COURSE DESCRIPTION

COURSE DESCRIPTION. 
The English language and the literature that has emerged from it make up a long chain of related parts. We can’t pull up just one piece and look at it without pulling up the links around it too. So Brit Lit is designed as a survey course. The readings are challenging, and some of the language (and the ideas conveyed) may seem strange or hard to comprehend. But that’s our job—to make sense of 1500 years of language and literature development. This means we’ll also be tracing the philosophical roots, influences, and pre-conditions to the literature. For example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a product of Enlightenment and humanistic thought, which were in turn products of other changes in values and beliefs. Some of the literature was an outworking of the political or religious forces of the time, so we’ll need to look at those big ideas too. Being able to see the “big picture” in all of this will be crucial to your success in British Literature.

Throughout both courses (Brit Lit A&B) our focus will be on two big ideas: 1) the evolution of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to today; and 2) the analysis (and all the skills, techniques, and devices that go with it) of literature in its various genre.


FORMAT. For this course, we'll be exchanging work through google docs. If you haven't set up an account, you'll need to do that asap. Once you've done that, create a Brit Lit folder that you can share with me (bradbeals@gmail.com). Include your last name in the title like this: "Jones Brit Lit A". In your folder you will add documents for each week's work and documents for the essays. But more on that as the course gets rolling.


TEXTS & MATERIALS. I'll provide a textbook (English Literature: With World Masterpieces). For the 2nd 12 weeks (Brit Lit B) you will need to have copies of Frankenstein, A Tale of Two Cities, and Lord of the Flies. The version or publisher is not important; just make sure none are abridged.


ASSIGNMENTS. You'll notice a few repeating assignment types. It might be helpful to go over those now.  1) Warm-ups: These are designed to begin each day's work and (in teacher lingo) activate your schema for the subject matter. Since you are working through the week's material at your own pace, you won't have daily warm-ups, but you will have them occasionally if the thinking required is beneficial.  2) Comprehension questions: most of the pieces of literature or chapters/parts within a piece will have questions for you to answer. Answer them fully. One-word answers are not full responses. If you're not sure how to make them "full" add a why or how thought.  3) Reading Responses: similar to warm-ups; You will see these short responses to our reading perodically. They're generally informal in tone and subjective.  4) Frontier Vocab: We'll do a self-generated vocab assignment every week. It's explained in the post on the right.  5) Essays:  If you've taken HSW1 or HSW2, then you're familiar with essay formatting. If not, don't worry about it until I've assigned one and I'll hit those particulars then.