Syllabus for English 9

The course description, the requirements, and the grading policy are available online, as is a complete list of suggested additional reading. All the course readings are also available on the gopher.

16 January

The Classical World

There are many classical texts in English translation. Oxford's Alex catalogues them by date, splitting the eighth through first century BCE from the first century CE. Mythology is treated in alt.mythology. The Bryn Mawr Classical Review, edited by Jim O'Donnell, includes reviews of many books on the ancient world, including the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Metamorphoses. See also Homer and Ovid in the additional readings section.

18 January

20 January

23 January

25 January

27 January

• The Creation (pp. 29-31);
• The Ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron (pp. 31-33);
• Cadmus (pp. 74-77);
• Actaeon (pp. 77-80);
• Tireseias (pp. 82-83);
• Echo & Narcissus (pp. 83-87);
• Pyramus & Thisbe (pp. 95-98).

30 January

• Mars & Venus (pp. 98-99);
• Tereus, Procne, & Philomela (pp. 146-53);
• Daedalus & Icarus (pp. 183-86);
• Orpheus & Eurydice (pp. 225-26);
• Pygmalion (pp. 231-32);
• The Death of Orpheus (pp. 246-48).

The Bible

There are dozens of Internet Bible resources. Check out soc.religion.christian.bible-study and alt.christnet.bible. See also the additional readings.

1 February

• the Creation (Genesis 1-2);
• the Temptation and Fall (Genesis 3);
• Cain & Abel (Genesus 4:1-16);
• the birth of Moses (Exodus 1:7-2:10);
• the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17);
• the ten plagues (Exodus 6-12);
• the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14).

3 February

• the Nativity:
  1. Matthew (Matthew 1-2);
  2. Luke (Luke 2);
  3. John (John 1:1-27);
• the Passion:
  1. Mark (Mark 14-16);
  2. Luke (Luke 22-24);
  3. John (John 18-21);;
• the Parables of the Ten Virgins and the Talents (Matthew 25);
• the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:1-32);
• Lazarus Resurrected (John 11);
• turning water into wine (John 2:1-25).

Medieval Literature

There is an excellent collection of Medieval resources on the Internet called the Labyrinth. We also maintain pointers to most Medieval mailing lists. The Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, co-edited by Jim O'Donnell, includes reviews of many books on the Medieval world, including Chaucer. See also Chaucer and Sir Gawain in the additional readings section.

6 February

8 February

10 February

13 February

15 February

The Renaissance

There are countless resources on the Renaissance. Check out Alex (by author, not period; the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are improperly catalogued) and our list of mailing lists. The Renaissance gets short-shrifted in this class, since the great Renaissance narratives, such as The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, would eat up too much of the semester, and many of the greatest works of the period are dramatic and lyric. See Columbus and Shakespeare in the additional readings section.

17 February

There's an online exhibition related to Columbus at the Library of Congress.

20 Feb

The Eighteenth Century

C18-L is the best Internet source for eighteenth-century studies; it's available as a newsgroup. I've assembled other eighteenth-century resources as well. See also Pope, Swift, and Boswell in the additional readings section.

22 February

24 February

27 February

1 March

3 March

6 March

8 March

10 March

13 March

15 March

17 March

The Nineteenth Century

Alex includes many nineteenth-century E-Texts from both England and America. We also maintain pointers to most Romantic and Victorian mailing lists. See also Coleridge and Douglass in the additional readings section.

20 March

22 March

24 March

The ballads listed here aren't restricted to the nineteenth century; some go all the way back to the seventeenth. There are good folk music resources on the rec.music.folk newsgroup, and some very good web sites at FolkWeb, FolkBook, and the Folk Music Home Page. See also the additional readings section.

27 March

29 March

31 March

3 April

5 April

• Hawthorne, "The Birthmark" (pp. 27-42);
• Edgar Allen Poe (pp. 43-60);
• Arthur Conan Dole.

7 April

The Twentieth Century (and Beyond)

Alex has many twentieth-century E-Texts from around the world. Since copyright is still a problem on most recent texts, the selection is idiosyncratic (not to say perverse). We also maintain pointers to most twentieth-century mailing lists. See also short stories, Nabokov, and hypertext in the additional reading ssection.

10 April

• James Joyce, "Grace" (pp. 255-74);
• D. H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" (pp. 275-89);
• Katherine Mansfield, "Woman at the Store" (pp. 300-309).

12 April

• Katherine Anne Porter, "Flowering Judas" (pp. 310-21);
• Eudora Welty, "A Vision of Charity" (pp. 411-16);
• Flannery O'Connor, "Parker's Back" (pp. 501-19).

14 April

17 April

19 April

21 April

24 April

26 April

Check out alt.hypertext for discussions of new directions for hypertext.

28 April