Rob Hume

Office: 13B Burrowes	Department Mailbox: 116 Burrowes
Office Hours:	Home phone: 234-2355
Tues 8:30-9:30	(before 10 p.m. please)
Wed 8:30-10:00	E-mail: mailto:Rob-Hume@psu.edu
and by appointment*

*If you have a car or a bike, I am normally happy to see you at my house any day of the week if I am not on campus.

This course will be an intensive survey of major writers and their background. We will deal with such individuals as Dryden, Pope, Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Johnson. Fiction will be emphasized, but substantial time will be devoted to both poetry and drama/theatre. No prior acquaintance with the primary texts is presumed, but most seminar time will be devoted to discussion and analysis of a wide range of mostly recent criticism and scholarship, from historicist to marxist, feminist, and deconstrutive. There will be no seminar paper (since the principal point of the course is acquaintance with the subject matter), but each member of the seminar will be required to produce a short bibliographic essay, a book review, and at least two drafts of a Ph.D. thesis/book proposal of 7-10 pages that demonstrates a grasp of both the historical subject matter and current critical ways of dealing with it (all of which should be jolly good practice for the future). If transportation can be arranged for everyone, we will meet at my house after the first day. Members should emerge from this course with a good general acquaintance with a lot of major texts, a clear sense of the recent work on them, and some notion of the current and prospective state of play in this large, active, and somewhat stormy field.

There will be no assigned readings in primary texts. Pretending to "cover" all genres for a period of this length would be ridiculous. Some of you will have read a lot of one author, and nothing of another. This course offers you an opportunity to read what you want to read and what you need to read. Our group discussions will be largely devoted to the state of criticism and scholarship in each area we cover, and to identifying potential future areas for criticism and research. For each primary subject covered I have listed some of the major, obvious works with which anyone familiar with the field would be expected to be acquainted (see the list at the end of this syllabus).

The writing assignments are designed to familiarize you with genres you will need to be able to function in, and to push you to identify publication and thesis possibilities. A "bibliographic essay" reviews the current state of a potential topic and shows us what still needs to be done. A book review assesses a contribution to a field of interest. A thesis proposal, even if "mock," forces you to think and plan as you will have to be able to in order to get a Ph.D., especially with a thesis that can be quickly and efficiently turned into a book. Pertinent samples of actual thesis proposals will be on file with Joyce in the graduate office.

This syllabus—and the instruction sheets for each assignment—are available on my website:

Please note one cranky, eccentric, sadistic, requirement for this already unusual course.

I want at least your final "mock thesis" paper (and preferably the first version of it) mounted on your own PSU website. Penn State makes lots of web space available to all members of the community, and as a budding teacher you need to be able to use a website in at least elementary ways. This is not 1990, and a Ph.D. going on the job market who is not up to speed on basic technology is at a horrible disadvantage. People always say they are going to learn about these things "soon" or "some day," but the time to do so is now. This stuff is not hard, and I am more than happy to help you (no prior experience or knowledge is expected or required). But if you feel totally resistant to using computers and technology in routine ways, then please find yourself a teacher equally dedicated to hiding from reality.

27 Session on "General Books" with Clem Hawes joining us book review due click here for instructions

3 Johnson and Boswell 1-page preliminary sketch for mock-thesis proposal due

17 Richardson and Fielding first draft of mock thesis proposal due click here for instructions

NB: I expect all members of the course to consult regularly with me. By all means catch me in office hours (undergraduate trade is slight early in the morning), and any other time I am on campus and not tied up, I am happy to talk with you. I will see people at home any day of the week. I do try to answer e-mail queries promptly. Drafts will be returned to you within 48 hours (or sooner, if possible, on request). Your final project will be a lot better if you work closely with me throughout the semester. A lot of help is available if you want to make use of it.

Dryden (as poet and critic): Mac Flecknoe; Absalom and Achitophel; Religio Laici; Essay of Dramatic Poesy; "Heads of an Answer to Rymer"; "Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy" [prefaced to Troilus and Cressida]

Pope: An Essay on Criticism; The Rape of the Lock; Imitations of Horace; Essay on Man; The Dunciad

Swift: Poems: "Description of a City Shower"; The Progress of Beauty"; "A Beautiful Young Nymph going to Bed"; "Verses on the Death of Dr Swift"; "On Poetry A Rapsody"; "The Day of Judgement." Short prose: "Predictions for the Year 1708" and "The Accomplishment of the First of Mr Bickerstaff’s Predictions"; "An Argument against Abolishing Christianity"; A Modest Proposal. Longer prose: A Tale of a Tub; Gulliver’s Travels. [All conveniently available in the Norton Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Greenberg and Piper.]

Johnson: "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; sample essays from Idler and Rambler; Rasselas; Preface to Dictionary; Preface to Shakespeare; samples from Lives of the Poets (e.g., Cowley, Dryden, Pope); samples of Letters.

Drama: What follows is a list of basic/vital plays that anyone taking comps would be presumed to be familiar with.

Defoe: Robinson Crusoe is historically significant; Moll Flanders is the most readable and widely read; Roxana is artistically the most interesting.

Richardson: Pamela is historically important and (relatively) short; Clarissa is the masterpiece (and fearfully long, but best not read abridged).

Fielding: Shamela is short and funny; Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones are the masterpieces.

Sterne: Tristram Shandy is one of the great novels is English; A Sentimental Journey is short and easy going.

Gothic fiction: Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764) is short, ghastly, and historically significant. Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) is the classic suspense example (though her The Italian is the more interesting book). M. G. Lewis’ The Monk (1795) is the contrasting "horror" novel (and origin of "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out . . ."). For more intellectually interesting gothic, one needs to go up to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1817) or Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820).