I'll be doing English next year...

Kovik

...assuming there's a massive collapse in points. Anyway, I thought I'd humour/torture myself by getting ahead on the reading requirements for the course during the summer. Can anyone tell me when the reading list gets published and where I can get it from?

claire h

You could get in touch with Diane, the executive officer for Freshman students - contact info is up at http://www.tcd.ie/English/contact/ - she'll post out the reading list when it's available if you leave in an SAE.

Not sure when exactly it gets done up, but I do know that a lot of the time it's just the previous year's reading list - I got mine in October and several of the texts changed when the courses were actually taught, so it's not a 100% reliable list.

Kovik

You speak wisdom. You may put on the wisdom hat and stand upon the intelligence stool.

Thank you!

Squoosh

English Studies, not TSM?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you'll be subjected to the torture of Old English! Suffer! And it's the one subject you can't fail! Mwahahahahahaha, so glad I'm done and dusted with that.


Ah no. It's not that bad. Not really. Well it is, but you only have one term of it, the last. You'll survive. Probably. Possibly.

Kovik

Well I have English TSM along with Film put down as my first choice, with pure English as my second. Will I get enough points for either? Only time will tell.

Actually, no. No I won't.

Squoosh

I have an actually useful post to add this time; if you know someone who'll get you into the Trinity local site (someone who goes there that is) they could get you into the examination papers section for English Junior Fresh. The exam papers have questions on almost every book on the course, so you'll get a good idea of what you should be reading from that.

I'd copy and paste them for you, but my Adobe Reader isn't working for some unknown reason and they're all pdf files.

Hope this is a bit more help than the last one!

europerson

According to the exam papers, it looks like you should look at:

• Matthew Arnold
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• Roman Jakobson
• Roland Barthes
• Sigmund Freud
• Michel Foucault
• Louis Pierre Althusser
• Ania Loomba
• Edward Said
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Jean Baudrillard
• Jean-François Lyotard
• Walter Benjamin
• Jacques Lacan
• Antonio Gramsci
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• Jane Austen
• Thomas Hardy
• Kate Chopin
• Virginia Woolf
• Edmund White
• Jeanette Winterson
• William Butler Yeats
• James Joyce
• Seán O'Casey
• Patrick Kavanagh
• John McGahern
• Seamus Heaney
• Eavan Boland
• Tom Murphy
• Patrick McCabe
• Edmund Burke
• William Blake
• William Godwin
• John Barrell
• Virgil
• John Milton
• John Dryden
• Henry Fielding
• John Gay
• Samuel Richardson
• William Wordsworth
• Laurence Sterne
• Klas Östergren
• Peter van Diest
• Henry Medwall
• Sir Philip Sidney
• JW Lever
• Thomas Kyd
• Thomas Dekker
• Francis Beaumont
• John Webster
• William Shakespeare
• Christopher Marlowe
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Klaus Mann
• Thomas Mann
• Hector Berlioz
• Oscar Wilde
• Mikhail Bulgakov
• Sophocles
• Jean Racine
• Henrik Ibsen
• Niccolò Machiavelli
• Benjamin Jonson
• Molière
• Dion Boucicault
• Anton Chekhov
• William Langland
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Cynewulf
• Some Anglo-Saxon stuff of unknown provenance

europerson

By the way, don't take that as a complete list. I'm sure the English Department would change their courses every year.

punka

I think you have to read Dryden's translation of the Aeneid at some point in first year. Read that, it's amazing, and by far the best English translation that exists.

Crash

You know Europerson, i think i shall make it my mission to read one of each from that list this summer either that or finish off the reading list from the 4th year gothic and horror fiction course - Darryl Jones has good taste in books

hrmm never did finish "the monk"...

John

&#231 wrote: »

hrmm never did finish "the monk"...

Do, it's quite good towards the end.

Crash

I foolishly started reading it just prior to the leaving cert - will have to get it out of the library.

John

I read it a couple of months ago, I was attracted by the very dramatic cover of a demon carrying a man through the air.

Crash

actually - if you like lovecraft and that sort of thing, give M R James a read - ghost storyesque version of lovecraft -much better written overall.

Oh, and look for a book called perfume - (translated from the german Das Parfum) by Patrick Süskind - very dark, and an excellent read.

