Meeting Times and Room:

Tues, Thurs 1:30-3:00, BH 224

Professor:

Jim English;

Email Address:

jenglish@english.upenn.edu

Office:

115 Bennett Hall

Hours:

Tues, 11:00-12:00 and by appointment: email or phone 898-7349 the Graduate Office

Class Listserv:

english265@english

DESCRIPTION:

This class will be a rather open-ended exploration of the contemporary British novel, focusing on novels published within the last few years and on the system of evaluation and promotion within which they circulate. We will begin by reading the work of some novelists who are well established as major figures on the British literary scene: Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, and Martin Amis. We will then look at some novels by less well-known writers—Lucy Ellmann, Patrick McCabe, Helen Zahavi, and Geoff Nicholson—and try to understand what it is that leads one contemporary author rather than another, one contemporary novel rather than another, to be identified as "important" and "lasting." What is a "great" novel expected to do these days? What cultural work is it meant to perform? What evaluative criteria may be legitimately brought to bear on it? And how are the various competing evaluations of a book adjudicated? What institutions and individuals hold greatest power within the system of literary reward and esteem? Since we ourselves (as members of an English department at an elite university) are players in that system, our analysis will be in part a self-reflexive one; we will be inquiring into the specific roles of students, professors, and academic critics in determining the hierarchy of contemporary literary value.

REQUIREMENTS:

You do not need to have read any of these authors, or any contemporary British fiction at all, to take this class. You should have some background in the discipline, such as the core courses for the English major (English 20, 40, 60), and an interest in the novel. Every student will be expected to read every book on our reading list, and there will be brief exams comprised of multiple-choice or short-answer questions covering all the texts. You will also be expected to do a fair amount of independent research in the library or online, after some preliminary instruction and guidance from me and the library staff. There will be frequent one-page assignments involving research into biographical and bibliographical questions, sales figures, advertising and promotion strategies, advances, book prizes, and other aspects of the publishing industry. It is hoped that some of this research will open avenues toward your longer papers (4-8 pages), of which there will be three, with one required revision.

ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING:

This is a discussion-oriented seminar. Your attendance and day-to-day performance in the class will count 10% of your final grade, with an additional 30% based on your scores on three unannounced and three announced quizzes. Reading for the class averages 150-200 pages per week, and to do well on the exams, which will comprise detailed, factual questions on all the reading materials, you should expect to spend perhaps 6-8 hours on the reading each week. Written work includes five short research reports of about 1-2 pages (counting 15% of the final grade), and three essays of between 4 and 8 pages, one of which must be revised (counting 15% each toward the final grade; 45% total).

Note on grading: The Penn English Department's rule of thumb for 200-level classes is that no more than 30% or 40% of the final grades should be A or A-. Of course, some groups of students are by chance much stronger than others, so this is not a hard and fast rule. But in general, you should not expect a grade higher than B unless you are one of the outstanding students in the class, scoring consistently better than a majority of your classmates on exams, essays, and research reports. A 'B' represents a very good performance in the class, based on which I could write you a strongly positive letter of recommendation for a job or graduate-school application.

Note on participation: Vigorous participation in our class discussions is encouraged, but your comments should be addressed to the class as a whole. Secondary conversations, private whispering and joking, and so forth during class time will be regarded as acts of disrespect to the class, destructive of our collective enterprise. Anyone who persists in this sort of activity risks receiving a zero for the class-participation portion of the grade (effectively lowering his or her final grade by 10 points, e.g. from B+ to C+.

Note on plagiarism: Students who submit work that is not their own, whether taken without proper attribution from a printed source, copied from another student, or purchased from a term-paper vendor, can expect to fail the class and to face disciplinary action from the University.

TEXTS:

The novels for this class are on sale at the Penn Book Center. If you purchase a book elsewhere, be sure your edition is the same. All other readings will be distributed as handouts or posted to our web page at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/265fall98.

• Martin Amis The Information Random House. 0679735739
• Lucy Ellmann. Man or Mango. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 0374202281
• Doris Lessing, Diaries of Jane Somers. Vintage. 0394729552
• Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child Vintage. 0679721827
• Patrick McCabe. The Butcher Boy. Dell. 0385312377
• Geoff Nicholson. Bleeding London. Overlook Press. 0879518863
• Salman Rushdie, Shame. Henry Holt. 0805053107
• Jeanette Winterson Written on the Body Vintage. 0679744479
• Helen Zahavi. Dirty Weekend. Cleis Press. 0939416859

SCHEDULE: