Because this is an Early Modern Center English 10, we will focus our readings on the drama, poetry, and novels of the “long eighteenth-century,” that is, on the literature from roughly 1660-1790.   Our particular approach will correspond with the EMC theme of “Ballads, Broadsides, and Popular Culture,” wherein we will ask questions of the texts such as: What constitutes popular culture in the 18^th century? What is the popular or culture aspect of “popular culture”? How do these terms run together or diverge in the “Age of Enlightenment”? How do these texts both make the popular and become the popular?  In order to get at these and other questions, we will read two important Restoration comedies: George Etherege’s The Man of Mode and William Congreve’s The Way of the World.  We will also cover a wide range of poetry (from John Dryden to William Cowper) and ask: how does poetic form bear on the popularity of a satirical poem? An ode? A ballad? How is the culture of the ode different from or similar to the culture of the ballad?  Finally, our course will end by exploring Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Henry Fielding’s Shamela, and the “Pamela Media Event.”  We will also engage with some of the Gothic reactions to the purported “formal realism” of the novel.

Course Description: This Summer Session ‘A’ English 10 serves as an introduction to literature and the field of literary studies.  Through classroom discussions, online forums, and analytical essays, we will develop and deploy a basic critical vocabulary, a range of interpretive tools, and explore the philosophical questions most germane the study of literature. In order to expand interpretive possibilities, as well as foreground the historical significance of literature, we will be reading selections of British and American literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.  This section of English 10 focuses on enriching student awareness and comprehension of a variety of forms within four significant genres: drama, poetry, essay, and fiction.

This course has been specifically designed by faculty and staff at BYUH to help first and second year students adjust successfully to the intellectual atmosphere of the university.  It offers a set of reading, writing and critical thinking skills necessary to engage in academic dialogue.  This course will ask students to critically read texts, including their own writing and the writing of their peers, in such a way that fosters the thinking that maintains currency across the varying fields of academic study and beyond.

This course is writing intensive and designed to be used in preparation for future upper-division course work, as such, much will be expected of you—both as a writer and as a critical reader.  Be prepared to move quickly through reading and writing assignments—to fall behind in this class, as in all collegiate work, will be disastrous for performance.

Course Description:

Course Description: This class on British and American literature of the “long” 18th century (1640s-1790s) takes “literature” in the broad sense: poetry, drama, political tracts, philosophical treatises as well as fictional and non-fictional narratives. We will examine a range of literary works from the British Enlightenment and explore how those works exemplify, mitigate, or exacerbate the dynamic tensions between the period’s major intellectual questions. We will be reading works by a host of authors, from philosophers like Hobbes and Locke to the riotous Restoration drama of William Congreve. We will focus on poets of the “Augustan Age” and the movement in poetry towards what some critics have labeled the “Age of Sensibility”. Together we will be testing period tags like Age of Reason, Age of Dryden, Augustan Age, Age of Sensibility or the Age of Experience as well as the assumptions and tensions between the ideals and methods that underpin this exciting historical period.

Course Description: This class on British and American literature of the “long 18th century” (1640s-1790s) takes “literature” in the broad sense: poetry, drama, political tracts, philosophical treatises as well as fictional and non-fictional narratives. We will examine a range of literary works from the British Enlightenment and explore how those works exemplify, mitigate, or exacerbate dynamic tensions between some of the period’s major intellectual questions (proper government, science, slavery, property, and poetics to name a few). We will be reading works by a host of authors, from philosophers like Hobbes and Locke to the riotous Restoration drama of William Congreve. We will focus on the satirists of the “Augustan Age” and the movement in poetry towards what some critics have labeled the “Age of Sensibility”. Together we will try to make sense of the various literary answers to the question: What is Enlightenment?

