Eng 550.640: Gothic Fictions and National Tales
Professor
Michael Gamer
Course
meets: Tuesdays, 6:00-8:40 p.m.
Office:
206 Bennett Hall
Office
Phone: 898-5968
Office
Hours: Tuesday before and after class and by appointment.
Books: Available at Penn Book Center, 34th and
Samson, (215) 222-7600.
Austen, Jane. Persuasion (Broadview).
Bage, Robert. Hermsprong (Broadview).
Colley, Linda. Britons (Yale).
Collins, Wilkie, The Moonstone (Broadview).
Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent and Ennui
(Penguin)
Owenson, Sydney. The Wild Irish Girl (Oxford)
Scott, Walter. Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years
Since (Oxford).
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphrey
Clinker (Oxford)
Stael, Germaine de. Corinne, or Italy
(Oxford).
Stoker, Bram. Dracula (Broadview)
Coursepack: I will provide photocopied
materials to you.
Course
Calendar:
Unit
1: The '45 and Its Aftermath:
Sept 10: Introduction to the course. For
this class we'll discuss the opening chapter of Ann Radcliffe, The Italian.
Sept 17: Read the introduction and first three chapters
of Linda Colley, Britons. Read most of Tobias Smollett, The
Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1773).
Sept 24: Read the selections by Hume, Hobsbaum,
Gellner, and Anderson. Finish Humphrey Clinker.
Unit 2: Revolutions:
Oct 1: From the bulkpack, read the first half of
Robert Bage, Hermsprong (1796) and the selected works on the American
and French Revolutions. On this day we'll be discussing Hermsprong in
light of the selections from Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Hannah More.
Oct 8: Finish Hermsprong and read chapter 4
of Britons. This week we'll discuss Hermsprong in relation to the
selections from Helen Maria Williams and Mary Wollstonecraft. Presentation:
Nava.
Oct 15: Read Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent
(1800) and Ennui (1809). By this date you should have read chapters 5
and 6 of Britons. Presentation: Charlotte.
Oct 22: Read Sydney Owenson, The Wild Irish Girl
(1806) and the article by Ina Ferris.
Presentation: Charity.
Oct 29: Read the selection of Germaine de Stael, Corinne,
or Italy (1807). Begin Walter Scott, Waverley (1814).
Presentation: Nancy.
Nov 5: Finish Walter Scott, Waverley; Or, 'Tis
Sixty Years Since (1814). Read the chapter by Katie Trumpener.
Presentation: Tony.
Nov 12: Read Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818). Annotated
Bibliography Assignment due. Please bring copies for every person in the
seminar. Presentation: Dawn and Michelle.
Nov 19: Read the first half of Wilkie Collins, The
Moonstone (1868). Finish Linda Colley, Britons. Presentation:
Sean.
Nov 26: Finish The Moonstone.
Dec. 3: Begin Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897). Read the
article by Steven Arata, entitled "Occidental Tourism.
Presentation: Betsy. "
Dec 10: Finish Dracula.
December 20th
Long Essay due.
Computer
Information:
· Homepage:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer. All of the items below are available via
this homepage.
· Syllabus:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Teaching.
· Electronic Resources:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/ and (for 1780-1830)
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Romantic. You'll especially find sites
like "The Romantic Chronology," "British Women Writers,"
and "Romantic Circles" useful.
· OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
available via Library Homepage, under "Reference."
· Literature Online available via Library
Homepage, under "Databases." A full-text database of on-line texts,
and very useful for research.
· MLA Bibliography
(Modern Language Association) available via Library Homepage, under
"Databases."
· ESTC (English Short Title
Catalogue) available via Library Homepage, under "Library
Catalogues."
· RLIN (Research Libraries Network)
available via Library Homepage, under "Library Catalogues."
Format
of Class Meetings:
As
our course is a seminar, you should come each week with questions,
observations, and discoveries about the reading. Be prepared to talk to (rather
than at) one another. To jump-start the class each week, a few of you each week
will post a response to the course listserv. These responses are due 48 hours
before we meet, by Sunday evening. Between Sunday and Tuesday evening, the rest
of us will print and read the responses. We'll then bring the printed responses
to class along with our own questions for the writers. Every week, I will ask
several of you to respond to the responses -- so please come prepared to do so.
Simply put, the seminar will not work unless its participants arrive with ideas
to pursue and questions to pose.