Also Angela Carter's bloody chambers and other stories - reworkings of old fairy tales - a feminist leaning but despite that a good read :P

John

Thanks, being the only other person I know to have heard of The Monk I will be more than willing to take a risk on these. Oh and I will see your recommendations with Count Stenbock. Quite hard to find but a big influence on Lovecraft. I think you'd like him.

Kovik

Wow. Thanks all.

Are specific works by those authors typically specified for the course?

The Monk is teh sex0r, by the way.

Squoosh

[*]Matthew Arnold
[*]Ferdinand de Saussure
[*]Roman Jakobson
[*]Roland Barthes
[*]Sigmund Freud
[*]Michel Foucault
[*]Louis Pierre Althusser
[*]Ania Loomba
[*]Edward Said
[*]Pierre Bourdieu
[*]Jean Baudrillard
[*]Jean-François Lyotard
[*]Walter Benjamin
[*]Jacques Lacan
[*]Antonio Gramsci
[*]Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
[*]Jane Austen
[*]Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
[*]Kate Chopin - The Awakening
[*]Virginia Woolf - Orlando
[*]Edmund White
[*]Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
[*]William Butler Yeats
[*]James Joyce - Dubliners
[*]Seán O'Casey
[*]Patrick Kavanagh
[*]John McGahern
[*]Seamus Heaney
[*]Eavan Boland
[*]Tom Murphy
[*]Patrick McCabe
[*]Edmund Burke - extracts only
[*]William Blake - extracts only
[*]William Godwin
[*]John Barrell
[*]Virgil -
[*]John Milton - Paradise Lost
[*]John Dryden - Aeneid translation
[*]Henry Fielding
[*]John Gay
[*]Samuel Richardson - Pamela
[*]William Wordsworth
[*]Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
[*]Klas Östergren
[*]Peter van Diest
[*]Henry Medwall
[*]Sir Philip Sidney - wonderful, read everything of his
[*]JW Lever
[*]Thomas Kyd - Spanish Tragedy (?)
[*]Thomas Dekker
[*]Francis Beaumont
[*]John Webster
[*]William Shakespeare
[*]Christopher Marlowe
[*]Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust
[*]Klaus Mann
[*]Thomas Mann
[*]Hector Berlioz
[*]Oscar Wilde
[*]Mikhail Bulgakov
[*]Sophocles
[*]Jean Racine
[*]Henrik Ibsen
[*]Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince
[*]Benjamin Jonson
[*]Molière
[*]Dion Boucicault
[*]Anton Chekhov
[*]William Langland - Piers Plowman
[*]Geoffrey Chaucer
[*]Cynewulf - in Old English book
[*]Some Anglo-Saxon stuff of unknown provenance - in Old English book


Alright, the stuff in red is all in the Critical and Cultural Theory book which I really can't remember the name of right now. The stuff in blue (except for the Shakespeare) is all in the Kinney editions of either Medieval Drama: An Anthology or Renaissance Drama: An Anthology. Do NOT, I repeat do NOT buy either of these. It's a total waste of money (loads of people in my first year bought either one or the other without realising that all the plays weren't in both, and they're really expensive) and you can get them on long loan from the library, if you get there quick. The stuff in green I am reasonably sure is all given to you on handouts in The Essay course - they'll be fairly compact and won't take too long to read. Oh, and don't worry about the Old English stuff. Just get the book when you get the list.

I've stuck in the titles of novels that I can remember; you may as well read as much Austen and Shakespeare as you can though, they're both going to pop up again and again. Richardson's Pamela is WITHOUT DOUBT the worst novel I have ever, ever read. It is awesomely excruciating. But you have to read it, so you can go through the bonding experience of hating it with everyone else. And it is the first real novel blah blah blah blah. It's still rubbish.


Hope that's useful!

claire h

Kovik wrote:

Are specific works by those authors typically specified for the course?

Yep. Most courses (and exam qs) are text-specific rather than author-specific (unless you're looking at a poet or a literary theorist/critic).

Austen turned up on three JF courses this year (or possibly more, someone from SH may have some to add) - Pride & Prejudice on the Lit & Sex course, and Northanger Abbey on The Hero and Romanticism & Revolution. Most of the other writers only show up once, with one particular text to look at.

