Karen R. Jacobs  English Instructor  English Department  Louisiana Tech University   Email me at: RJacobs@garts.latech.edu
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 Syllabus English 102
 

English 20l 03

Dr. Karen R. Jacobs Office 224 GTM 2573033

Office Hours: MWF:l0-ll;1:15-2:15;TTH:10:30-11:30;1-2 (Please make an appointment.)

This course is an introduction to the major works of British literature from Beowulf to T.S.Eliot. Your text will be The Norton Anthology of English Literature. You will have four short collateral readings, all of which are in your text, and one full-length novel. In your text are The Chester Play of Noah's Flood, Shakespeare's The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, and James Joyce's The Dead. The novel is Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and you can purchase it inexpensively in the Bookstore. Let me remind you that English l0l and English l02 or the equivalent are prerequisites for English 20l.
 

Skills: You should be prepared to read, to listen, and to take notes well. You will employ standard writing skills in the exams and in short papers.
 

Grading and Exams: There will be three exams including the final. In addition there will be five reading exams on the collaterals (ten reading questions). Each major exam will constitute 25% of your course grade. The five collaterals will constitute the final 25% of your grade. I will grade your papers as part of your exam grade.
 

Attendance: Classroom attendance correlates with passing grades. Lecture material is important to success in this class. In a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class schedule you are at risk after missing three class periods. Though the class is basically a lecture class, I welcome questions. In each class period I give information that is vital for the success of your grade.
 

Make-Ups: If you should miss an exam, please schedule a make-up promptly. Make-ups will be scheduled only for confirmed illnesses or emergencies. I should be informed of your condition and needs as promptly as is reasonable. Exams must be taken sequentially and in the order prescribed on the syllabus.
 

Approximate Schedule:

Mar 10: Introduction

Fri l2: Beowulf

Mon l5: The Middle Ages and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Wed l7: Sir Gawain cont.; Chaucer's The General Prologue;

Fri 19: EXAM on Noah's Flood; Ch's The Nun's Priest Tale; The Renaissance

Mon 22: Renaissance cont.; Elizabeth I: On Monsieur's Departure; Sir Philip Sidney; Sir Edmund Spenser: Sonnet 75; Shakespeare's Sonnets 130 and 149;Spenser's Epithalamion

Wed 24: EXAMShakespeare's Henry IV Pt I; Spenser cont.

Fri 26: EXAM ONE.

Mon 29: Seventeenth Century Poetry PAPER ONE due

Wed 31: Jonson's Song: To Celia; On My First Son; To the Memory of My Beloved, . . .Shakespeare; John Donne: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Sonnet 5, Sonnet l4, and Meditation l7.

GOOD FRIDAY

EASTER MONDAY:

Wed 7: Herbert's The Pulley; Marvell's To His Coy Mistress, Lovelace's To Lucasta. . .

Fri 9: Introduction to Milton, BkI.

Mon 12: Milton Bk II. The Victorians

Wed 14: Eighteenth Century and Swift's A Modest Proposal.

Fri 16: Pope's Rape of the Lock

Mon 19: S Johnson and J Boswell; The Romantics.

Wed 21: EXAM Wuthering Heights; Wordsworth's Intimation Ode.

Fri 23: LAST DROP DAY Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Mon 26: Byron, Shelley, and Keats' Ode to a Nightingale

Wed 28: EXAM II

Fri 30: The Victorians and Tennyson's Ulysses

May 3: Tennyson's Lady of Shallot and Crossing the Bar; Browning's Prophyria's Lover and Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.

Wed 5: Arnold's Dover Beach and EEBrowning;s How Do I Love Thee?

Fri 7: The Moderns.

Mon l0: WB Yeats Lake Isle of Innisfree, Easter, l9l6, and Lapis Lazuli.

Wed 12: Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,

and the Wasteland.

Fri 14: Conrad's The Heart of Darkness EXAM

Mon 17: Joyce's THE Dead EXAM

Wed 19: Review

Fri 21: FINAL
 

INDEX 

English 336: Course Description

Dr. Karen R Jacobs

Prerequisites: English l0l and l02 or the equivalent
 

This course is designed as a writing workshop for those of you who wish to improve your expository writing skills. You will write five formal papers, four of which will be out-of-class writes: the first will be narration, the second process or a form of analysis, the third compare or contrast, the fourth argument. Each of these four papers will have two writes. The fifth assignment will be the final, a writing exercise that will illustrate the student's comprehension of the Style text. That style final will count for two components out of a total of ten in the writing portion of your grade.

In addition, there will be in-class writing, often group work of analogy, description, cause and effect. These assignments will be read aloud to the class and will receive credit for completion rather than a grade. Peer evaluations of the four compositions will also be a process of group work. The completion of these four evaluations is essential to your grade.

