English Courses

This introduction to literature written in English focuses on several plays by Shakespeare, introduced by an examination of lyric poems — either by Shakespeare or by one of his contemporaries. The course is designed to develop the student's imaginative understanding of literature along with the ability to write and speak with greater clarity. It is intended to be of interest to students at any level of preparation, including those with a background of advanced literary study in secondary school. There are at least six writing assignments, with students writing a frequent topic for classroom discussion. Most sections are writing-intensive. A student who receives credit for the Humanities Sequence 101 through 202 may not receive credit for English 101. (Credit, full course.) Staff

An examination of several masterpieces of Western literature, including Homer's Iliad and Dante's Divine Comedy. Some sections are writing-intensive. Prerequisite: Engl 101, or Humn 101-102. (Credit, full course.) Staff

A consideration of the role of women in literature.  Topics include Gothic fiction, nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers, and women in fiction.  Drawing on authors of both genders, the course considers gender relations, the historic role of women, the special challenges that have faced women writers, and the role of women in fiction. (Credit, full course.) Craighill

An examination of poems from British and American literature selected by the instructor. Writing-intensive some semesters. Prerequisite: Engl 101 or Humn 101-102. (Credit, full course.) Irvin, Michael, Wells

An examination of novels and short fiction from British and American literature selected by the instructor. Writing-intensive some semesters. Prerequisite: Engl 101 or Humn 101-102. (Credit, full course.) Clarkson, J. Grammer

A course which examines texts in various genres and which may focus on a particular theme chosen by the instructor. Prerequisite: Engl 101 or Humn 101-102. (Credit, full course.) Staff

Students examine, compare, and analyze the journalistic and literary writings of 19th- and 20th-century American writers such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Fanny Fern, Ernest Hemingway, and Katherine Anne Porter. They also study 20th-century “New Journalism” (Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Mailer) and conclude with an examination of contemporary journalism, creative non-fiction, personal essays, and multi-media journalism. Students are required to analyze literary and journalistic writing with an eye towards discerning the difference between news writing, editorials, and literary journalism. They write journalistic pieces as well as analytical essays. (Credit, full course.) Craighill

Study of a broad range of imaginative writings, from ancient to modern, concerned with the human search for God, transcendence, and ultimate meaning. Literatures influenced by Jewish and Christian traditions figure prominently in the reading list but works inspired by Buddhism and Native American religion are included as well. Texts include writing by at least one medieval mystic and by authors such as George Herbert, Leo Tolstoy, Black Elk, Elie Wiesel, Flannery O'Connor, T.S. Eliot, and Marilynne Robinson. (Credit, full course.) Gatta

A study of several key works in translation from the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, chiefly Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, some extracts from Malory, and a number of shorter Anglo-Saxon poems. (Credit, full course.) Benson, Irvin

A study of the Canterbury Tales and other poems by Chaucer. A term paper is usually expected. (Credit, full course.) Benson, Engel, Irvin

A study of the drama of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, excluding the works of Shakespeare but including tragedies by Kyd, Marlowe, and Webster, and comedies by Jonson and Beaumont. Offered in alternate years. (Credit, full course.) Engel

A study of several plays written before 1600. (Credit, full course.) Macfie, Richardson, Malone

A study of several plays after 1600. (Credit, full course.) Macfie, Richardson, Malone

A study of the major 16th-century genres, with emphasis on sources, developments, and defining concerns. Readings include the sonnets of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare; the mythological verse narratives of Marlowe and Shakespeare; the pastoral poems of Spenser; and Books I and III of Spenser's Faerie Queene. (Credit, full course.) Macfie

A study of the major 17th-century poets, concentrating on such poets' redefinitions of genre, mode, and source. Readings emphasize works by Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Herrick, Milton, and Marvell. (Credit, full course.) Macfie

A study of Milton's poetry and prose in the context of religious and political upheavals in mid-17th-century England. Particular emphasis is on Lycidas and Paradise Lost. Offered in alternate years. (Credit, full course.) Engel

A study of selected works by Dryden, Swift, Pope, and Fielding. Reading of other writers such as Pepys, Prior, Addison, and Gay is required. (Credit, full course.) Richardson, Malone

A study of the fiction of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Austen. (Credit, full course.) Reishman

A study of the literature from 1750 to 1800. Included is an examination of such writers as Johnson, Boswell, Burke, Gray, Collins, Goldsmith, Burns, and Blake. (Credit, full course.) Malone, Michael

