Red Deer College
English 340 A: English Literature—The Middle Ages to the Present
Fall 2014 / Winter 2015
Room 2208
MTR 3:00pm-3:50pm
Instructor: Dr. Roger Davis
Office: 2506E
Phone: 403-342-3269
email: [email protected]
Office Hours: Monday 2-3pm, or by appointment
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
A historical survey of representative literature in English from the Middle Ages to the
present. Prerequisite: English 219 and 220 or 6 credits of Junior (200 level) English.
Students lacking the prerequisite must identify themselves to the instructor no later
than the second class.
Please note: Students cannot take more than one of the following courses for credit:
English 200, English 304, and English 340.
OBJECTIVES TO BE COVERED:
By the end of this course, a student should
 be familiar with the origins and subsequent development of literature written in
English
 understand the connections between literature and its historical or ideological
context
 be aware of the broad social, intellectual, and literary features of the various periods
into which British literature is usually categorized
 have a more refined capacity to read carefully, think critically, and challenge fixed
assumptions
 possess the ability to structure a unified, logically organized, coherent, written
argument (essay) in which detailed evidence is brought to bear on a unified thesis
 have a solid working vocabulary of critical and literary terminology possess a
respect for the written word, and an ability to write in precise, concise, lively, and
forceful sentences
 possess the ability and willingness to participate actively in challenging discussion
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Black, Joseph, et al., eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Concise ed. 2
vols. Peterborough: Broadview P, 2009. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke. 2nd ed. Peterborough:
Broadview P, 1999. Print.
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. N.p.: Seal, 2003. Print.
WRITING REQUIREMENTS:
Students will submit a minimum of 3000 words of written work during each term; this
work normally will be marked and returned within two weeks of its submission.
Assignments will consist of the following:
one shorter essay of approximately 1000-1250 words each term (15% each)
one longer essay of approximately 1500-2000 words each term (20% each)
one class presentation and write-up each term (5% each)
reflective writing assignments and final portfolio each term (5% each)
informal in-class or take home writing assignments and participation (10%)
Mark Breakdown and Due Dates:
Essay 1
Essay 2
Essay 3
Essay 4
Presentation 1
Presentation 2
Reflective Writing 1
Reflective Writing 2
Participation 1
Participation 2
Oct. 10
Dec. 2
Feb. 23
Apr. 10
Fall
Winter
Nov. 28
Apr. 6
Dec. 2
Apr. 10
Grading System
Grade
Grade Point
A+
4.0
A
4.0
A3.7
B+
3.3
B
3.0
B2.7
C+
2.3
C
2.0
C1.7
D+
1.3
D
1.0
F
0.0
15%
20%
15%
20%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
Description
Excellent
Good
Satisfactory
Pass
Fail
N.B.: Although D+ and D are passing grades at Red Deer College, they might not be
passing grades for students transferring to other universities.
Important Dates
Fall 2014
September 3
courses.
Full-Year 2014 – 2015 courses
First day of classes for Fall term 2014 and Full-Year 2014-2015
September 11
October 7
October 13
November 10
November 11
December 3
Winter 2015
January 2
January 5
February 16
February 17-20
March 3
March 13
April 3
April 6
session -evening)
April 7
April 10
April 10
April 15-21
April 23
April 27
April 29
May 9
2015 written.
Last day to register late or add/drop Fall term 2014 and Full-year
2014-2015 courses.
Last day to have tuition refunded for Fall term 2014 and Full-Year
2014-2015 courses.
Emergency Response Day.
Thanksgiving Day; college closed.
College open. No credit classes.
Remembrance day. College closed.
Last day of classes for Fall term.
College open. No credit classes.
First day of classes for Winter term. Mid-term feedback date for
Full-year courses.
Family Day; College closed.
Mid-term break. No credit classes.
Emergency Response Day.
Final exams schedule posted.
Good Friday; College closed.
Perspectives: Canada in the World: Margaret Atwood (Public
Perspectives: Canada in the World: Margaret Atwood (Student
session, 9:30-10:30 a.m.)
Last day to withdraw from Full-year courses are receive a WD.
Last day of classes for Winter term and Full-year courses.
Final exams written.
Deferred exams for Winter term 2015 and Full-year 2014-2015
courses written.
Last day for submission for final grades for Winter term courses.
Final grades available.
