Literature for Our Time

ENG140Y1Y 2009-10

All lectures Fridays 2-4

Bader Theatre, Victoria University, 93 Charles St. W.

Professor: Nick Mount

Office: 170 St. George Street, Room 704

Office Hours: W 2-4

E-Mail: nick.mount@utoronto.ca

Literature for Our Time Series

ENG140: The Soundtrack

Department of English

English Students' Union

CURRENT NOTICES

• The next lecture begins our look at Sylvia Plath's Ariel.

• Essay #1 was due in tutorial, Friday, 20 November. Late papers may be submitted in accordance with the late policy to the Department of English, Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George, Room 610. Make sure the class name, your name and student number, and your TA's name appears on the first page.

• Covering Lolita, over 150 book and media covers from 33 countries.  A fascinating exhibit which proves book designers are not always the most sensitive book readers!

Esther de Bruijn esther.debruijn@utoronto.ca

The tutorial schedule and teaching assistants are posted inside Blackboard.

Course Description

This course explores how recent literature in English responds to our world in poetry, prose, and drama. In the fall term we’ll visit some of the more famous landmarks of early and mid-twentieth-century literature: London Bridge on a foggy winter morning, a lighthouse off the west coast of Scotland, a roadside ditch in Georgia, and the bean green waters off Nauset, Massachusetts, among others. In the spring term, our guides will be closer to our own time, young writers who respond in various ways to the search for identity and value in a world increasingly characterized by the collision of different identities, different values. In both terms, emphases will include literature’s reasons for being, the formal qualities of the works we’ll study, their historical context, their relation to other media, and their relevance to our moment in history.

Required Books

Fall: T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Prufrock, and Other Poems (Dover); Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Broadview); Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (Grove); Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Anchor); Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (Vintage); Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (Harcourt); Sylvia Plath, Ariel (Harper Perennial).

Spring: John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Dramatists Play Service); Karen Solie, Modern and Normal (Brick); Lynn Crosbie, Liar (Anansi); Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon); Stephen Marche, Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (Penguin); Jon McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury).

All books are available at the University of Toronto Bookstore, 214 College St.

Fall 2009 Syllabus (assignments due in tutorials)

 Date

 Tutorial

 Lecture

Sept. 11

None

Introduction

Sept. 18

None

Eliot, "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Sept. 25

Eliot, "Prufrock"

Eliot, The Waste Land

Oct. 2

Eliot, Waste Land

Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Oct. 9

Assignment #1 (in class)

Lighthouse; Modern Times (film)

Oct. 16

To the Lighthouse

Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Oct. 23

Waiting For Godot

Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Oct. 30

Things Fall Apart

Nabokov, Lolita

Nov. 6

Writing an Essay

Nabokov, Lolita

 November Break

Nov. 20

Essay #1; Lolita

O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Nov. 27

A Good Man

Plath, Ariel

Dec. 4

Ariel

Plath, Ariel

Spring 2010 Syllabus (assignments due in tutorials)

 Date

 Tutorial

 Lecture

Jan. 8

None

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (film)

Jan. 15

Hedwig

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Jan. 22

Jan. 29

Editing an Essay

Lynn Crosbie, Liar

Feb. 5

Essay #2; Liar

Feb. 12

 Jimmy Corrigan

Ware, Jimmy Corrigan

 Reading Week (Feb. 15 = last day to drop course from record)

Feb. 26

None

Marche, Shining at the Bottom of the Sea

Mar. 5

Shining

Marche, Shining at the Bottom of the Sea

Mar. 12

Shining / If Nobody Speaks

McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Mar. 19

Essay #3; If Nobody Speaks

McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Mar. 26

Exam Strategies

Conclusion

Evaluation

One in-class paragraph (5%); three 1,000-1,250 word essays (45%); tutorial work (15%); three-hour final exam (35%). All work will receive a percentage grade, using the following scale and criteria:

90-100

A+

4.0

Outstanding

A: Strong evidence of original thinking; good organization, capacity to analyze and synthesize; superior grasp of subject matter with sound critical evaluations; evidence of extensive knowledge base. Few writing errors.

4.0

80-84

A-

3.7

77-79

B+

3.3

Good

73-76

B

3.0

B: Evidence of grasp of subject matter; some evidence of critical capacity and analytic ability; reasonable understanding of relevant issues; evidence of familiarity with the literature. Good organization and writing.