The first four writes will be evaluated in the following manner: I will read the first write for minimum content, organization and grammar. Then you will present your paper for peer editing; the final write, the second write, the one most important to your grade, I will assign after you incorporate my suggestions and the suggestions of your peers into your paper. Your grade will consist of three parts: your first write, your editing of student papers, and, most importantly, your second write. Your peer editing must give evidence of critical thinking, careful consideration, and fairness. I recommend discussion of these evaluations, heated or otherwise, and I also welcome discussion of my comments and directions; indeed, I recommend student use of my office hours.

To summarize: 75% of the class grade will be based on ten writing components, two writes of four compositions, peer editing on each assignment, and the Style final which will equal two components. The remaining 25% will consist of five components: one and two for the correspondence, three and four for the in-class written and oral assignments, and five for reading and vocabulary quizzes.

Good writing is contingent upon the constant act of writing; writers learn to write only by writing. Essential to writing is thinking. Accordingly you will receive your writing topics well in advance of the date on which the writing assignment is due. You should take care to tailor the topic to your interests, talents, and audience. These compositions should show evidence of careful deliberation and analysis. Some of you, perhaps many of you in this class, may have the talent for creativity in your compositions. I will welcome it, but it is not necessary to competent, clear, informative writing or to an excellent grade in this class. English 336 deals with expository writing, writing that clarifies, informs, and analyzes, writing that is essential in university courses, in the workplace, and in the various forms of human communication. It is my suggestion that you should tailor your writing subjects to your majors and, to your professional future.
 

Good writing is also contingent upon reading models. Those of you who have a broad reading base on which to model your writing are likely to be successful writers. It is wise to remember that writing structures are based on reading structures, not on speaking structures. Consequently, your will read and analyze writings from the Decker text. Vocabulary and word choice are also important. There may be vocabulary exams.
 

Good writing must also focus on a specific audience to be truly communicative. You should consider not only the instructor and the grade that I give to your paper but also the student readers of your paper. In addition, I recommend that you consider an audience of professional peers, to the point of preparing your papers for publication. A good paper has a good reader. In this class your reading responsibilities and discussion responsibilities are almost as important as the writing assignments themselves. Certainly you should be a good writer, but you should also be good reader. You should also provide a nurturing audience for the papers the class produces. Accordingly, I take the matter of attendance very seriously. You must be present in order to provide audience and support for your classmates. You must be present in order to do the peer evaluations. You must be present to record the letters in your correspondence; you must be present to fulfill the in-class oral and written assignments. Those of you who cannot attend this class regularly should drop it promptly. It is very hard to compensate for excessive absences.

To develop a sense of audience, each of you will initiate a correspondence with a person of your choice. These letters will be brought to class sealed and stamped every Monday. After I check them in the grade book, I will mail them to their correspondents.

For the eight compositions, I require word-processed copy. If you do not own a personal computer, I recommend the computers in the English computer lab in George Madison Hall across from the English Department or the computers on floor ten of the library. Each composition should include a title. You should bring writing materials to each class.
 

I am fairly flexible in most procedural matters. I want the class to be serviceable to individual needs, interests, and future professions. I do, however, have at least two matters of policy that I seldom reconsider. l. All work should be completed in the order in which it is assigned. If an assignment is missed, it must be completed before the next assignment is begun. 2. I do no work on make-ups during the final week of the quarter or the last five days of the quarter (whichever is relevant).
 

I observe the following grading formula: compositions and the final are three-fourths of the final grade; the final exam; quizzes, in-class writing, letter writing, and peer evaluation of student papers are the final one-fourth of the grade. 92-l00 is an A; 82-92 a B; 82-72 a C; 72-62 a D; 62 and under a F. I will assign letter grades to your papers and convert them to numerical grades when I calculate your final grade.
 

Grading Criteria for Compositions and Peer Evaluations:
 

l. The composition should deal with subject matter that is substantial enough to demand clarification and elaboration. The composition cannot explain what is self-evident.
 

2. The subject matter of the composition should be directed by a thesis sentence that controls the paragraphs that flow out of it.

Since 336 is an advanced writing class, this thesis may be explicit or implicit. It should certainly be a controlling force in the writer's mind.
 

3. The body paragraphs should develop and detail the points covered in the thesis sentence. Well developed examples are crucial in every paper in this class.
 

4. The style and vocabulary of the paper should reflect the standards of written English and certainly the expectations of the audience that it is addressed to. Some subjects are informal in nature; others are not.
 

5. Standard grammar should be used in the composition.
 

6. The composition should show evidence of considering the audience to which it is addressed.
 

There are two texts in this class: Patterns of Exposition by Decker and Schwegler and Style by Joseph Williams. We will use the first text for writing instruction and for writing examples. The second we will cover in its entirety, one chapter each week. The first text will be important in paper writing; the second will not only be important in paper writing but will also be the substance of the style final at the end of the class.
 

Approximate Schedule:

Narration Composition: March 24, 25, 29

Process Composition: Apr l2, l4, l6th

Compare and Contrast Composition: Apr 23, 26, 28

Argument Composition: May 10, 12, 14

The 25^th of March, the l4th and 26^th of April, and the l2th of May will be Peer Evaluation.

