Graduate of English Language and Literature
Fu Jen Catholic University

Curriculum: Spring, 1998

Restoration Drama / Dr. Marguerite Connor

This course will consist of an introduction to the theater of Restoration London, one of the richest periods of drama in English history, and a time when drama wielded considerable power in the political arena. Some of the best writers of the time turned to drama--among them Dryden, Congreve, Wycherley, Fielding, Behn--and their involvement in the theater made it a vibrant time. Often unfavorably compared with the earlier Renaissance period, which is of course, a period unlike any other, the Restoration period gets short shrift in many discussions. In this course I hope to redress that imbalance.

Students will read a variety of representative plays--hopefully one per week--in order to be exposed to the wide variety of theater experience available through this period. Depending on time limitations we will be covering writers in the period from 1660 through 1730, and hopefully through to the 1780s (She Stoops to Conquer and School for Scandal came from this later period). We will not be covering The Beggar's Opera, though, as I covered that last spring, and I don't want to recover material in such a small program. Titles I am sure we will cover are All for Love, The Rover, The Country Wife, The Busy Body, and Tom Thumb. Others will be added depending on what the class has a background in.

Course requirements: Along with being fully prepared with their weekly reading I will expect students to do the following:

1) an oral report on some aspect of the play as theater (casting, costuming, music, set design, etc.)
2) an oral report based on your long research paper
3) a long research paper (10-15pp) on some aspect of Restoration literature
4) a short paper of close textual analysis of one scene of a play

The text will be announced, but for preparation for this course, a student may want to dip into a social history of the period such as J.P. Kenyon's Stuart England, or one of the various background volumes available in the library. For more information or suggestions, feel free to see me.

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Shakespeare and the Power of Language / Dr. Raphael Schulte

This course, rather than examining Shakespeare's work within one genre as recent Shakespeare classes have done, will broadly focus on one theme as it is present in a variety of plays: the powers of language. We will look at several comedies, tragedies, and history plays, as well as one of the late romances to see how Shakespeare's ideas about language changed and evolved over the course of time and within the conventions of different genres. At this time I am considering including the following plays on our reading list: Richard II, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, All's Well that Ends Well, and The Winter's Tale. But this reading list is not set. If there are other plays which you would prefer to read, please let me know.

Because this will be a seminar course, most of our class time will be spent in discussion. Each student will be responsible for two in-class presentations and will have the option of doing two medium length papers--the first due at mid-term--or one longer paper due at the end of the semester.

I prefer students to read from the Riverside Shakespeare, but any scholarly edition of Shakespeare's plays will be acceptable.

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20th-Century British Poetry / Dr. Raphael Schulte

This survey course will primarily be discussion based, and the readings, discussions, and writing assignments will examine a variety of modern and contemporary British poets and poems. We will explore the characteristics and meaning of "modernism" or even--perhaps--how many types and contradictory understandings of modernism are embedded in twentieth century British poetry. Our emphasis will be on short lyric poems and their social and cultural contexts.

The last hundred years have been notable for the number of exciting and challenging British poets writing. Because of this, we cannot in one semester hope to read or even sample all of that poetry. With that in mind, I am at this point planning to include the following poets on our reading list, but if there are other poets (or even specific poems) that you are interested in studying, please feel free to tell me. We may begin by examining for the first two or three weeks the late Victorian poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (not extensively published until 1918) and poems by Thomas Hardy. We may then read poems by Charlotte Mew and major texts by William Butler Yeats, Mina Loy, and T.S. Eliot. We will then discuss poets actively writing during World War I--particularly Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas--and then proceed to read poems by W.H. Auden, Laura Riding, Basil Bunting, and Dylan Thomas, as well as selections from contemporary poets like Ted Hughes, Jon Silkin, Thomas Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Philip Larkin, Tony Harrison, and Eavan Boland.

Each student will be responsible for two in-class presentation and will have the option of doing two medium length papers--the first one due at mid-term--or one longer paper due at the end of the semester.

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19th-Century British Novel / Bro. Nicholas Koss

This course will be an introduction to some of the important British novelists of the 19th century. Novelists to be introduced and studied include: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Mrs. Gaskell (1810-65), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), Charles Dickens (1812-70), Anthony Trollope (1815-82), Charlotte (1816-55) and Emily (1818-48) Bronte, George Eliot (1819-80), and Samuel Butler (1835-1902).

Students wanting to take this course should give to Judy Peng by December 24, 1997, a list of all of the novels they have already read by the above-mentioned authors. The list of the novels to be read during this course will be determined at a meeting with me before the end of this semester so that you can beginning reading some of these novels, many of which are long, before the start of the new semester.

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The American Novel: Revolution - Realism / Dr. Joseph Murphy

This course will focus on American novels written between the later eighteenth and later nineteenth centuries, when writers in the United State were distinguishing themselves from their European counterparts by responding to social, political, and economic conditions in the new nation: the democratic revolution, the frontier, the industrial revolution, extremes of urban poverty and wealth, and an ongoing encounter with Europe. During this century novelists defined a particular brand of American romanticism that was then challenged by realism and naturalism. Throughout these historical and literary contexts novelists persistently seek to define the freedom and moral accountability of the individual. The syllabus will include works from among the following novelists: Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Wharton, and Norris. Visual art will help us imagine the world these writers are describing, and a series of films based on the novels will complement the course. Requirements include a short mid-term paper, a term paper, and an in-class presentation.

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Seminar on Joseph Conrad / Sr. Heliena Krenn

In this seminar students will become familiar with some of the famous fiction by Joseph Conrad. Through these readings they will be led to appreciate Conrad as an author who contributed essentially to introducing modernism into English literature, whose writings reflect profound understanding of the human condition, and whose work is concerned with the issues that are at the center of present-day literary discourse: colonial and postcolonial concerns, racism, and women questions. We shall see Conrad as a great artist and as a man of profound thought about humanity

We will intensively study "Heart of Darkness," Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, and Victory (The choice of titles is negotiable depending on previous readings that the students may have done).

In addition students will choose one of the following titles to write a seminar paper of 12-15 pages and to give a presentation of 20-30 minutes:

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