Course Blog: http://springenglish10.wordpress.com

Course Description: The purpose of this class is to “acquaint students with purposes and tools of literary interpretation.” It “introduces techniques and vocabulary of analytic discussion and

critical writing.” We will explore some of the major schools of critical and literary analysis along with their attendant questions. However, our primary objective will be to read and interpret texts based on evidence from the text and supported by that textual evidence. Because this is an Early Modern Center English 10, we will focus our readings on the drama, poetry, and novels of the “long eighteenth-century,” that is, on the literature from roughly 1660-1790. Our particular approach will correspond with the EMC theme of “Science and Technology” wherein we will ask questions of the texts such as: what is the relationship between science and technology? How do science and technology flow into literature in the early modern period, as well as currently? How do these terms run together or diverge in the “Age of Enlightenment”? In order to get at these and other questions, we will read the important Restoration comedy by William Congreve: The Way of the World. We will also cover a wide range of poetry (from John Dryden to William Cowper) and ask: how does poetic form work technologically in a satirical poem? An ode? A ballad? Finally, our course will end by exploring the science and technology of Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy.

Course Blog: http://byusummer236.wordpress.com/

Course Description: Masterpieces of British Literature takes an expansive and cursory view of literature written on the British Isles ca. 450 to the present. The basic premise of the course is “to provide students with a panoramic view of the dawn of English literature and of the development of the various genres that make up artistic written expression in English: various poetic modes, prose fiction, dramatic modes, the essay, the novel, and the short story.” With this purpose in mind, together we will lightly touch down in various major historical periods in literary history (Medieval to present) and read a variety of texts from a myriad of genres. Some of what we read will be familiar—the giants of liteature if you will (i.e. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton). However, much will be new, strange and hopefully engaging. Our basic approach to the literature will be introductory as opposed to comprehensive, which means we will not seek to fully grasp the aesthetic, intellectual, historical, or cultural context of any given work or literary period. Rather, our individual work and classroom discussions will be guided by three foundational questions or interpretive modes: (1) what do we find intellectually provocative in the work of art; (2) how does the document relate to its historical and cultural context; and (3) what does the form of the work contribute to our understanding of what a work of art can and/or should do as an aesthetic object? This course is something of a greatest hits course. And like all greatest hits albums, invariably some great works are relegated to the dustbin and sometimes we are left scratching our heads about why other works end up included (“Viva Las Vegas” on The Essential Bruce Springsteen comes to mind). I’ve tried to pick the brightest of the literary lights and hope you’ll not feel too heavily my editorial hand. In any event, the course will proceed at a breakneck speed (we cover nearly two thousand years in the first two weeks!), as such you might say that its intellectual energy is highly kinetic—throwing off light and heat in all directions. However, the real power of this course lay in its potential energy, that is, it is designed to promote future interest and encourage years of study beyond our summer quarter.

Course blog: byusummer291.wordpress.com

Course Description: British Literary History I takes an expansive and in many ways cursory view of literature written on the British Isles ca. 450 to 1800 AD. The basic premise of the course is to introduce students to the “development of ideas, movements, genres, and styles” in literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the early modern period. With this purpose in mind, together we will lightly touch down in three major historical periods in literary history (Medieval, Early Modern, and Restoration/Eighteenth Century) and read a variety of texts from a myriad of genres. Some of what we read will be familiar—the literary lights if you will (i.e. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton). However, much will be new, strange and hopefully engaging. Our basic approach to the literature will be introductory as opposed to comprehensive, which means we will not seek to fully grasp the aesthetic, intellectual, historical, or cultural context of any given work or literary period. Rather, our individual work and classroom discussions will be guided by three foundational questions or interpretive modes: (1) what do we find intellectually provocative in the work of art; (2) how does the document relate to its historical and cultural context; and (3) what does the form of the work contribute to our understanding of what a work of art can and/or should do as an aesthetic object? This course will proceed at a breakneck speed (we cover nearly a thousand years in the first two weeks!), as such you might say that its intellectual energy is highly kinetic—throwing off heat and light in every direction. However, the real power of this course lay in its potential energy, that is, it is designed to promote future interest and encourage years of study beyond our summer quarter.