Style Final: May l9

Exit Interview: May 21
 

List of Readings:

Narration: Martin Gansburg's Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police

Chang-rae Lee's Uncle Chul Gets Rich

Process Analysis: Mike Rose's Writing Around Rules

Jean Kilbourne's Beauty. . .And the Beast of Advertising

Compare and Contrast: Bruce Catton's Grant and Lee

Scott Sanders' The Men We Carry In Our Minds

Analogy: Alice Walker's Am I Blue?

Patricia Raybon's Letting In Light

Description: Sharon Curtin's Aging in the Land of the Young

Joyce Maynard's The Yellow Door House

Argument: Christopher Daly's How the Lawyers Stole Winter

Barbara Lawrence's Four Letter Words Can Hurt You 

English 4l5: Shakespeare

Dr. Karen Jacobs

Prerequisites: English l0l, l02, 20l or the equivalent

Office Hours: MWF 10-11;1-2 TTH 10:30-11:30; 2-3
 

English 4l5 concentrates on the work of William Shakespeare and his theater. This class will read ten plays: four comedies, five tragedies, and one history. All plays assigned are in the Norton Shakespeare which is available in the bookstore. If you desire individual copies of the plays, the Arden Shakespeare is a good choice. The Riverside Shakespeare is also excellent; I, myself, use the Kittredge Shakespeare. There will be a reading quizz on each of the plays consisting of ten objective questions, a short answer final on classroom lecture material, two short essays assigned at key times in the quarter, and a presentation of one of these papers to the class in the final week of the quarter. The essays will be critiqued by the instructor and will, if necessary, be revised and resubmitted. The skill of writing papers on drama is one of the goals of this class. There will be one for comedy, one for tragedy, and/or one on the cultural context of drama. Should the student need extensive revision on the first paper, or for that matter the second, I will ask the student to resubmit the paper. All students in the class will be asked to select one essay for presentation at the end of the quarter. Graduate students will include in their papers and presentation reference to select works of Shakespeare criticism. (Consult me for likely possibilities.)
 

In addition to these reading and writing requirements, let me highly recommend that students consider Shakespeare from a performance perspective. Floor ten of the Library has in its holdings a complete video library of the BBC Shakespeare. Most students profit from reading the text in conjunction with viewing the performance. Televisions are available on floor ten and times will be arranged at which groups of students can view the plays. Individual viewing is not encouraged because of the durability of the video tapes. Select videos are also available for video rental as well. I will, for most plays, use the BBC video as we lecture and discuss, but I will only show bits and pieces that have relevance to my comments and to the discussion of the play under consideration. Ideally the student should view the play before the quiz and before classroom discussion.
 

I enjoy and promote lively discussion in class. Indeed, it is essential to good reading and good writing. In order to have a spirited and interesting class, it is crucial that students be present. It is part of the nature of this class that students become a good audience for the ideas and papers of their peers. Let me remind you that a TTH class should have at a maximum no more than two absences. If you cannot attend this class regularly, please drop it immediately.
 

Should absences be necessary, please communicate with me immediately. I can give make-ups only for confirmed illnesses and emergencies. I require that make-ups be done in an orderly progression and that one be completed before another is begun.

I do not do make-ups the final week of the quarter. I strongly discourage incompletes except for very rare emergencies.
 
 

Your final grade will have three components: l. the average of your reading quizzes, 2. your final exam grade, and 3. the average of your essays and your presentation. Classroom participation may also affect the grade of a student.
 
 

Classroom Schedule:

Thursday, December 3: Backgrounds of Shakespeare

Tuesday, December 8: Backgrounds of Elizabethan Theatre

Thursday, December l0: The Genre of Comedy

Tuesday, December l5: A Midsummer Night's Dream (quiz)

Thursday, December l7: Much Ado About Nothing (quiz)

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS

Tuesday, January 5: Twelfth Night (quiz)

Thursday. January 7: The Tempest (quiz)

Tuesday, January l2: Comedy Summation; Tragedy Introduction

Thursday, January l4: FIRST PAPER DUE; Romeo and Juliet

MARTIN LUTHER KING HOLIDAY

Tuesday, January 19: Anthony and Cleopatra (quiz)

Thursday, January 21: MacBeth (quiz)

Tuesday, January 26: MB cont.

Thursday, January 28: Othello (quiz)

Tuesday, February 2: SECOND PAPER DUE Othello cont.

Thursday, February 4: Hamlet (quiz)

Tuesday, February 9: Hamlet cont.

Thursday, February 11: History Introduction; Richard III (quiz)

Tuesday, February 16: MARDI GRAS

Thursday, February l8: Richard IIIcont. Sh Criticism

Tuesday, February 23: PRESENTATIONS

Thursday, February 26: PRESENTATIONS CONT.

Tuesday, March 3: FINAL
 

Success in this course is predicated on your reading and listening comprehension, on your ability to assimilate and comprehend lecture material, and on your writing performance. Questions are always welcome, and lively, informed discussion is encouraged.
 

INDEX
 Syllabus English 438