English Courses: 2012-2013
ENGLISH 1. Elements of Fiction. Fall. The Department. 5 meetings weekly. Block C, E, or F. Required of all members of Class IV. Writing intensive course. Freshman English fall semester. This course provides students with the fundamentals necessary for their future work in English. During the fall, students investigate the techniques of fiction, reading and analyzing short stories and a novel. Formal instruction in writing is an integral part of this course, and students write frequently. In each semester, they are expected to master the writing of a unified paragraph and a unified essay. Throughout the year, students study essential points of grammar, usage, and punctuation. The course aims, above all, to help students acquire a clear and confident voice in speaking and writing about fiction, poetry, and drama.
ENGLISH 2. Elements of Poetry and Drama. Spring. The Department. 5 meetings weekly. Block C, E, or F. Required of all members of Class IV. Writing intensive course. Freshman English spring semester. For description see English 1. [During the spring, students study the fundamentals of poetry, reading and analyzing a variety of poems from different periods and a Shakespeare play.]
ENGLISH 3. Literature and Composition I. Fall. The Department. 5 meetings weekly. Block A, C, D, E, or F. Required of all members of Class III. Writing intensive course. Sophomore English fall semester. This course introduces students to great works in the Western literary tradition; the focus is on close reading and the critical essay. The course seeks to develop in students the ability to convert their intuitions about the meaning of these complex texts into organized, coherent, articulate assertions. While encouraging students to recognize that these texts are ultimately inexhaustible and irreducible, the course demands that students make clear and forceful general assertions, both in speech and in writing, and support these general assertions with a wealth of detail. Writing assignments are frequent and closely coordinated with the topics covered in Sophomore Writing Workshop. By year’s end, all students are expected to demonstrate a mastery of the protocols of the formal essay.
ENGLISH 4. Literature and Composition II. Spring. The Department. 5 meetings weekly. Block A, C, D, E, or F. Required of all members of Class III. Writing intensive course. Sophomore English spring semester. For description see English 3.
ENGLISH 3W. Sophomore Writing Workshop. Year. The Department. 1 meeting weekly. Block TBA. Required of all members of Class III. Weekly workshops on the craft of writing with particular emphasis on the analytical writing done in the disciplines of English and History. These workshops analyze and develop, one by one, the elements that constitute effective expository/analytical writing. The workshops begin with an analysis of the function of the paragraph and the topic sentence; they move on to techniques for subordinating evidence, strengthening coherence and logical flow, revising paragraphs, and introducing and concluding essays. The workshops finish by addressing the finer details, presenting a variety of sentence structures, and offering rules for the use of all forms of punctuation. Along the way, students study how to make good writing better, how to make their ideas more distinct, and, above all, how and why writing is a process of reformulation and revision. The workshops conclude with a writing test and a grammar and punctuation test. Students continue in the course until they have passed these tests.
ENGLISH 5. Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition I. Fall. The Department. 5 meetings weekly. Block A, B, C, D, E, or GH23. Required of all members of Class II. Writing intensive course. Junior English fall semester. This course focuses on the techniques of textual criticism appropriate to each of the major genres. Mastering these techniques provides preparation for the Advanced Placement Examination in Literature and Composition. Most members of Class II are encouraged to take the exam at the end of the academic year. Formal instruction in writing reinforces and expands the work of the Sophomore Writing Workshop. During the fall, the course concentrates on the writing of out-of-class essays. Students review the essay skills emphasized in English 2 and apply these skills to writing critical essays that demand further sophistication of approach and discernment.
ENGLISH 6. Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition II. Spring. The Department. 5 meetings weekly. Block A, B, C, D, E, or GH23. Required of all members of Class II. Writing intensive course. Junior English spring semester. For description see English 5. [In the spring, the course focuses on the writing of timed, in-class essays on works in a variety of genres.]
Members of Class I are encouraged to elect fall and spring courses that complement each other with respect to genre, content, or historical period.
The following courses are open during the fall semester to all members of Classes I and II. In the case of over enrollment, preference will be given to members of Class I.
ENGLISH 10. Imagining History: The Literature of World War I. Fall. Mr. Beaton. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Many have argued that the 20th Century - as a term denoting a distinctive way of looking at the world - really began in the spring of 1915, in the wartime trenches that scarred the landscape of Europe. "Progress," the great doctrine of 19th Century faith, lost its way in those miles upon miles of muddy, corpse-filled, stultifying channels, where the war stopped dead but could not end, and where the modern world came face-to-face with something like "meaninglessness." We now know a great deal about that fateful encounter from the literature that it inspired, from the great poetry, fiction, and memoirs of soldiers who lived in those trenches and vividly recorded their experience. As we stand at the threshold of a new century, wondering how and when it will actually "begin" (if it didn't actually begin ten years ago), it may be valuable to remember one lesson of that first "Great War" - that such events usually take us by surprise. Our texts will be an anthology of poems by Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and others; two novels, A Farewell To Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway and Regeneration (1993) by Pat Barker; and selections from Robert Graves's Goodbye To All That (1929).