ETA adding to Squoosh's list:

Jane Austen - Pride & Prejudice, Northanger Abbey
Edmund White - A Boy's Own Story [not on course 05/06, replaced with Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray]
Charlotte Bronte - Villette [05/06, anyway]
James Joyce - The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Patrick Kavanagh - The Great Hunger
John McGahern - Amongst Women
Seamus Heaney - any poetry that deals with memory/cultural history/archaeology etc
Tom Murphy - Bailegangaire
Patrick McCabe - The Butcher Boy
William Godwin - Caleb Williams
John Gay - The Beggar's Opera
William Wordsworth - The Prelude
Laurence Sterne - The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Elizabeth Bowen - The Last September
Charlotte Lennox - The Female Quixote
Matthew Lewis - The Monk [which, as has already been established, beats yer standard soap any day of the week for drama and craziness]

Pet

John McGahern - Amongst Women

I hated this book, and yet I liked Cat's Eye...(shut up, Dec)

What kind of novel is Richardson's Pamela?

Crash

William Godwin - Caleb Williams

you know, i'm almost sure i've read this, but its somewhat non existant in my mind...

Squoosh

Pet wrote:

What kind of novel is Richardson's Pamela?

It's an epistolatory novel, first published in 1740, and one of the very first - if not the very first - novels ever published or written. That fact, however, doesn't make it any less absolutely awful. It's terrible. It's preachy, annoying, unbelievable, irritating, hard to read, and downright patronising. If I could find Richardson today I'd punch him.

Don't do it unless you HAVE to.

Oh I've just remembered - the Henry Fielding book on the course is Joseph Andrews.

Kovik

Hey, thanks again. I'll go pick up a few of those titles today. It seems I've read some of them which makes me feel all prepared and 1337 and such.

I offer you love.

fiveone

Or you could, you know, read what you actually want to while you still have time on your hands. Everythings relavent anyway. Im slightly sceptical of the "head-start" mentality but I suppose it'll be of use to you.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Sabre_wolf wrote:

Accepts love on behalf of the forum.

Sabre_wolf...though you made a grammar error in one of your posts ;_;

Kovik

lydonst wrote:

Or you could, you know, read what you actually want to while you still have time on your hands. Everythings relavent anyway. Im slightly sceptical of the "head-start" mentality but I suppose it'll be of use to you.

Well, some dude at the open day told me, essentially, that it was vital to do so. And I'm not going to argue with a bald man.

Right_Side

Kovik wrote:

Well, some dude at the open day told me, essentially, that it was vital to do so. And I'm not going to argue with a bald man.

If I were you I'd just enjoy my time off. Course content changes very frequently.

It will mean more to you if you do it first in lectures anyway... thats their function... otherwise we could just get a reading list sent to us and do an exam in May!

Squoosh

Kovik wrote:

Well, some dude at the open day told me, essentially, that it was vital to do so. And I'm not going to argue with a bald man.

Yeah, he lied to you, nobody does that. Ever.

Murv

HA. Reading. I remember I thought I had to do that. Dark days they were.

sterculelum

Just out of curiosity... how many books are English students expected to read throughout the course of the year... and how much time do they have to do it? And how many hours lectures? Is it tough??

sterculelum

sterculelum wrote:

Just out of curiosity... how many books are English students expected to read throughout the course of the year... and how much time do they have to do it? And how many hours lectures? Is it tough??

On the final point, you'll be hard pressed to find a course in college that is 'easy', especially given that one person's strength is another person's weakness.

Lectures I don't think is that many, and am even unsure if it makes it into double figures, though that might depend if you're doing TSM or Single Honours.

Looksee at the School Handbook (you're looking at JF - Junior Freshman, i.e. 1st year; SH = Single Honours, TSM = Two Subject Moderatorship) here: http://www.tcd.ie/English/assets/docs/School_Handbook_%202006-2007.pdf. It mentions about the different exams you take, and even details the deadlines for the essays you have to hand in (which is quite handy. I always get additional assignments from random lecturers not knowing that we have other assignments due).

This thread, in fact, has some suggestions for whom and/or what you should read, as well as a response by someone about their impression of the reading list. Look again!

sterculelum

Myth wrote:

On the final point, you'll be hard pressed to find a course in college that is 'easy', especially given that one person's strength is another person's weakness.

Lectures I don't think is that many, and am even unsure if it makes it into double figures, though that might depend if you're doing TSM or Single Honours.

