cultural relativism, diversity, in a range of genres which argue that first and subsequent contact = the most significant cultural transformation since the Crusades of the Middle Ages.

Requirements:
This course meets the multicultural requirement.

ENGL 416: Major Author, School, Movement: Harry Potter: Is it Literature? (Wytenbroek)

The books that have had the most profound impact in both the genres of Children’s Literature and Fantasy Literature in the last 50 years are the books in the Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling. This course will look at five of the books in the series, discussing their literary merits while considering what makes them the popular phenomenon they have become. We will discuss, amongst other things, their mythic roots and their post-modernist themes, looking at how Rowling has created a new wave of writing for children and adults that have people reading despite the other distractions of our time.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Courseware pack of critical essays on the Harry Potter series.

Requirements:
This course meets the 20th-century requirement.

ENGL 432: American Literature from 1900: Rationalization and Religion: Biblical Rhetoric and the Creation of an American Identity (Atkinson)

The recent (and, for that matter, the current) US Administration’s tendency to condemn “theocracies” may seem a bit hollow, given the fact that the Judeo-Christian God is mentioned on nearly every piece of American currency, and a large statue of the Ten Commandments graced, for a time, the Alabama Supreme Courthouse. Cecil B. De Mille’s 1956 landmark film, The Ten Commandments, writes in bold colours on the silver screen the fact that American values are derived from a particular interpretation of the biblical Exodus story, but the roots of the theological basis of America’s political identity go much farther back in history.

The development of a European-American identity depended nearly entirely on biblically-derived rhetoric. The broadside tracts that promoted America as an investment and settlement opportunity described it as the “New Eden,” or the “New Canaan.” Biblical dichotomies that drove the assessment of land use allowed colonists, investors, and government agents to overlook signs of habitation and term the land “virginal,” and thus in need of a “husband” to make it “fruitful.” Further biblical rhetorical patterns that define “us” and “them” in the bible led to inaccurate assumptions about First Nations people, which led in turn to prejudices that stemmed from these same inaccurate assumptions. Even the Puritan settlement was rationalized through typology: the “signs and wonders” the Puritans interpreted in the events around them connected them directly—in their minds—to the Israelites on their way to freedom during the Exodus, which leads (albeit indirectly) right back to De Mille’s epic film.

This course begins with a critical examination of the relevant biblical material, and then examines the ways in which biblical rhetoric has shaped American identity and consciousness, and continues to do so even in a more and more pluralistic and secular society.

Requirements:
This course meets the 20th-century requirement.

ENGL 435: Children’s Literature: Topics in Children’s Literature: Freedom to Read (Doughty)

Is it ever all right to ban a book? Because of a culture’s anxieties about the formation of children’s values and adults’ desires to protect children, children’s books are frequently the subject of challenges by various individuals and groups. What is the basis of the decision to ban a book? In this course, we will read a range of theoretical discussions on the freedom to read versus the impulse to protect children. We will also read a variety of picturebooks and novels that have been challenged. The central problems we will engage include the duty to protect children, children’s rights, and the dilemmas caused when the rights of competing groups collide.

Requirements:
This course meets the 20th-century requirement.

ENGL 438: British Literature from 1940: Realism and Experimentalism: Reading Contemporary British Fiction (Torkko)

This course explores the ways in which contemporary British writers experiment with the conventions of realist narrative in order to transgress the limiting boundaries of familiar categories and formulaic perceptions of the world. We will examine the ways in which writers react against, reject, or transform realist modes of representation and consider the ways in which the authors’ narrative strategies serve to express their strong social and ideological concerns. We will consider the ways in which the fiction draws attention to its status as fiction in order to question the relationship between fiction and reality, and we will consider the ways in which writers can provoke readers to think seriously and critically about the real world by creating characters, events, and settings that in many ways diverge from what readers would expect in everyday life – in reality. To this end, we will consider not just what is in a work of fiction but also how readers respond to the content and its representation. In many instances we will be developing new ways of reading these works and will develop skills in describing and critiquing both their aesthetic and social complexities. Our reading list may include some of the following: Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill; Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop; Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child; John Berger, Here is Where We Meet; Ali Smith, Hotel World; Jeanette Winterson, The Powerbook; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; David Mitchell, The Cloud Atlas; Ian McEwan, Atonement.

Requirements:
This course meets the 20th-century requirement.

ENGL 450: Canadian Fiction: The Myth of Multiculturalism in Contemporary Canadian Literature (Potvin)

It has been almost 50 years since Northrop Frye offered what would become a defining statement of Canadian Literature: Canadian literature has been “less perplexed by the question ‘Who am I?’ than by some such riddle as ‘Where is here?’” (The Bush Garden 213; article originally published in Literary History of Canada (Carl F. Klink 1965)). Despite the age of this statement, it is one that has stayed particularly relevant, especially in our current age of globalization. With Canadian cultural identity fused to multiculturalism (often an utopian view of it), the borderlands of our “here” often prove particularly translucent and shifting. Throughout the course , we will be engaging with these questions of national identity as they are expressed in Canadian literature, so expect our key themes to include the definition of places/homes (in particular, national geography/travel and the city), the role of the past in the present/future, and the formation of distinct cultural communities within nation. Our texts are predominantly from the past 10 years, though the themes and events expressed allow us to engage with various moments in Canadian history. Through this study, we will be developing our understanding of Canadian-ness and literature’s role in making us question who “we” as Canadians are (and the inevitable problematic nature of forming any sense of a unified group). Nevertheless, beyond motivating you towards a greater understanding of contemporary Canadian literature, this course will demand that you think critically about what we’re doing when we’re reading and studying Canadian literature. How does a canon of Canadian literature form? How “Canadian” does a book have to be to be Canadian literature? How do literary awards, community reading projects, government funding, literary journals, and other aspects of book culture affect our formation of our sense of Canadian literature? Why do we study Canadian literature in universities? What are the challenges involved in such a study? As such, expect this course to build your understanding of contemporary literature in Canada AND to build your sense of all that goes into the pursuit of building CanLit as a vital artistic pursuit and object of critical study.

Course Objectives:

develop one’s knowledge of contemporary Canada literature and selected critical

questions regarding the field of Canadian literature

develop one’s ability to interpret both literature AND literary criticism

allow opportunities for students to communicate their ideas both orally and in writing and

become a part of a community of learners

build respect for matters of academic integrity, including developing the skills of proper

MLA citation of sources

build essay writing skills, including effective argumentation, structure, and grammar

allow students to experience, and hopefully enjoy, interesting and challenging literary texts.

Required Texts:

All texts are available for purchase at the VIU bookstore. Having alternate editions is completely acceptable, but be aware that you might find it difficult to follow lectures if your page numbers are different than the editions assigned.

Dionne Brand, Thirsty – McClelland and Stewart – 978-0771016448

Wayne Johnston, Baltimore’s Mansion – Vintage – 978-0676972979

Janice Kulyk Keefer, The Ladies Lending Library – HarperPerrenial – 978-0002006378

Drew Hayden Taylor, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass – Vintage – 978-0307398062

QuArc Issue of TNQ (119).

Requirements:
This course meets the Canadian and multicultural requirement.