ENGL 220

Literature in English to the 18th Century (3 credits)

Instructor: Lorcan Fox
Section: 921
Term: 1A

Office: Buchanan Tower 528
Phone: 604 822-6328
E-mail: lfox[at]interchange.ubc.ca

This course focuses on selected English writers of poetry, drama, and prose from the 14th to the late 18th centuries.  The following literature will be studied: The General Prologue in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Shakespeare’s King Lear; selections from John Milton’s Paradise Lost; Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; Part 4 of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.  Except for the Austen novel, all of this material is included in the anthology ordered for the course (see below).

Though no mark will be assigned for attendance and participation, both may affect your mark on the home essay.  At the end of the course the letter grade received for the essay will be converted into a number grade.  Each letter grade has a numerical range: for instance, a B ranges from 72% to 75%.  Your attendance and participation may determine whether the number grade is at the high or low end of the range.

Please note that participation includes not only answering questions in class, but also speaking with me during my office hours, e-mailing me. . . .  If, then, you are too shy to speak up in class, you will still be expected to participate.  What I am looking for, above all, is proof of your commitment to, even your interest in, this course.

“In accordance with UBC Policy #65, students who are scheduled to attend classes or write examinations on the holy days of their religion must notify their instructors two weeks in advance of the religious holiday they wish to observe.  Instructors will provide opportunity for students to make up the missed work or examina­tion without penalty.  The full policy may be viewed at: http://www.policy.ubc.ca/policy65.htm.”

Texts:

• Joseph Black et al., eds., The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume A
      (The Medieval Period, The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century, The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century)
• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (Broadview)

  The texts will be available at the UBC Bookstore in a specially priced, shrink-wrapped package.

Students should also have a good college-level dictionary (for instance, The Concise Oxford Dictionary) and a grammar handbook (for instance, The Canadian Writer’s Handbook).