Supplemental exams for Winter term 2015 and Full-year 2014-
Instructor’s Course Policies:
1. If you email me, please ensure that a) you address me properly (Hi Roger or Dear Dr.
Davis); b) you use proper email etiquette; and c) I can identify who you are and the class
in which you are enrolled. If your email is [email protected], please make
sure you identify yourself in the body of the email. Please do not expect an overnight or
immediate response to emails, especially when sent after normal business hours. I will
respond to emails within two business days, perhaps sooner.
2. Class participation includes not only attending class but also arriving to class on time,
actively engaging in class discussion and group work, having reading done before class and
completing informal assignments throughout the course.
3. I encourage students to discuss ideas with me during office hours. Office hours are
specific times set aside for assistance or discussion: I am available during these times to
discuss matters relevant to this class. I request that students have specific ideas ready for
discussion when visiting me during office hours, even if it is just something you are
struggling to understand. If you wish to discuss any course material, please see me during
my office hours and we can work through things. Please be advised that my office hours
may get busy around assignment due dates, and I may not be able to accommodate
everyone. Appointments are recommended, and appointment lengths may vary if volume is
high.
4. I recommend that assignments should be submitted in both paper copy (hard copy) and
as an attachment via email. Please send assignments to [email protected] and print
off a copy of the assignment for in-class submission.
5. Assignments are due at the beginning of class on the assigned date. Assignments
received after that time are considered late. Email submissions do not stand in for paper
copy submissions. Late assignments will be penalized 5% per day up to a maximum of
seven days or 35%. Assignments submitted later than one week after the due date will not
be accepted. Late days apply to days of the week, not simply days we have class.
6. Essays should be typewritten and double-spaced. Computing and printing facilities are
available in the library. Use standard, white paper with a legible font (12 pt). Use only one
side of the page. Use one inch (2.5 cm) margins.
7. Normally, I return assignments within two weeks of submission.
8. I give written feedback on your written assignments. For more extensive commentary,
please meet with me during office hours.
9. Technology: Please turn off cellphones and other electronic devices during class time
(this means no texting). If you plan to use a laptop during class, I may request that you post
your class notes for the day to Blackboard for everyone’s benefit (in other words, you
should use your laptop for taking notes, not for checking Facebook, email or other noncourse-related activities).
10. At the end of the course, I do not “bump up” grades to pass, to transfer or for some other
reason. I do not assign extra work for extra marks, nor do I permit you to revise essays from
earlier in the course. This is for fairness for all students. If you anticipate that you may fall in
an undesirable grade range, I would advise that you meet with me sooner rather than later
(i.e. as early as possible), and we can discuss strategies on how to improve your grades.
11. Missed classes are the responsibility of the student. Please get to know students in the
class so you can you obtain any missed materials from them should you be absent from any
class(es). Please refrain from emailing me and asking “Did I miss anything?” as I cannot
reasonably convey and entire class in a single email.
Tentative Schedule (any changes will be announced in class):
As we encounter them, please read the introductions to each of the major periods as well
as to the authors studied.
TERM 1:
Week 1: Sept. 3-5
Day 2 – Welcome; Course Introduction; Roll Call; Syllabus Review; Writing Instruction
Discussion; Assessment Discussion
Day 3 – Text TBA
Week 2: Sept. 8-12 (Middle Ages: Beowulf)
Day 1 –Beowulf (62-78)
Day 2 – Beowulf (78-87)
Day 3 – Beowulf (87-106)
Week 3: Sept. 15-19 (Middle Ages: Chaucer)
Day 1 – Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue (233-)
Day 2 – Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale (300-)
Day 3 – Canterbury Tales: The Wife (continued); reflective writing 1 (15 mins)
Week 4: Sept. 22-26 (The Sixteenth Century: More)
Day 1 – Utopia: Book 1 (online at Broadview)
Day 2 – Utopia: Book 1
Day 3 – Utopia: Book 2
Week 5: Sept. 29-Oct. 3 (The Sixteenth Century: More)
Day 1 – Utopia Book 2
Day 2 – Utopia: Book 2; Academic Integrity Discussion
Day 3 –Shakespeare via The Tempest (handout of excerpts); reflective writing 2
Week 6: Oct. 6-10 (The Sixteenth Century: Shakespeare)
Day 1 – Shakespeare Introduction; Sonnets 18 (798), 29 (799), 130 (806)
Day 2 – King Lear or Twelfth Night (Acts 1, 2) (online text)
Day 3 – Shakespeare (Act 3); Essay 1 due
Week 7: Oct. 13-17 (The Sixteenth Century: Shakespeare)
Day 1 – Thanksgiving Day: College Closed
Day 2 – Shakespeare (Act 4)
Day 3 – Shakespeare (Act 5); reflective writing 3
