Course Requirements and Schedule

You will be responsible for (1) a bibliographical essay on current scholarship on an author or problem, (2) an oral report related to the bibliographical essay, (3) two drafts of a critical/scholarly article (15-20 pages), and (4) informed discussion both of your colleagues' drafts and the texts to which they are responses. 

Since I fully subscribe to the principles we teach in English 15 (planning, drafting, revising, revising, revising), you should expect to show me very preliminary drafts and discuss your paper plan long before you begin to write the paper.

The final grade will be determined by your performance in those five areas, which I will weight thus:

Bibliographic essay (10%)
Oral report (10%)
First draft of final paper (10%)
Revised draft of paper (45%)
Informed discussion (25%)

For the final paper, "A" work will be as good as most of the research published in the last five years or so--the subject of your bibliographic essay should give you a very good sense of the field. With another revision (or two), your article should be publishable if it is "A" work. I regard "B" work as carefully researched, clearly presented writing that needs considerable revision before it could be submitted for publication.

But even Homer nods. Work that never really establishes its major point or does not adequately support its central argument or does not address topics remotely of interest to the field will receive no better than a "C."

Schedule of Assignments

1/13 Introduction to course, period, requirements and resources
1/20 JTH is in New Orleans
1/27 Packet (Leonard Michaels' story; "A Fiery Flying Roll") & Hobbes, Leviathan; Porter's History

2/3 Packet (Micrographia; "The Scatalogical Homunculus"; The History of the Royal Society; Occasional Reflections; Aubrey's Brief Lives; Diary of Samuel Pepys
2/10 Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year; PAPER PROPOSAL DUE
2/175 Addison and Steele; Packet (Pope, "Peri Bathous") 
2/24 Swift, Gulliver

3/2  Swift, Other Prose Works (PROGRESS REPORT DUE); Packet (Tillotson, Law, Butler, Chesterfield). Oral reports: Jodie and Holly

3/9 Spring Break  

3/18 Johnson, Selected Writings (pp.50-134, 139-260). Note: this is a Saturday -- we will meet from 12:00-3:00 at my house -- transportation will be arranged). Oral reports: Trey and Caroline
3/23 Johnson, Selected Writings (pp.261-500). Oral reports: Amy 
3/30  Boswell, Life of Johnson. Oral reports: Kelly, Mike, and Cedric

4/4 Michael Hunter, "'The Disappearance of Magic' Reconsidered" (102 Weaver, 4:00 p.m.)
4/6 Paine, Rights of Man. Oral reports: Adam and Justin
4/13  Burke Philosophical Enquiries; Packet (Young, Conjectures; Reynolds; Goldsmith). FIRST DRAFT DUE 
4/20 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
4/27 Perorations, Exhortations, Final Reflections

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