Looksee at the School Handbook (you're looking at JF - Junior Freshman, i.e. 1st year; SH = Single Honours, TSM = Two Subject Moderatorship) here: http://www.tcd.ie/English/assets/docs/School_Handbook_%202006-2007.pdf. It mentions about the different exams you take, and even details the deadlines for the essays you have to hand in (which is quite handy. I always get additional assignments from random lecturers not knowing that we have other assignments due).

This thread, in fact, has some suggestions for whom and/or what you should read, as well as a response by someone about their impression of the reading list. Look again!

Ah well obviously it's not "easy"... I'm just wondering like what standard in say Leaving Cert English grade you'd want to be or how difficult it is to keep on top of the course and everything...

Thanks for link and everything tho.

John

It's very different to leaving cert english so I don't think you can say that everyone that gets an A1 in higher level English would do better than those who got a C3. There's a lot of books to read, that's the reason there's so few lectures. As far as I know, you're given a reading list of core texts and are expected to read them all. In practice, no one reads them all but concentrates on a proportion of them, reading the necessary secondary texts (i.e. books of criticism, related works by the same or other authors, historical books for a frame of reference, etc.). I did science but in third year took the broad curriculum literature course and we were expected to read 1-2 books a week for what was essentially a part time course that didn't count towards my degree. However, I didn't read them all and got a first in the end.

I think if you're into reading a wide variety of works and prepared to write about them then English would be no bother.

Dave3x

First year lectures are about 12 hours a week (for English/Philosophy anyway).

The bulk of the course really is the reading- at its peak you'll be expected to finish a thick novel in three days while doing your other subject in TSM and possibly even writing an essay. That's probably why you were advised to get a 'head start'.

It is only 'vital' if you plan on doing all the work that's assigned to you- which no-one does. You couldn't possibly read everything you're expected to and still have a life (please- no-one post and say 'I did'-it'll just make me feel inadequate).

I too would advise you to read something you WANT to read, as once the course starts, you'll be told what to read for so long reading for pleasure usually waits until the holidays.

That said, it's a great course. Arm yourself with some anti-feminist views to make Literature & Sexualities tutorials much more fun (there's a strong majority of women in English).

Crash

If you can include a sentence such as

"with the loss the of the word 'actress' due to it being considered discriminatory against women, and it being replaced by 'female actor' (if specification is needed), I hereby propose that the term woman is actually similarly discriminatory, and as such should be replaced by the term 'female man' (if specification is needed)."

i'll give you a shiny penny.

claire h

Dave3x wrote:

It is only 'vital' if you plan on doing all the work that's assigned to you- which no-one does. You couldn't possibly read everything you're expected to and still have a life (please- no-one post and say 'I did'-it'll just make me feel inadequate).

I second this. The reading lists are crazy and anyone who has read everything should be shot or something.

sterculelum wrote:

how many books are English students expected to read throughout the course of the year... and how much time do they have to do it?

I think I only actually finished about ten or so books last year (first year English, TSM), got halfway through a bunch more (hint: don't even start anything by Richardson. Just don't. Just - yeah.), plus read a handful of essays and bits from Beginning Theory (aka Literary Theory For Dummies) for the critical theory course.

The way it works is that there's usually a text per lecture (novel/play/bunch of poems/whatever), and you've 3 or 6 lectures a week depending on whether you're TSM or SH, and in an ideal world you'd also do background reading et al. How it works in practise is that you've 6 tutorials per 9-week term, again in every subject, and that'll cover most of the texts, so you tend to focus on those ones. (And if you want to be super-lazy/typical arts student, you'll focus on the one you have to do a presentation on, and also write your essay on that.) So it's a few books a week, depending on how diligent you want to be (and with essay and exam Qs what they are, it'd be impractical to read everything, honestly).

It's fun, though.

[eta after reading crash's post:] Also, there is cracked-out feminist theory. Some of which is readable and groovy, and some of which was clearly written when the authors were high on something. Hee.

ApeXaviour

&#231 wrote: »

If you can include a sentence such as

"with the loss the of the word 'actress' due to it being considered discriminatory against women, and it being replaced by 'female actor' (if specification is needed), I hereby propose that the term woman is actually similarly discriminatory, and as such should be replaced by the term 'female man' (if specification is needed)."

i'll give you a shiny penny.