Week 8: Oct. 20-24 (The Seventeenth Century: Donne, Jonson)
Day 1 – Donne, Holy Sonnets 10, 14
Day 2 – Donne, “The Flea” (831), “The Sun Rising” (827), “A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning” (833)
Day 3 – Jonson, from Epigrams (813-823)
Week 9: Oct. 27-Oct. 31 (The Seventeenth Century: Various)
Day 1 – Donne, “Elegy 19” (837); Herrick, “To the Virgins…” (865)
Day 2 – Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress” (883), “The Garden” (887)
Day 3 – Taking Stock: Stop, Start, Continue; reflective writing 4
Week 10: Nov. 3-7 (The Seventeenth Century: Milton)
Day 1 – “L’Allegro” (899); “Il Penseroso” (902)
Day 2 – Paradise Lost, Book 1 (920-932)
Day 3 – [Restoration] Dryden, “Mac Flecknoe” (1056); Gray, “Elegy Written…” (1517)
Week 11: Nov. 10-14 (The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century)
Day 1 – College Closed: Remembrance Day Observed
Day 2 – Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (1368)
Day 3 – Johnson, “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1478); reflective writing 5
Week 12: Nov. 17-21 (The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century: Aphra Behn)
Week – Oroonoko (1106-1142)
Week 13: Nov. 24-28 (The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century)
Day 1 – Swift, from Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1 (1272-1301)
Day 2 – Swift, from Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1
Day 3 – Swift, from Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1; reflective writing 6; portfolio due
Week 14: Dec. 2 (The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century)
Day 1 – Essay 2 due
TERM 2:
Week 1: Jan 5-9 Romanticism
Day 1 – Blake, Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience (42-50)
Day 2 – Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (handout); Burke, “Reflections” (handout)
Day 3 – Wordsworth & Coleridge, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (121-)
Week 2: Jan 12 Romanticism
Day 1 – Wordsworth, “Lines” [Tintern Abbey] (119)
Day 2 – Robinson, “London’s Summer Morning” (handout); Wordsworth, “London,
1802” (142), “The world is too much with us” (142); Reflective writing #1
Day 3 – Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (181)
Week 3: Jan 19 Romanticism
Day 1 – Paine, “Rights of Man” (handout); Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication…” (62-79)
Day 2 – Austen, from Pride and Prejudice (222)
Day 3 – More, “Strictures…” (166); Barbauld, “On the Origin…” (169)
Week 4: Jan 26 Romanticism
Day 1 – Shelley, “Ozymandias” (384), “Ode to the West Wind” (385), “To a Sky-Lark”
(387)
Day 2 – Byron, “Darkness” (310), “She walks in beauty” (308)
Day 3 – Reflective Writing #2; Keats, “On First Looking into…” (423), “When I have
fears that I may cease to be” (429)
Week 5: Feb 2 Romanticism
Day 1 – Keats, “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (438)
Day 2 – Keats, “Ode to Psyche” (440), “Ode to a Nightingale” (441)
Day 3 – Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (442), “Ode on Melancholy” (443)
Week 6: Feb 9 Victorian Age
Day 1 – Carlyle, “Past and Present” (551-569)
Day 2 – Mill, “The Subjection of Women” (591-)
Day 3 – Reflective Writing #3; Browning, “The Cry of the Children” (623); Contexts:
(570-590)
Week 7: Victorian Age (Feb. 16)
Week – Midterm Break: No Classes (we used to call this “Reading Week”)
Week 8: Feb 23 Victorian Age
Day 1 – Shorter Essay Due; Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott” (640)
Day 2 – Tennyson, “Ulysses” (645), “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (702)
Day 3 – Browning, “My Last Duchess” (713)
Week 9: Mar 2 Victorian Age
Day 1 – Arnold, “Dover Beach” (785), “The Function of Criticism…” (786)
Day 2 – Rosetti, “Goblin Market” (810)
Day 3 – Reflective Writing #4; Arnold, “Culture and Anarchy” (handout)
Week 10: Mar 9 Victorian Age to the Twentieth Century
Day 1 – Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur” (870), “The Windhover” (876); Hardy, “The
Convergence of the Twain” (864); Introduction to Modernism
Day 2 – Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1316)
Day 3 – Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1151), “Sailing to Byzantium” (1156),
“Byzantium” (1160)
Week 11: Mar 16 The Twentieth Century
Day 1 – Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Day 2 - Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Day 3 – Reflective Writing #5; Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Week 12: Mar 23 The Twentieth Century
Day 1 – Achebe, “An Image of Africa…” (1439)
Day 2 – Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1187-)
Day 3 – Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Week 13: Mar 30 The Twentieth Century and now
Day 1 – Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Day 2 - Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Day 3 – Good Friday: class cancelled
Week 14: Apr. 6 The Twentieth Century and now
Day 1 – Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Reflective Writing #6
Day 2 – Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Day 2 – Last day of class; Final Essay Due
Course Outline
It is the student’s responsibility to be familiar with the information contained in this
course outline and to clarify any areas of concern with the instructor.
