E 328, The Novel in the Nineteenth Century
Summary
[this summary is dedicated to Christie Smith]
IMMEDIATE PRACTICAL GOALS to help students get and keep jobs:
[1] time management; [2] Literacy, esp. ability to read and follow directions
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS GOALS:[1] Discovery learning;[5] Leadership
UNIVERSAL GOAL OF UNITY
WRITING GOALS:strengthening our motivation (fear vs. love), our creativity (vs. writer’s block and perfectionism, etc.), time management (planning, goal setting, etc. vs. procrastination), polishing, punctuation, documentation, proofreading.Leadership writing: personal and leadership visions.
READING GOALS:discover and discuss the purposes of the university, the liberal arts, and the English major;discover our place in the history of the world and of our civilization, especially in the dialectics between Hellenism vs. Hebraism, pastoral vs. urban, Greco-Roman vs. Gothic, and modernism vs. antimodernism;know the primary features and context of the literature produced from about 1830 to about 1914;explore idea of the hero in literature
IMMEDIATE PRACTICAL GOALS to help students get and keep jobs.
Employers have made it clear that what they expect from a university graduate is [1] time management and proficiency in writing and reading.Time management (vs. procrastination) includes planning, goal setting, etc. [2] Literacy. According to “The National Assessment of Adult Literacy,” released by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, just 25 percent of college graduates . . . scored high enough on the tests to be deemed “proficient” from a literacy standpoint, which the government defines as “using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.” Literacy includes the [2] ability to read and follow directions. Even more important in terms of your future success than reading literature carefully is the ability to read directions carefully and follow them fully and faithfully. Employers regard that as a key asset, and of course see weakness in this area as a serious liability. You can not expect an employer to hold your hand throughout an assignment the way you may have expected your parents or teachers to do so. Now that you are in college you must make the transition clearly stated in the traditional address to Freshmen at Amherst College. Once you become an employee you will no longer have the luxury of demanding extensive clarifications of directions. If you do so, the employer may well figure he might as well do the job himself, and you will not be needed.
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS GOALS
We will keep all of these in mind. For example, [2] Freedom includes respect for Diversity, which many students consider the primary lesson learned at U. T. By using literature as the calisthenics of the sympathetic imagination we will increase our capacity for appreciating diversity. However, we will focus on two of the core values of this university: [5] Leadership and [1] Discovery.
[5] Leadership
will be the guiding theme of our reading and writing assignments, as explained
below.
[1] Throughout
the course we will adapt the discovery learning method
promoted by the College of Natural Sciences to reading and writing. As
you know from your own experience, if you do not use active learning, connecting
the subject to your own personal experience, it is soon forgotten and thus
you have, in fact, learned nothing. Discovery learning, also known as active
learning , has been used in English courses to explore the inner world, but,
like the natural sciences, we will also connect with "the
outer world." In
this course "outer
world"
mean primarily the world around you here on and near campus: the sense of
the “world” as your “sphere of action or thought; the ‘realm’ within which
one moves or lives” (OED). And
we will expand our sense of the word “reading” as well: all of your world
will be your text. We will approach it as semioticians, those who study all signs,
linguistic and non-linguistic, connecting literature when possible to art,
architecture, landscapes (geography), material culture (archeology), etc.
[4A] Our
goal is to learn to think for ourselves, decreasing reliance on secondary
sources, a key element of what is known as active, experiential or discovery
learning (as in science experiments, the Moore method in math, and Amherst
College’s Baird Freshman English course in the humanities).
[4B] A
key to learning to think for oneself is knowing oneself, one’s strengths
and weaknesses in learning, writing, reading, speaking, and listening.
UNIVERSAL GOAL OF UNITY
[5] Our goal is also unity, of the self, of the self and others, of the self and nature, of one subject and another, etc. Hence our course mottoes: "Only connect! . . .Live in fragments no longer.” E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22. “One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’. For days I could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]” William Butler Yeats (Nobel Prize, 1923; cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51 )
[5A] This is a central principle of Newman’s Idea of a University, for Newman emphasizes again and again the necessity of synthesis, connection between the various courses and activities of university life, to achieve a strong sense of university education as the unity it is supposed to be rather than the fragmented multiversity it all too often is.