ENGLISH 11. Studies in Medieval Literature. Fall. Ms. Van Norden. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. We shall read one or more of the following classics of medieval literature: Dante's Commedia, the Old English epic Beowulf, the Middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In any given year, however, we may decide to focus exclusively on the "Matter of Britain," i.e., those texts, literary, historical, and quasi-historical, pertaining to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. In any case, we are sure to encounter dragons, monsters, giants, knights, and loathly ladies.
ENGLISH 12. Masters, Servants, and Slaves. Fall. Mr. Foster. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Whatever their egalitarian pretensions, Americans are as familiar now with the roles of master, servant, and slave as were their ancestors, even if those roles are a little less apparent to the eye. We will study a variety of characters – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; Prospero, Caliban, and Ariel; Bertie Wooster and the incomparable Jeeves - who arbitrarily or fortuitously find themselves in one or another role, and we’ll observe the tensions and complicities not only between masters and servants or masters and slaves, but between any of these roles and their wearers’ essential being. Along with Don Quixote, The Tempest, and Jeeves, we will read from a list including Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro, Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, Fugard’s Master Harold and the Boys, Henry Green’s Living, Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and Thoreau’s Walden.
ENGLISH 14. Twentieth Century Literature. Fall. Ms. Hutcheson. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Modern novels are playful and subversive. Witty, violent, ironic, and dark, they often feature central characters who are lost, confused, and distinctly unheroic. Using experimental forms, these novelists seem to question the whole concept of the traditional novel, with its central hero undertaking a quest to find the meaning of his life. They poke fun at their characters, mock themselves as authors, and seemingly refuse to provide an uplifting epiphany. They are also fun to read. In this course, we will read a variety of contemporary novelists--possibly Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov, Don Delillo, and Salman Rushdie.
ENGLISH 15. Jane Austen: Her Literature and Life. Fall. Mrs. Proctor. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. If you found Pride and Prejudice engaging, this is your opportunity to reacquaint yourself with Darcy, Elizabeth, and the inimical Reverend Collins, while acquiring familiarity with other inimitable Austen characters. We will read Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and one other Austen novel as we view, compare, and critique several visual presentations of Austen’s narratives. Tea, scones, clotted cream with jam, and other period accoutrements will also accompany our extensive investigations into the times in which Austen lived and the conditions under which she wrote.
ENGLISH 16. Essay Writing. Fall. Mrs. Proctor. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Writing intensive course. We investigate the art, pleasure, and challenges of narrative essay writing (as opposed to analytical exposition) while reading an engaging compilation of narrative essays including ones from The New Yorker, E.B. White's essays, and The Best Essays of the Twentieth Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. The “narrative essay” is story telling; the distinction between it and a short story is simple: the narrative form relies on personal truth, not fiction. Intensive writing and alert reading play a critical role in the work of this course.
ENGLISH 17. Portrait of the Antihero. Fall. Mr. Mann. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Homer’s Iliad, a core text from our sophomore curriculum, is a long meditation on heroism in the Bronze Age of ancient Greece. But a difficult question emerges from reading Homer’s epic: who is the hero of the poem? We often know a hero when we see one, but the concept of heroism is complicated and difficult to define. Perhaps in response to this difficulty, the figure of “the antihero” emerged in literature along the way to modernity. The antihero is a protagonist whose entire essence is often antithetical to what is typically heroic (think of Jay Gatsby), but whose identity is much more recognizable as human. In other words, the antihero is much more like us. To understand precisely what the antihero is, we will survey a range of authors, including Vergil, John Milton, James Joyce, J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller, Jim Bouton, and Tim O’Brien. As our understanding of the antihero evolves, so too will our view of the hero and heroism.
ENGLISH 18. Love and Happiness: Shakespeare’s Comedies. Fall. Mr. Hilsabeck. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. This course takes its name from the great Al Green song and with it the idea that love plays a powerful role in our lives, for better or for worse. As the singer says, “Something that can make you do right / Make you do wrong, love.” To study this mysterious phenomenon, we will tackle—read, perform, debate, and puzzle over—four of Shakespeare’s strange and wonderful comedies: As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, with a few digressions along the way. Through our investigations of these plays we will attempt to come to a better understanding of those twin pursuits: love and happiness. We will also look at the influence of these plays on contemporary Hollywood cinema.