No changes will be made to this course outline without the consent of the class and the
approval of the Associate Dean of the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences and
Social Work.
Tim Heath, PhD
Associate Dean, School of Arts & Science
Approved 28 August 2014
STUDENT RECOGNITION OF PLAGIARISM*
Standards of Proof
Plagiarism can be judged to have occurred if the instructor has both the material
presented by the student and the original source from which this material was taken.
Also, plagiarism can be judged to have occurred
 if the student is incapable of explaining the terminology or ideas in the submitted
material
 if such terminology or ideas cannot be shown to originate in the works contained in
the Bibliography, References, or Works Cited page accompanying the submitted
material (or, for oral presentations, if the student cannot produce the notes or texts
used to prepare the presentation).
Consequences: A student charged with plagiarism may

be given a reduced mark or no mark (that is, a grade of 0 or F) for the plagiarized
assignment, or
 be assigned a final grade of F, or
 be expelled from the course and assigned a final grade of F.
In all of the above cases, the instance of academic dishonesty will be recorded on the
student’s academic file.
PROCEDURE
1. If an instructor discovers or suspects academic misconduct, the instructor provides
evidence of the misconduct to the student and takes disciplinary action up to and
including the assignment of a failing grade for the work involved in the misconduct.
2. If the instructor feels that the misconduct warrants more serious consequences, the
Program Lead is informed. The decision to remove the student from the course or to
assign a failing grade in the course as a consequence of the misconduct may be taken by
the Program Lead in consultation with the Associate Dean upon reviewing the evidence
of the misconduct and determination that the violation warrants such action.
3. If the instructor and Program Lead determine that the violation requires more
significant action such as removal from a program or from the College, the evidence is
presented to the Associate Dean for a decision.
4. In each case, the decision and disciplinary action are communicated to the student in
writing and a copy is provided to the Registrar who places it in the student’s file.
(*adapted from RDC’s policy on Student Misconduct: Academic and Non-academic - see
section below on college policies)
College Policies
Students should be familiar with what constitutes misconduct, as well as its
consequences. This may include academic misconduct, which includes plagiarism and
cheating, or non-academic misconduct, where student behaviour is deemed unsafe or
disruptive. Plagiarism may involve the act of submitting work in which some or all of the
phrasing, ideas, or line of reasoning are alleged to be the submitter’s own but in fact were
created by someone else. Cheating involves attempts to obtain unsanctioned assistance in
a formal academic exercise. Students should familiarize themselves with the Policy on
Academic Misconduct: academic and non-academic. Penalties for such misconduct range
from academic sanctions on assignments or a course to removal from the College.
Students should refer to the Student Appeal, Formal and Informal Resolution Process
Policy should they have questions or concerns about the course outline that cannot be
resolved with the instructor.
At all times, the Final Examinations Policy will be followed.
This course may be eligible for Prior Learning Assessment. Students should refer to the
RDC Calendar for a list of excluded courses.
Classroom learning resources may be available to students in alternate formats.
The various RDC Academic Policies described above can also be found here.
Academic Resources on Campus
Students should be aware that Personal Counselling, Career, Learning, and Disability
Services are provided by RDC. Students may inquire about locations at the Information
Desk. It is the student’s responsibility to discuss their specific learning needs with the
appropriate service provider.
Learning Support (Library: 403-342-3264, [email protected] )
• Writing Skills Centre ([email protected])
• Math Learning Centre ([email protected])
• Learning Strategies (note-taking, studying and exam-writing strategies)
• Peer-Assisted Study / Tutoring (one-on-one tutoring by students)
Disability Services (Library: 403-357-3629, [email protected])
• Coordination of services (tutoring, alternate format text, note-taking and so on.)
• Academic accommodations, including exam accommodations
Counselling and Career Centre (Room 1402: 403-343-4064, [email protected])