Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: English

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: MAJOR AMERICAN AUTHORS: POE & HAWTHORE ***** Section 1: Dickens and the Birth of the Industrial Strength Author: This seminar, open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students, tracks the development of the 19th century concept of authorship through the early works of Charles Dickens: Sketches by Boz, Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby. We will also read Dickens's letters and biographical statements, study the texts in their first printings, and consider the ways in which subsequent adaptations--especially films--perpetuate the myths of authorship Dickens and his contemporaries fashioned for an age of steam printing, international commerce, growing literacy, and middle-class leisure. Section 2: Interpreting Shakespeare: This seminar is conceived as an anti-survey course in Shakespeare. We will immerse ourselves in only three plays (Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra) and pay close, loving attention to all those internal aspects - language, psychology, motivation, performance - that tend to get skimmed over in the rush to achieve coverage. A course, then, as much about reading per se, as about a particular playwright named Shakespeare. Repeatable for Credit.