Texts:

The Course

"Twentieth-Century British Literature" is just as impossible to encapsulate in one course as, say, British literature from 1100-1750 or American literature from, well, pick your own dates.  Instead of trying to fit everything in, then, this semester we're going to look at only four authors -- poets -- and see what we can learn. 

What's this mean for you? 

It means, first of all, that you'd better like poetry.  It not, it's going to be a long term for you.  I also hope it means, though, that you're going to learn more about poetry as the semester wears on, in both what it can achieve and how it can achieve it.

Second, it means that by the end of the course you're going to know a lot about Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin, and Seamus Heaney, and a handful of other important poets who you will present to the rest of the class.  It means that you'll be able to see a line through the art of the twentieth-century in England -- at least I hope we can find that line, or lines.

It means that we're going to have to understand the external events which shaped and were shaped by the art of the twentieth-century.  This'd be history, both personal and national.   I hope it means that you're going to have a better understanding of how literature exists within its moment, and how it might survive into other moments. 

Finally, it means that you're going to have to come to terms with the broad, sometimes very pessimistic, vision which art conveyed during the last century -- and figure out how we can understand and value it.

Oh, yeah, and it also means that you're going to have to read a ton.  Just get used to the idea that you're going to have a couple of hours worth of well-considered reading for each class period.  This is what junior and senior English majors get paid to do, after all.

Course Requirements:

This is going to be a fairly straightforward course in terms of what it asks you to do.  It breaks down like this:

Precision in Writing

Writing is central to the English major; therefore, the Department of English has implemented a policy to encourage excellence in writing:

The faculty in the Department of English will return papers written by English majors, if they

Instructors will return papers, final papers will be reduced by one letter, and students will have forty-eight hours to revise and re-submit papers. In many cases, instructors will not have read the entire paper once they have determined that an essay fails to meet the minimum requirements; consequently, students will need to review and revise essays from beginning to end to make corrections. If essays fail to meet these minimum standards after re-submission, students will earn Fs for those assignments.

Plagiarism

This is really simple:  if you copy someone else's direct words or exact ideas -- intentionally or not -- without giving them credit you fail the class.  Universities and colleges are built upon the notion that ideas matter; if you plagiarize someone else's ideas, you're denying that fundamental tenet.  Thus there will be zero tolerance for plagiarism in here.  If you do it, you will fail the course, period. (Please see also p. 27 "Academic Dishonesty" in the college's 2002-03 catalog and p. 576 ff. of Hacker's Bedford Handbook, as well as the relevant sections of your Freshman Seminar Handbook.)

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