Fall Syllabus
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First Week
- Welcome back.
- Evaluate Summer Reading.
- Introduce and begin Homer's The Iliad: Books 1-3; in
Book 2, read only lines 1-493, 786-817.
- Books Four, Six and Seven; in Book 4, read only lines 1-195
and in Book 6, only lines 72-528.
Second Week
- Book Nine; read only lines 1-528, 600-713.
- Book Eleven, read only lines 760-845 and in Book Twelve, read
only lines 430-470.
- Book Fourteen, lines 1-439; Book Fifteen, lines 1-401; Book
Sixteen, 1-130, 220-295, 632-865.
- Discuss paper topic.
Third Week
- Paper due.
- Catch up on material.
- Book Seventeen, lines 1-245, 735-740; Book Eighteen, lines
1-387; Book Nineteen, lines 1-96.
- Discuss paper topic.
Fourth Week
- Paper due.
- Books Twenty Two and Twenty Three; only read lines 1-270 of
Book Twenty Three.
- Book Twenty Four.
- Introduce 19th century culture.
Fifth Week
- College Essay topic due.
- Pope's Rape of the Lock, Canto I.
- SAT Prep and Canto II.
- Canto III.
Sixth Week
- College Essay draft due.
- Canto IV.
- Canto V.
- Catch up on all material.
Seventh Week
- College Essay rewrite.
- Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Book I.
- Gulliver's Travels, Book II.
- Discuss paper topic. (Parents' weekend)
Eighth Week
- Paper due.
- Catch up on all materials.
- Gulliver's Travels, Book IV.
- Continue with Book IV.
Ninth Week
- Swift's A Modest Proposal.
- Review for exam.
Winter Syllabus
First Week
- Review Exams.
- Review Augustan period and introduce some elements of
Romanticism.
- Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard;
William Wordsworth's My Heart Leaps Up, Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud, The World is Too Much with Us, and Ode:
Intimations of Immortality.
- Discuss paper topic: Following Wordsworth's spirit, what
powers do "we lay waste" in his poem, The World is Too Much
with Us.
Second Week
- Review William Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of
Immortality; read and analyze Lines Composed a Few Miles
Above Tintern Abbey; introduce Coleridge and start The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner and emphasize narrative technique.
- Second paper topic on the narrative structure of Rime.
- First Paper due.
Third Week
- Coleride's Kubla Khan.
- Introduce the second generation of Romantics: Keats and
Shelley.
Fourth Week (fractional week)
- Continue with second generation Romantics.
- Introduce Mary Shelly's Frankenstein for reading over
the Winter Break.
- Future paper topic: compare narrative techniques of Coleridge
and Mary Shelley.
Fourth Week (fractional week)
- Welcome back. Discuss Frankenstein and paper
strategies.
Fifth Week
- Review and discuss Romanticism, historical context, and paper
strategies for Frankenstein.
- Paper due.
- Second generation of Romantics.
- Shelley: Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a
Sky-Lark.
- Keats: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, Ode to a
Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, To Autumn, The Eve of St.
Agnes, La Belle Dans sans Merci: A Ballad.
- Paper topic for the second generation of Romantics: given
Keats' relationship with death, what role does this biographical
effect play in one of his poems?
Sixth Week
- Continue with second generation of Romantics.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822): Ozymandias, Ode to the
West Wind, To a Sky-Lark.
- John Keats (1795 - 1821): On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer, Ode to a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, To Autumn, The
Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dans sans Merci: A Ballad.
- Paper topic for the second generation of Romantics: given
Keats' relationship with death, what role does this biographical
effect play in one of his poems?
Seventh Week
- Introduce Dickens and begin Tale of Two Cities.
- First paper topic: what role does Baby Darnay play in the
novel?
Eighth Week
- Continue with Dickens' Tale of Two Cities.
Ninth Week
- Continue with Dickens' Tale of Two Cities.
- Second writing topic: just as Baby Darnay played a key role in
such a small narrative space, what do we get from the similar
small yet significant role of the seamstress who interacts with
Carton in the closing moments of the novel? NB: the seamstress saw
that Carton had switched with Darnay.
Tenth Week
- Finish Dickens' Tale of Two Cities.
- Possibly read Robert Browning (his monologues to help
introduce Joyce).
- Review for exam
Spring Syllabus
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Mrs. Dalloway
- Modern Poetry: Yeats; T.S. Eliot; Pound.
- Shaw's Pygmalion.
- Playboy of the Western World/Riders to the Sea
First Week
- Introduce Joyce and stream of consciousness
- Read and discuss Chapter One and Two
Second Week
- Read Chapter Three and Four
- Paper Topic: what effect does the essay prize money have on
Stephen?
Third Week
- Read Chapter Four and sections of Five.
- Discuss Stephen's ephiphany scene.
- Paper due.
Fourth Week
- Introduce Virginia Woolf.
- Compare her use of stream of consciousness to Joyce.
Fifth Week
- Continue reading and discussing Mrs. Dalloway.
- Paper topic: how does the water pump outside the tube station
(pp.80-84) relate to the rest of the novel?
Sixth Week
- Playboy of the Western
World.
Seventh Week
Eight Week