Assignments:
Three
Responses (15%): Part of the preparation for
our meetings will be for you to write three responses to the course readings
during the semester. You will send these to the e-mail address
engl550-640-02a@lists.upenn.edu, and they'll be due Sunday evening -- meaning
that if you want to respond to the reading for the upcoming week, you'll need
to send a response to the listserv address 48 hours in advance of our meeting
to discuss that reading. For the weeks in which you choose not to write a
response, you should print the responses, read through them, and write up an
informal paragraph for yourself laying open questions about the reading -- both
your own and those suggested by the responses -- that you'd like the seminar to
discuss.
When seminar participants begin doing presentations
and leading discussion, they will provide a prospectus a week in advance
designed to raise questions and otherwise set up discussion; those wishing to
write responses should use that abstract (as well as the readings) as a
springboard for their responses.
I will grade the responses based on a plus, check,
minus system. If you wish to write a 4th response, you're welcome to
do so; I will only count the three highest grades.
The responses will be due to the listserv on Sunday
evening; all seminar participants should print the responses, read them prior
to class, and bring them to class. For those of you without e-mail at home, you may
post them first thing Monday morning. If you do not have access to e-mail,
please see me.
So, the rhythm of the seminar will go as follows:
Choosing
the focus of your Presentation: At the beginning of class of September 17th
and September 24th, I'll ask you if you've decided what text on the
syllabus you want to present on. You'll then be slated for that date -- and
should let me know as soon as possible if you'd rather go on another date.
Then, at least two weeks before you present, you should meet with me to talk
about what you'd like to do. I'll provide as much help as you need. NOTE:
Undergraduate participants may pair up for this assignment.
The
Prospectus for your Presentation: The week before you present, you should come to
class with copies of a prospectus, the purpose of which is to provide guidelines
for what you'll be doing in your presentation. You should keep this under 500
words, and keep in mind that its purpose is to direct our reading and to
provide us with some questions to consider while we read. NOTE: Undergraduate
participants may provide a joint document.
The
Presentation (15%): For one of the class meetings, you'll be doing a short (please, no
more than 20 minutes -- be warned I will cut you off) presentation
setting up discussion and describing your own interests, ideas, and questions
about the readings. Notes: undergraduate participants should take special care
to stay under 20 minutes -- difficult when there's two people.
The
Annotated Bibliography (30%): This is not a write up of your presentation.
Instead, for the text you're presenting on, I'd like you to research its 1)
production and publication history, 2) reception history, and 3) critical
history. Having researched these, I'd like you to choose which of these three
arenas provides the richest and most interesting material to write about. Once
you've made this decision, you can begin to write up the assignment.
For
each of the less interesting two histories, I'd like you to write up a short
narrative in which you provide pertinent information and discuss the most
important events and issues involved in it. The write up can be anywhere from
10 to 500 words, and should be followed by a bibliography covering the
important sources for that arena. The length of these should depend entirely on
how much there is to say. For example, in the case of the production history of
Bage's Hermsprong, we have no manuscripts in Bage's hand, and no
significant changes between the first and later editions. We know that the
novel was extremely popular and immediately anthologized, going through several
editions and appearing in several collections of British fiction, including
Anna Barbauld's The British Novelists (1810, 50 volumes). But that's
about all there is to say. Yet the production history for a novel like Castle
Rackrent or Waverley is far more interesting -- the former being
rushed through production in an attempt to affect parliamentary sentiment over
the Anglo-Irish Union of 1800, while the latter was famously published
anonymously as a way for Scott to launch a second literary career as an author
of fiction without affecting his status as a poet of high renown.
For
the most interesting of the three histories, however, I'd like you to write a
more extended essay (approximately 5 pages), in which you make a case for why
this particular aspect of the text is most interesting. What questions does it
raise and why? What would answering these questions illuminate? What questions
do you wish to ask, and what are you answers? Finally, instead of a
bibliography, I would like you to provide an annotated bibliography of the
section, consisting of 10-12 entries, with each entry being no more than 200
words.
This assignment is due I'll provide an example of a bibliography so you have a sense of how it should be done.
The
Essay (40%):
Ideally, your essay should focus on different texts than those you present on
(if this is not possible, please see me). Length: around 15 pages. You should
think of this essay as being like a short article, and you should use the
articles we read during the course as models for it.