Dr. Yoder
English 4341.01     English Romantics: "Children, Idiots and Savages"
Spring 2009     TTh 1:40-2:55pm     Ross Hall 317

Office: Stabler Hall 501V     Office Hrs.: TTh 9:00-10:00am; W 4:00-5:00pm; also by appt.
Office Phone: 569-8321        email: rpyoder@ualr.edu       webpage: www.ualr.edu/rpyoder

Texts:

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Introduction and Commentary by Geoffrey Keynes.
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads, edited by Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter.
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein. Edited by Susan Wolfson.

Goals:

1. Students will read major works by William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley, considering those works both separately and intertextually.
2. Students will increase their skills in close reading and literary interpretation.
3. Students will explore key issues of authority and human development during the Romantic period.
4. Students will consider the impact of competing contexts for individual poems, in their original publication and in later anthologies.
5. Students will consider how the second generation of Romantics responded to the first generation of Romantics.
6. In class discussions students will come to see the flexibility of interpretation and subjective response to literature, while still basing interpretation in the text and its historical/social context.

Objectives:

1. Students will read cool stuff that will raise enable them to consider questions of authorship, human nature, and the relationship between the human and the divine, and between the human and history.
2. Students will write formally about literature as a way of recognizing that at some point the interpretive process must stop (however briefly), so that one's understanding can be assessed by others.
3. Students will write informally about literature as a way of learning that writing itself helps in the reading process, and that sharing this process creates a sort of group mind.
4. Students will participate in class discussions in order to share their insights and questions, and to compare their readings with other people.
5. Students will conduct research on topics of their own choosing as a means of extending their readings and discussion to the world outside of the classroom.

Course Assessment:
This course will include an ongoing assessment of my teaching in the form of weekly
journals. These journals consist of a 250 word (minimum requirement) written response to the
class readings or discussion. These journals allow me to assess how well students are
understanding what I think I am teaching them, and I make adjustments to my class
presentations and assignments accordingly. Taken as a whole, the journals count for 20% of
the student's final grade, thus insuring that the students take this assessment seriously.
The journals also serve other classroom purposes outlined on the "House Rules" page.

Secondary Education Assessement:
See "For Secondary Education Majors" page.

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For Secondary Education Minors
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