[5B] Our goal is to maximize our potential by cultivating both sides of our brains, developing all our multiple intelligences.
[5C] Our goal is especially to connect the verbal to the visual arts and rhetorics (to architecture, landscape architecture, sculpture, murals, paintings, drawings) and to music including popular music such as Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, etc.
[5D] Hence we want to learn the new “writing” of multimedia and the internet, connecting writing to drawing and the visual arts; to experience writing as the product of collaboration as well as isolation; to learn to read with the right side of the brain as well as the left; improve speaking in discussion and before groups, including presentations and acting; and to improve listening, concentration, and the sympathetic imagination.
[6] WRITING GOALS
Improving our writing includes strengthening our motivation (fear vs. love), our creativity (vs. writer’s block and perfectionism, etc.), time management (planning, goal setting, etc. vs. procrastination), polishing, punctuation, documentation, proofreading.
[6A] Time management is vital in life, but especially in writing, because the secret of writing as discovery learning; of writing as innovative thinking; of writing as creativity; in short, of great writing, is rewriting. A key to rewriting is allowing enough time to elapse between drafts -- the opposite of procrastination. To teach the importance of this kind of time management, punctuation and proofreading will be stressed in the grading of student writing for they are good indications of how careful the student has been in his or her writing and how much time has been budgeted between drafts.
[6B] We
will also adapt the leadership techniques of personal
and leadership visions to formal writing. The first half of the semester will
culminate in a personal vision, focusing on what the writer is most
passionate about. The second half of the semester will culminate in a leadership vision,
specifying the actions to be taken to fulfill the personal vision.
In other words the ultimate goal of formal writing in the first half of the semester is:“to know thyself”: Self-awareness is essential not only for leadership, but for good writing for it enables self-management of time and emotional as well as intellectual resources.
On the other hand, the goal of formal writing for the second half of the semester is: to know that which is greater than the ego. Better awareness of the world beyond the ego, beyond the conscious self, is not only a characteristic of a leader but enables a writer to be open to great inspirations and to be able to tap resources far greater than those of an isolated self. “Only connect” is one of the key mottoes of our course, especially as applies to connecting to that which is beyond the isolated self.
We also want to learn the new “writing” of multimedia and the internet, connecting writing to drawing and the visual arts; and to experience writing as the product of collaboration as well as isolation.
[7] READING GOALS
[7A]
Our first reading goals will be to discover and discuss the purposes of the university,
the liberal arts, and the English major. One of the results, presumably,
will be increased motivation.
[7B] Generally, we will read to discover our place in the history of the world and of our civilization, especially in the dialectics between Hellenism vs. Hebraism, pastoral vs. urban, Greco-Roman vs. Gothic, and modernism vs. antimodernism.
[7C] Of course in classes on Victorian literature our primary reading goal will be to know the primary features and context of the literature produced from about 1830 to about 1914. Hence we will study the basic facts about the time and hypotheses such as the ostensible "disappearance of God," and the "pattern of conversion" to various alternative entities greater than the self.
[7D] Discovery learning. One of the best ways to experience the context of the Victorian era is to "read" Victorian architecture here on campus and nearby in our downtown. This is an example of active learning, integrating the subject into our own personal experience. Another is learning to read the literature with both sides of our brains, writing Discussion Board entries that include the personal memories and feelings generated by the literature.
[7E] Instead of organizing our writers chronologically they will be scheduled to facilitate discussion of the goals listed above and to explore concepts of leadership. This semester we will begin with some traditional concepts of the hero in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In Far from the Madding Crowd we encounter an alternative male role model, Gabriel Oak, and a potential feminist heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, who resists marriage at first. In Tale of Two Cities we discuss the martyrdom of a flawed hero, clearly evoking the Hebraic strain of western civilization. Romola presents us a with a heroine who must leave marriage behind and choose between Hebraism and Hellenism. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre also leaves her loved one, exploring other options for a heroine, before finally returning to the traditional ending. The heroine of her sister's novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, goes further, daring to leave her husband for good, challenging the Victorian sense of a heroine. We conclude with rebellious Alice, whose journey, so far at least, includes no husband at all. We will discouss what kind of a role model she presented to the Victorians.
