Honors | Ideas & Experience II (HON)
H212 | 25359 | Gareth Evans
In this course, we’ll read a number of major literary works, most of
which are thought to be essential to an understanding of the
following literary movements: romanticism, realism, naturalism,
modernism, and postmodernism. We’ll assess the relationship between
the movements, books, and poems we’re studying, while also building
working models against which we can compare work we’ve already read
and work we will read in the future. By attempting to define the
literary movements we’re studying, we will learn something about the
strengths and weaknesses of genre criticism. We’ll talk, too, about
what features of the books we’re reading have made them seem central
to critical accounts of literary change and development.
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (Routledge edition)
George Eliot, Middlemarch (Norton edition)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Bedford/St. Martins)
Virginia Woolf, The Mrs. Dalloway Reader (Harvest Books)
Michael Cunningham, The Hours (Picador)
A selection of poetry by the following authors: T.S. Eliot, Langston
Hughes, John Keats, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Percy Bysshe
A handful of essays about the works and movements we’re studying.
Note: Middlemarch and Tess of the D’Urbervilles are both long
novels. Please try to read at least one of them during the break.
If you have time to read only one of the novels, read Middlemarch.
It will be time well and pleasantly spent. I promise.
•Three essays; two of 4-6 page essays and one 6-8 page essay. You
may, if you wish, also choose to revise and extend one of the two 4-
6 page essays.
•Four 1 page responses to essay and discussion questions posted at
•A ten question library exercise that tests your ability to locate
material in IUCAT and a number of online databases.
•Attendance and participation in discussions and in-class activities.