Final Arts- English Lecture Courses

Barry89

HI!

I'm trying to decide between two lecture courses. The times and days won't influence my decision (Even that 9am start! ) I'll be taking the course with 19th Century English Literature (which I chose over 19th C. American Lit.) Is there anybody with experience who could give me a shove in the right direction?

EN383 Literature & Culture: Romanticism
Romanticism represents one of the most important periods of innovation in literary history. This course
examines major figures in the movement, c. 1790-1820, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake,
Keats, and Shelley, and critics and satirists such as Thomas Love Peacock and Jane Austen. The
Romantics challenged inherited orthodoxies of subject matter and style in poetry and prose,
emphasizing the value of imagination and the sublime, childhood, superstition, and taboo subjects of
sexuality and violence.

Venue: Tuesday 5-6 IT250 and Thursday 11-12 AM250 Colm O’hEocha Theatre
Lecturer: Dr. Daniel Carey and Dr. Muireann O’Cinneide
Texts: Course Reader:
Includes selected writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, Keats, John
Clare, and lesser-known writers, as well as extracts from political commentators such
as Burke and Wollstonecraft. (The Course Reader will be available from Media
Services (Secretariat) on the Concourse)

Individual Texts:
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Maria Edgeworth, Belinda (1801)
Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821)
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
(These texts will be available from the College Bookshop.)
Assessment: End-of-Semester Examination


EN388 Studies in Modern Irish Literature
This course introduces students to the three major writers of the Irish literary renaissance: James Joyce,
W.B Yeats, and J.M. Synge. During the semester, we will consider how these writers sought to present
new visions of Ireland, both to the world and to the country itself. We will address the many creative
tensions in their writings: between tradition and modernity, patriotism and nationalism, high art and
popular culture, the Irish and English languages, and so on. A major feature of the course will be the
discussion of key episodes from Joyce’s Ulysses, but we will also read some of his short stories from
Dubliners. We will survey the poetic career of W.B Yeats, and will explore Synge’s The Playboy of the
Western World and his celebrated travelogue The Aran Islands.
Course material will be available on Blackboard.
Venue: Monday 4-5 O’Flaherty Theatre and Friday 9-10 AM250 Colm O’hEocha
Theatre
Lecturer: Dr. Patrick Lonergan
Texts: Required
James Joyce: Ulysses (Penguin)
James Joyce, Dubliners (Oxford World’s Classics)
WB Yeats, The Major Works (Oxford World’s Classics)
JM Synge, Complete Works (Wordsworth Poetry)
NOTE – these editions have been specifically chosen for the course, so you
are strongly advised not to purchase other editions.
Recommended
Harry Blamires, The New Bloomsday Book (contains a chapter-by-chapter
summary of Ulysses – much more reliable and accurate than material online)
Assessment: End-of-Semester Examination



Thanks!

CMBT

Hi OP,

I did EN383 Literature & Culture: Romanticism last year. I found the poetry quite boring and the individual texts tedious. The thing with the political extracts is that you can get alot of research and background on them, so you would have no problem writing about them.
I never had Daniel Carey, so can't comment on his lecturing Muireann O’Cinneide however, is hard to listen to (I found) and expects quite a high standard although she has a friendly personality.

My friend did EN388 Studies in Modern Irish Literature and while she found Ulysses exhaustingly long and confusing,(but worthwhile in the end) Dr. Patrick Lonergan is one of the best lecturers in the University never mind the English Department.
Anyway hope that is some help.

Barry89

Thanks for your help- I also have a choice within 19th Century Literature between English and American writers. I already am thinking along the English line but have you any personal or second-hand knowledge of either course?

OPTION A: The Nineteenth Century (English)
This course investigates selected British Victorian prose, poetry, fiction, and drama, considering the
ways in which Victorian writers offered different versions of national identity in response to political,
cultural and intellectual transitions in the period. It discusses how class conflict, gendered ideologies,
religious controversy, scientific discoveries and imperial ambitions shaped (and were in turn shaped
by) the literature of the period. Texts will include selections from the following authors: Dickens,
Gaskell, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Browning, Barrett Browning, Arnold, Carlyle, Kipling, Wilde,
Conrad.
Students wishing to read ahead should begin with Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton.
Venue: Wednesday 2-3 IT250 and Friday 1-2 Kirwan Theatre
Lecturers: Dr. Elizabeth Tilley and Dr. Muireann O’Cinneide
Texts: Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson, eds., The Norton Anthology of English
Literature: Volume E, The Victorian Age (New York and London, 2006).
(Available in the Book Store. Make sure you purchase the right volume).
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)
Assessment: End-of-Semester Examination


OPTION B: The Nineteenth Century (American)
The American section of the course focuses upon poetry, fiction and non-fiction from the mid-
nineteenth century with an emphasis on the way in which American writers are constructing a national
history, engaging with contemporary reform movements, such as abolitionism and women's rights, and
investigating religious belief. Texts include selections from Irving, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne,
Melville, Stowe, Dickinson, Douglass, Davis and Jacobs. Students wishing to read ahead should begin
with Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.
Venue: Wednesday 9-10 Cairnes Theatre and Friday 1-2 AM150 O’Tnuathail Theatre
Lecturers: Dr. Julia Carlson and Prof. Sean Ryder
Texts: Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volume B (1820-1865) (7th Rev edn)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Penguin edition).
Assessment: End-of-Semester Examination

CMBT

I personally preferred the American section of the course. Julia Carlson is really good at linking themes and topics between the poetry and the novels. Poetry is not my favourite thing in the world as regards writing about it in the exam, so you can get away without having to study it in an in-depth manner.
I did an American literature related course in 2nd year and wanted to continue on with that theme, and I found that this lecture did that. Never had Sean Ryder, so can't comment, but I found Julia Carlson to be very good. Unlike other English lectures you could actually get quality notes in her lectures.

Barry89

Thanks for your information!



Did anybody do the extended essay in place of a lecture course during the second semester? I'm of two minds right now--- I have the books that I would be interested in writing on but I hear so many ghost stories about people who work on the essay "from the beginning" and then get a low mark despite their efforts...anybody have any experience to share?

(Please note: the lectures available in the second semester will be the ones that were offered last year, but not necessarily in the same semester given that the following subjects are avilable this year for the 1st semester: English Writing of the 19th C, American Writing of the 19th C, Romanticism, Modern Irish Literature.)

Thanks in advance!:)