BRITISH LITERATURE II | Fall 2006
PAPERS AND EXAMS
For general policies on papers and exams, see The Fine Print.
Exams
A midterm exam, worth 15% in the calculation of your final grade, will be held on Monday, October 23.
The final exam, worth 25% in the calculation of your final grade, will be held on Wednesday, December 13, from 8:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Make-up exams will be administered for medical reasons only. You must supply documentation of all illnesses and accidents. (A note indicating merely that you were seen at the infirmary won't suffice.) Please do not request special arrangements to alleviate any of the following: a crowded exam schedule; a heavy workload; conflicts with employment, extra-curricular responsibilities, or job-hunting; familial celebrations (e.g., weddings or graduations); crises in other people's lives (e.g., severe depression of best friend's roommate); crises in your own life that are a normal and inevitable part of the collegiate experience (e.g., demise of relationship with boyfriend or girlfriend.) Fairness dictates that such accommodations cannot be made for one without being offered to all.
For help writing exam essays, consult Writing Essays Exams in the Geneseo Online Writing Guide.
Use the Suggest a Topic page on this site to make suggestions for exam and paper essay topics. If your topic is chosen, think how well prepared you'll be!
Papers
You will write two papers for this course. Each should be approximately 5 double-spaced pages (1250 words) long and is worth 25% in the calculation of your final grade.
You may suggest your own topics for papers as well as exams.
The "due-date" for each of the papers in this class is a one-week range during which you may submit your finished work. I grade and return papers in the order in which I receive them, so the earlier you submit, the sooner your work will be returned. The Online Writing Guide offers help on a wide range of essay-writing matters, including proper conventions for citation. In both papers for this class, you must follow MLA format for citations.
Before and as you write, you may find it helpful to consult this sample rubric (pdf) in order to understand what I'll be thinking about as I evaluate your work. When your graded paper is returned to you, it will be accompanied by a completed rubric similar to the sample. I do not use the rubric to arrive at my grade for your work but to provide you with helpful information about the strengths and weaknesses of your writing. (I assign your grade, then complete the rubric.) For a general description of my grading standards, see The Fine Print.
Paper One
Due October 6-13 (no later than 11:59 p.m. on October 13)
Choose one of the following topics.
- In an essay of comparison and contrast, examine what Belinda, Imoinda, and Fanny can show us about their authors' attitudes toward virtue, toward women, and toward virtue in women.
- In an essay of comparison and contrast, examine what the Baron, Oroonoko, and Joseph can show us about their authors' attitudes toward power, toward men, and toward the power of men.
- Examine the connection between character and social position in Oroonoko and/or Joseph Andrews.
- Examine the role of the pastoral ideal - as articulated in Pope's "Ode on Solitude" - in Oroonoko and/or Joseph Andrews.
- "All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee," wrote Pope in his Essay on Man. Examine the relationship between the "natural" and the "artificial" in Pope's poetry and/or Oroonoko and/or Joseph Andrews.
- Suggested Topic (added 9/25): In an essay of comparison and contrast, discuss the various moral outlooks represented in at least two of the following: Pope, Behn, Fielding. In particular, examine the relationship, for your chosen authors, between the moral outlooks of various characters and that of the implied author. You may find it helpful to consult the article titled Definition of Morality at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Whether or not you choose this topic, you may earn wiki credit for improving the wiki's article on "implied author.")
- Suggest a topic that's suitable for the whole class. If I accept it, I'll add it here.
Paper Two
Due November 13-20 November 13-30 (no later than 11:59 p.m. on November 20 November 30)
Choose one of the following topics.
- Learn more about the use of the term "dramatic monologue." Add what you learn to the Collaborative Writing Project's Dictionary of Literary Terms. Then compare any first-person Romantic lyric poem (for example, Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight") to any of Browning's dramatic monologues so as to highlight what is distinctive about the poetic kind that Browning helped invent.
- In his "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth writes of the "grand elementary principle of pleasure by which [man] knows, and feels, and lives, and moves" (Norton, 270). In re-writing Paul's claim, in Acts, that in God we "live, and move, and have our being," Wordsworth was re-orienting his readers' moral thinking so as to put human pleasure in the place once occupied by God. Choosing any of the Romantic or Victorian works on the syllabus, discuss this re-orientation of moral thinking. How is it reflected in the works you've chosen to examine? Does it give rise to problems or dilemmas that must be solved by the writers or their characters? What are these? What kind of resolution, if any, is offered?
- Read Jane Eyre through the lens of Wollstonecraft's Vindication. To what extent does Jane seem to share Wollstonecraft's opinions? In what ways does she seem to depart from them? How do the similarities and differences in their opinions affect the shape of Brontë's plot?
- Choose any one of Blakes's songs from Innocence and compare it, in detail, to any one of the songs from Experience. Examine not only similarities and differences in tone and theme but also, within each poem, the relationship between theme and structure.
- How well does Jane Eyre meet the definition of "formal realism?" What is the best way to explain those features of Brontë's novel that seem at odds with that definition?
- Suggest a topic that's suitable for the whole class. If I accept it, I'll add it here.
Submitting Papers
The two papers for this class must be submitted electronically by 11:59 p.m. of the last date in the due-date range (i.e., October 13, November 20). Receipt will be acknowledged within 24 hours. Be sure to save my acknowledgment email (by printing it if necessary), as it constitutes your only proof of submission. If you have submitted and received no acknowledgment, try again or notify me immediately. Late papers lose one-half grade per day.
To submit, please follow the steps below. You may also find it helpful to watch a tutorial video on how to submit your paper.
- If you have composed your essay using Microsoft Word:
- Name the file < paper1_yourlastname > for the first paper, < paper2_yourlastname > for the second paper. Do not include the angle brackets < >, and do not include spaces in the filename.
- Attach the file to an email addressed to me at schacht@geneseo.edu.
- Important: In the Subject line of the email, include the word < Engl213 >. Do not put spaces between the characters.
- If you have composed your essay using another word-processing application:
- Save the file in "rich text format," also known as "rtf". This option may appear when you use the "Save As" command in your program.
- Name the file < paper1_yourlastname > for the first paper, < paper2_yourlastname > for the second paper. Do not include the angle brackets < >, and do not include spaces in the filename.
- Attach the file to an email addressed to me at schacht@geneseo.edu.
- Important: In the Subject line of the email, include the word < Engl213 >. Do not put spaces between the characters.
Be sure to keep a copy of your work.
If you need help with this electronic submission procedure, contact the CIT HelpDesk. If they can't assist you, contact me.
Return of Papers
I will return work electronically, in the order in which it was received, with corrections and comments included in the returned file. Please do not expect work submitted close to the deadline to be returned in less than 2-3 weeks.