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Course Options for Spring
2004
By Jessica Heinen
Next
semester the English Department has a variety of course options for
students to take ranging from 20th Century British
Literature to Print Media/ workshops. So if you’re unhappy with a
class you’re taking and are looking for a replacement here’s a list
of alternatives.
Professor Willhardt will be teaching Comp and Lit,
Introduction to English Studies, Advanced Composition, and 20th
Century British Literature. “I’m excited about Intro because it
allows me to get in on the ground floor of what our majors are
really going to do for the next three or four years,” said an
enthused Willhardt. “Advanced Composition is fun because I get to
help students craft the non-fiction pieces which they want to
write (for a change).”
In the 20th Century British Lit class the
syllabi will cover Hardy, Larkin, Jennings, and Heany or as
Willhardt says, “All poetry all the time.”
Professor Roberts will be teaching two sessions of
Grammar as well as one session of Composition and Literature. “I
have taught both classes for the last four years,” commented
Roberts. “I enjoy each of them…I use a variety of materials in 110
and get to meet a lot of new students. In Grammar, I can specialize
information which will, hopefully, help a lot of people cope with
grammar.”
Professor Mary Bruce will be teaching several classes
next semester starting with Composition and Literature, and
Beginning and Advanced Creative Writing. In reference to her writing
classes Bruce commented that, “I love to see creative writers bloom
and find their individual artistic ‘voices.’” In addition to these
courses Bruce will also be heading up Reading, Writing and Teaching,
the program where students go abroad to England for a couple of
weeks to study children’s literature.
Other classes being offered are Print Media/Workshops
(Beginning and Advanced), Introduction to Literature, British Survey
II, American Survey II, Writing Fellows, Special Topics in
Literature: Romantic Poets, and Senior Seminar.
All of these classes together make a grand list of 15
courses (not including the eight Comp and Lit sessions) being
offered by the English Department. This means that there should be
no complaining in the spring that there were not enough choices!
This semester will be coming to an end shortly as we head into
finals but soon we shall have a new year with new
beginnings and another full load of classes to look forward to!
Happy Holidays everyone!
Poetry by Jacob Donnely
The Darkness Came
As the sun begins to set my flower
begins to wilt,
It only thrives in sunlight.
Its color begins to fade into
nothing it melts.
My beautiful flower blames me for
the coming of night.
It is true, I am the reason for this
coming shade.
I am the reason my flower dies.
My strike did come to close with
spade.
When planted I did leave tiny lies,
That grew to strangle my flower,
But as my flower grew my care did
increase.
I tried to pick away the weeds that
grew.
The newly formed love will never
cease.
Becoming a new person I too grew.
And happiness flooded my flower and
me.
But the weeds persisted.
And the truth came out.
A different person I am, I insisted.
But the moon still came out.
With the moon now overhead.
I am at a loss for what to do.
It seems my flower is almost dead.
I am dying too.
But with my dying a new hope comes.
My flower knows that I also grew.
And now shine like a million suns,
And I have placed at her feet the
dew
A chance for us to grow again and
renew.
Anecdote
From
Anecdotes.com
One day Charles Lamb happened to hear William Wordsworth declare
that he could write like Shakespeare if he 'had a mind to'. "So,"
Lamb replied, "it's only the mind that's lacking."
F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda both suffered from
self-destructive urges. Once, while visiting Gerald and Sara Murphy
on the Riviera, the couple was chided for their dangerous habit of
diving into the sea from 35-foot rocks after returning drunk from
late-night parties.
"But, Sara, didn't you know?" Zelda innocently replied. "We don't
believe in conservation."
"The door is imperceptibly ajar." Thus reads a stage direction in
one of Samuel Beckett's plays. One director, endeavoring to honor
Beckett's meaning to the letter, labored over this direction for
many minutes, painstakingly experimenting with varying degrees of
ajarness. Eventually Beckett himself, watching in disgust, strode
onto the stage and slammed the door shut. "But it says ajar," the
director protested - whereupon Beckett turned on him and snarled,
"It also says imperceptibly!"
"Joyce had no patience with monuments. Valery Larbaud said to him as
they drove in a taxi in
Paris past the Arc de Triomphe with
its eternal fire, 'How long do you think that will burn?' Joyce
answered, 'Until the Unknown Soldier gets up in disgust and blows it
out.'’ One day in 1961, an American student, newly arrived in
England
to begin his postgraduate work, paid a visit to T. S. Eliot. As the
young man was leaving, Eliot sought to impart some sympathetic
wisdom.
"Forty years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford," he mused. "Now,
what advice can I give you?" At this, the younger man waited with
bated breath for the bard's sage words. Eliot's advice finally
came... in the form of a question: "Have you any long underwear?"
Latin and
English
By Mathew
Underwood
To those who
know that I am a Classics major, this might appear like a shameless
plug. However, the benefits Latin provides for English majors
I feel must be expounded. Unlike other languages you can take
at Monmouth- i.e. Spanish, German, etc.- Latin is extremely
inflected. Inflected languages express aspects of nouns
and verbs using prefixes and suffixes. Because of this
inflection, word order in Latin does not matter. Other
languages, like English, Spanish, and Italian for example, depend on
word order to generate meaning. When native English speakers
learn Italian or Spanish, and vice versa, there is a familiar syntax
they can rely on: Subject- verb- object. In Latin there are
different and more irregular patterns used in syntax. The
sentence "I eat chicken" could have the word order "Chicken eat I"
in Latin and only prefixes and suffixes would indicate the subject,
the verb, and the direct object of the verb.
Consequently, when a student studies Latin, it becomes necessary to
learn and understand not just word patterns, but all of the
grammatical properties of a sentence. This is a perspective on
the English language that simply is not accessible in grammar
classes and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the
English language.
Taking Latin
will also improve vocabulary. Many English words have come
from Latin and studying Latin is like taking a foreign language and
an etymology class simultaneously. Latin offers tremendous
insight into the inner workings and history of the English language.
Students who study Latin can manipulate English more effectively
than students who have not studied Latin. For those who like
learning English and wish to better understand how it works, Latin
101 is a highly recommended course.
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