Dr. Yoder
Fall 2009        English 3331.02       Major British Writers I
Writing Assignments

All formal essays should be typed, double-spaced, with your name, course name and number, my name and the date on the first page. Number all pages after the first, preferably in the upper right hand corner. Please do not hesitate to call me or to make an appointment to discuss your papers with me. For suggestions on style, see Doc Yoder's Tips for Writers; for Guidelines for Quotations, look here. Now you have no excuses.

Journals: 250 words weekly       Due: No later than 6:00am on Thursdays.       Grade Value: 20% Total
Weekly informal journals provide an opportunity for you to reflect on and respond to the readings and discussions, develop ideas for your papers, and continue our classroom conversations after class. The journals also allow me to get to know your writing so that I can provide better advice and feedback on your papers. Finally, your journals are part of the class assessment process, allowing me to assess how well you are learning what I think I am teaching. In some ways the weekly journals will be the most important of the writing assignments. Your weekly journals should be no less than a full typed page (roughly 250 words), and they should be about some aspect of the class. Journals that stop only at "I like this; I do not like that" remarks will receive no credit. Instead you should use the journals as a way to engage the writers and to try to understand some aspect of their work individually or in relation to each other. The individual journal entries will not be graded, so the best approach is to try to have fun thinking about the work: speculate, venture, invent, try out new ideas, think through problems. These journals should be posted to the course listserve and are due by 6:00am on Thursday, so that everyone has a chance to read them before class; journals not received by the start of class on Thursday will not be accepted. Your "journal" grade will be based on the percentage of the total number that you actually submit. NO LATE JOURNALS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

Unit Papers: 3-4pp. (750-1000 words)        Due: Sept. 22, Oct. 13, Nov. 10, Dec. 7

• Unit 1: Brutus, Chaucer, Everyman
  1. Discuss the role of view of women and marriage in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale." What does the wife seem to think about her position in life or about marriage? Do the ideas of her prologue coincide with the ideas in her tale?
  2. Discuss the sequence of events in Everyman. Is there a logic behind the order in which he meets the other characters? Is that logic dramatic, moral, didactic or something else? Who are his friends and enemies? Which ones does he meet first, last and in between? Why?


• Unit 2: Spenser and Shakespeare
  1. Discuss the structure or imagery of "Epithalamion." If you consider the structure, what is the movement of the poem? How is the poem organized? If you consider the imagery, what the imagery suggest about the poet's attitude toward marriage or his bride?
  2. Discuss the idea of either villainy or madness in King Lear. In discussing villainy, you might consider the degrees of villainy or the motives, or you might consider the question of mistaken villainy. Aside from the obvious villains of the poem, are there characters who also might be considered villains? In discussing madness, you might consider the issue of real vs feigned madness, as well how the imagery, setting or staging influences or reinforces the audience's perception of madness.


• Unit 3: Metaphysical, Milton, Restoration
  1. Discuss the imagery and/or structure of one of the poems by Donne, Herbert, Dryden, Rochester or Behn.
  2. Discuss one of the verse paragraphs in Lycidas. You should consider its position in the poem -- how it follows the verse paragraph before it and how it relates to the verse paragraph following it. You might also consider the dominant imagery of the verse paragraph or how it fits into the tradition of pastoral elegy.
  3. Discuss the development of ONE of the two conversations in Paradise Lost Book IX that lead to the fall -- either the argument between Adam and Eve (ll. 192-407), or the temptation scene between Satan and Eve (ll. 510-790). What is the nature of the argument and response on either side of the conversations? What sorts of appeals are made? Where do the missteps or errors occur? When is it too late to go back?


• Unit 4: Eighteenth Century
  1. Are the Houyhnhnms as good as Gulliver thinks, or are the humans as bad as he thinks? What evidence does Swift offer that might mitigate Gulliver's judgements?
  2. Discuss the character of either Belinda or the Baron in The Rape of the Lock. How kind of imagery does Pope use to depict the character and his or her motives? Does Pope seem to have mixed feelings about either character? What evidence is there in the poem for your assessment?
  3. Compare and contrast the various depictions of the poet in Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. How many times is the poet depicted? Do the descriptions agree? How self-aware is the poet of the way he is perceived by the community?

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