The following courses are open in the spring semester to all members of Classes I and II. In the case of over-enrollment, preference will be given to members of Class I.
ENGLISH 20. Shakespeare as Playwright of His Age. Spring. Ms. Van Norden. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. After some brief studies in Renaissance perspectives, we shall embark upon a very close reading of three or four of the following plays: Henry IV, Part One, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. If time permits, and the mood takes us, we may also read a number of the sonnets.
ENGLISH 21. The Kinship of Dickens (Charles) and Irving (John): A Study of Influence and Invention. Spring. Mr. Beaton. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. John Irving, one of today's most popular and engaging novelists, openly acknowledges many debts to his great 19th Century English predecessor, Charles Dickens. Both writers share a love of the odd, eccentric, and out-of-the-way; both writers sympathize imaginatively with the disenfranchised of their societies; and both writers often disdain probability (and embrace coincidence) in their pursuit of some more profound truth. Their similarities are thus very interesting to explore, but so also are their differences. We will focus our study of this relationship on Dickens's Hard Times and Great Expectations and on Irving's The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and A Widow for One Year.
ENGLISH 22. The American Poet. Spring. Mr. Foster. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Alexis de Tocqueville thought that there was “nothing so small, so filled with miserable interests, in a word, so antipoetic, as the life of a man in the United States,” but he argued that nevertheless in America “one always meets one that is full of poetry, and that one is like the hidden nerve that gives vigor to all the rest.” We will evaluate this proposition in a wide-ranging survey of American poetry, of which we will read a lot.
ENGLISH 24. Classical Literature. Spring. Mr. Mann. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Building on the themes and cultures explored in Classical Mythology, we will explore a broad range of other literary styles from the Greek and Roman ancient world. Readings in history, philosophy, poetry, tragedy, and epistles will form the core of our topics and texts. Many of these works comprise the philosophical cornerstones of western civilization. Authors will include Sappho, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Euripides, Lysias, Catullus, Ovid, Vergil, and Seneca. In addition to the classical themes, we will discuss how this ancient literature and these traditions have resonance in our modern age, permeating through our popular and scholarly cultures.
ENGLISH 25. The Delights of the Booker Prize. Spring. Mrs. Proctor. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. The Man-Booker Prize anoints the "finest new work of fiction" each year, produced in the Queen's Empire – an empire on which, at one time, the sun never set. From far flung countries (e.g., New Zealand and South Africa) to the streets of Dublin and London, authors – women and men alike – compete for this coveted, often politically controversial, award. If the Academy Awards appear beset with politics, the Booker Prize backroom skirmishing leaves the Academy in the dust. We will read some of the finest contemporary fiction – often converted to movies (which we will review) – and some of the "also ran" pieces (many of which similarly inspired cinematic exercises) – that artists believe were unfairly bypassed for "treacherously trendy" choices. This collection represents some of the more interesting contemporary reading in print.
ENGLISH 26. Mystery in Literature. Spring. Mrs. Proctor. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in order to escape debtors’ prison and to enable him to write “serious literature” that we rarely read today. Doyle is not alone. Many early mystery writers were also aspiring novelists, and today we discover that many novelists prefer to express their art in the form of mystery fiction, thus elevating the genre. In this course we shall read myriad authors’ use of the idea of “mystery” to forward a narrative. In the process, we will examine the nature of human behavior--alas, not always its most admirable side. Curiosity and imagination are requirements for joining this class.
ENGLISH 27. Fiction Writing. Spring. Ms. Hutcheson. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. Fiction writing comes out of the impulse to tell great stories in which imaginary people become as real and important to you as the corporal bodies next to you. They allow us to cross the enormous divide that separates one soul from another. They are also fun. In this class, we will write short stories. We will read widely from a diverse group of writers, and we will talk extensively about the art of writing. We will go over techniques such as plotting, rhythm, structure, and language. You will be encouraged to find your own voice, entertain yourself, and explore your own imaginary worlds. This class is run as a workshop, so your stories will be read by your classmates.
ENGLISH 28. Twentieth Century Drama. Spring. Mr. Hilsabeck. 4 meetings weekly. Block TBA. This course will explore some of the key works of 20th Century drama, starting with Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s hilarious and disturbing story of two men stuck on the road to somewhere, anywhere. From there, we will move on to plays by Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Miller. While performance will be an important part of the course, absolutely no dramatic experience is required.