70-72

B-

2.7

67-69

C+

2.3

Adequate

63-66

C

2.0

C: Student who is profiting from her or his university experience; understanding of the subject matter; ability to develop solutions to simple problems in the material.

60-62

C-

1.7

57-59

D+

1.3

53-56

D

1.0

Marginal

D: Some evidence of familiarity with subject matter and some evidence that critical and analytic skills have been developed.

F: Little evidence of even superficial understanding of the subject matter; weakness in critical, analytic, and/or writing skills; limited or irrelevant use of the literature.

50-52

D-

0.7

0-49

F

0.0

Late Policy

Essays may be submitted up to a week late with the automatic loss of one percentage point a day, to a maximum of seven points (e.g., 70% to 63%). Essays will not be accepted beyond a week after the due date except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. 

Essays

Aside from basic reference works (such as a college-level dictionary), secondary sources are neither required nor permitted for essays in this class: your essays should be the product of the text you write about and your own ideas about that text. Please read this short essay, How Not to Plagiarize. Here are some of the basic conventions for formatting academic essays in the humanities; for more detailed help with writing and documenting essays, follow the links below.

• Essays should be double-spaced throughout, with one-inch margins at the top, bottom, and both sides. Essay folders and cover pages are not necessary.

• Left-justify only (i.e., ragged right margin).

• Cite quotations parenthetically, for example: "reading is a pact of generosity between author and reader" (Sartre 55). Include a Works Cited list at the end of the paper.

• Use the same font and size for all text, including quotes.

• In North American "usage," commas and period go inside the closing "quote mark"; semi-colons and colons go outside the closing "quote mark." If your sentence ends with a parenthetical citation, the period goes after the "citation" (45).

• Titles of works published on their own, such as Ariel, should appear underlined or in italics; works published as part of larger works, for example "Daddy" in Ariel, appear in quote marks.

• Type dashes as em dashes (--), not as hyphens (-).

• All work of more than one page should be paginated in the upper right-hand corner.

• Indicate omissions from quoted sentences potentially mistakable for a full sentence in the source with an . . . ellipses.

Further Resources

The English Critical Essay, by Linda Hutcheon and Nancy Kang (advice on writing, organizing, and revising a critical essay, as well as MLA Documentation)

Essay Style and Editing

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

Writing at the University of Toronto 

Writing Plus: Academic Skills Workshops

The University of Toronto is committed to accessibility. If you require accommodations for a disability, or have any accessibility concerns about the course, the classroom or course materials, please contact Accessibility Services at   http://studentlife.utoronto.ca/accessibility.
 

We Knew Them When: Artist Survivors of ENG140

Musician Elliott Altilia (2004-05), film critic/actor Bil Antoniou (2005-06), actor Jamie Arfin (2003-04), musician Mike Ciani (2005-06), musician John Corrigan (TA, 2003-04), photographer John Currid (2008-09), jazz singer Nandita Dias (2003-04), musician Rob Duffy (2003-04), model Rebecca Dunham (2006-07), poet Triny Finlay (TA, 2004-05), rapper MC FÜBB (2004-05), comics artist Rosena Fung (2003-04), musician Robin Hatch (2006-07), musician Ross Hawkins (TA, 2006-07), columnist Joe Howell (2005-06), musician Ladan Hussein (2006-07) of Basket of Figs, music critic Graham Isador (2006-07), poet Yannick Marshall (2003-04), novelist Robert McGill (TA, 2004-05), percussionist Dan Morphy (2006-07), musician Craig Morrison (2006-07), music promoter Daniela Oliva (2004-05), playwright Aurora de Peña (2006-07), writer/musician Dave Proctor (2003-04), writer Nav Purewal (2003-04), writer/broadcaster Larry Solway (2003-04), filmmaker Jacob Stein (2004-05), Torontoist editor David Topping (2005-06), musician Chris Trigg (TA, 2006-07), musician Alex Werden of the London Parachutes (2005-06), musician Matt Wiesblatt (2008-09) of Cut Throat Britva, musician Alex Zenkovich (2008-09) of Invasions.

Updated 21 November 2009

nick.mount@utoronto.ca