That's quality..lmao

And I'll give you a euro (I'm out of shiny pennies sorry) to go around campus approaching female students with a petition to "end women's suffrage".

Pet

Oh dear God, are ANY of us sleeping? I'm talking to kev on msn as well..

Stargal

Yeah it's funny how active the TCD forum has been tonight! I've counted at least 10 of us online since I got here around 1.30am

Nietzschean

Pet wrote:

Oh dear God, are ANY of us sleeping? I'm talking to kev on msn as well..

i slept for a solid 12 hours last night if its any use...........

lilmizzme

Is it true, that at some stage, you will be reading about 6 novels a week just to keep up??It's a rumor, a scary rumor, Ive been hearing!

Edit:Typos

Sounds like BS

King.Penguin

you have to read 6 novels at the same time, literally, the same time. you position the books on the table, then you stand far away and process the books in images of whole pages. it's an invaluable skill to have.

lilmizzme

so, you don't have to read 6 in a week??

claire h

lilmizzme wrote:

so, you don't have to read 6 in a week??

Actually, it can come pretty close, if you're single honors English. For lectures it doesn't make much of a difference, but for tutorials, which you'll have about 2/3 of the time (there are 'reading weeks' dotted throughout the year) it's sort of expected that you'll have read the text-of-the-week (not necessarily a novel) more often than not, so if you've six tutorials a week you can see how that works out. Even if you're only going to focus on a couple of texts per course, which is really what you need to do for most of them, you'll have to do more reading than just the texts (literary criticism, etc) for essays and exams.

... scared yet? You get used to it, honestly. You just start the long ones a bit early, avoid the ones you know you'll never get through, and learn how to get through a tutorial by commenting insightfully on the 20 pages you've actually read...

lilmizzme

It's just the horrible feeling I have that once I get there, it'll all be too hard and Ill run screaming from the place by the end of the first semester.....and by the looks of that reading list, I thin I should have start preparing at the start of secondary school....eek!! :eek:

lilmizzme

lilmizzme wrote:

It's just the horrible feeling I have that once I get there, it'll all be too hard and Ill run screaming from the place by the end of the first semester.....and by the looks of that reading list, I thin I should have start preparing at the start of secondary school....eek!! :eek:

There's a learning curve in every subject. In college you aren't spoonfed things as much as you are in school... for example, in another thread on here, a poor soul who does BESS mentioned how a lecturer used to write up some figures, then the words "after some Algebra", and then the answer.

Don't get scared off courses before you've even started them. You will adapt. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own.

Wait, scratch the last two.

Dave3x

A note on exams:

Usually, you have a question on every text in a course in the first two years.

3 questions x 3 exams= 9 texts per year.

However, some evil person in English decided to phrase EVERY question in the Victorianism section this year as "discuss overreated our outdated approach to X *in any two texts on your course*."

Partly informational, partly ranting.

claire h

lilmizzme wrote:

It's just the horrible feeling I have that once I get there, it'll all be too hard and Ill run screaming from the place by the end of the first semester.....and by the looks of that reading list, I thin I should have start preparing at the start of secondary school....eek!! :eek:

Ah, it's not too hard. It sounds like a lot of reading, but you'll have the time for it - firstly because you'll only have 10-14 hours per week (depending on whether you're TSM or single honors) in class, secondly because if you bring a book with you to read while waiting for buses/people/whatever, you'd get a lot of it done. You might feel like you should be doing more and reading more, as most people tend to, but at the end of the day you really only need a couple of texts per course.

Dave3x wrote:

some evil person in English

Heh, apparently that gentleman's papers for the sophister courses he teaches were equally evil. I am not a fan, I have to say.

mattysullivan

I'll be starting English Studies like some of you here...

Swoosh *over my head* on most of the books just mentioned.

Just thought I'd come out and comfort the other slow and lazy readers attempting English.

Ash1590

ok im thinkin about switching to english through trinity.. does anyone have the reading list of a module and a seminar question or something?? also anyone know what people who did english as a tsm subject are doing now?

*Miss Ní C*

I really hope I get the points for English, it seems like such an amazing course!
I'm terrified that I'll be absolutely brutal at English in college and end up failing, or something. So I'm really looking forward to it, but dreading it at the same time!