A study of the poetry and poetic theory of British romanticism. Included is an examination of such writers as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. (Credit, full course.) J. Grammer, Michael

A study of the poetry and designs of William Blake in the context of his revolutionary era. Selected readings from Milton and the Bible are assigned as essential background; prior knowledge of these sources is helpful but not required. Digital resources aid in the study of the visual art, and students read and report on selected critical works. (Credit, full course.) Michael

A study of selected poems of Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, and D.G. Rossetti and selected prose of Carlyle, Newman, Arnold, and Ruskin, which constitute the central texts for classroom discussion. (Credit, full course.) Reishman

A study of the fiction of Charlotte and Emily Brontė, Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, and Hardy. (Credit, full course.) Reishman

A study of American writing from the 17th century to the 1850s, emphasizing major works of the American renaissance by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and Whitman. (Credit, full course.) E. Grammer

A study of American writing from the 1830s to 1900, including works by Dickinson, Mark Twain, Chesnutt, James, Jewett, Stephen Crane, and others. (Credit, full course.) E. Grammer

A study of major 19th- and early 20th-century American novels. Representative authors include Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, and Wharton. (Credit, full course.) Carlson, E. Grammer

A study of the first two important American poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, whose expansive free verse and tight, elliptical lyrics defined the possibilities for American poets for the next hundred years. This course examines in detail the careers and major works of these poets, with brief consideration of their contemporaries and literary heirs. (Credit, full course.) E. Grammer

A study of the modern period in British poetry that examines representative poems by Hardy, Hopkins, Yeats, Lawrence, Auden, Thomas, and others. (Credit, full course.) Carlson, Clarkson

A study of 20th-century British fiction from turn-of-the-century decadence to high modernism. The course examines the novel as it emerges from Victorian realism and the fin-de-siècle to challenge existing notions of narrative form and literary authority. Authors include Conrad, Forster, Lawrence, Ford, Mansfield, Joyce, and Woolf. (Credit, full course.) Richardson

A consideration of British fiction from the 1930s to the present. The course explores the new kinds of fiction that emerge from high modernist innovations, as well as from changing cultural conditions, such as Britain's decline as a political and economic power. Authors covered include Greene, Orwell, Bowen, Waugh, Murdoch, Rushdie, Byatt, and others. (Credit, full course.) Staff

A study of Joyce’s increasingly innovative forms, including Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. Offered in alternate years. (Credit, full course.) Staff

An exploration of modern drama from Ibsen's naturalism to contemporary drama's innovations. The course investigates the relationship between the theatre and social reform, and considers issues of performance as well as close analysis of the plays themselves. The course covers British, American, and important Continental dramatists, including Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Chekhov, Beckett, Pirandello, Williams, Stoppard, Churchill, Vogel, Wilson, and others. (Credit, full course.) Clarkson

The origin and development of the modern period in American poetry, concentrating on the work of the major modernist poets: Frost, Pound, Stevens, Williams, and Eliot. The course includes a brief examination of their influence in poems by Berryman, Bishop, Brooks, Hughes, Lowell, Moore, Rich, Roethke, Wilbur, and others. (Credit, full course.) Clarkson

A survey of American fiction from the late 19th-century through World War II including novels and short stories by James, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Warren, and Ellison. (Credit, full course.) Carlson

A study of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Hamlet, and Go Down Moses. The main business of each class meeting is the presentation and peer criticism of one or more student papers. (Credit, full course.) Carlson, J. Grammer

A study of the Southern Literary Renaissance emphasizing poetry written by Ransom, Tate, Davidson, and Warren, and fiction written by Faulkner, Warren, Lytle, Welty, Porter, and O'Connor. The course includes discussion of 18th- and 19th-century writers from the American south, and also focuses on writers associated with the University of the South.  (Credit, full course.) Carlson, J. Grammer

A study of the major traditions of African-American writing from the 19th century to the present, including Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, and Rita Dove. (Credit, full course.) E. Grammer

A study of writings from the colonial era to our own day reflecting the diverse ways of imagining humanity's relation to the natural environment. Readings include both traditional literary texts by authors such as Thoreau, Cather, and Frost and seminal nonfiction by figures such as Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Rachel Carson, and Wendell Berry. (Credit, full course.) Gatta

A seminar focusing on American fiction published after World War II with an emphasis on analysis of fictional techniques. Students read one novel or collection of short stories each week and lead classroom discussions of assigned topics. The syllabus changes each semester. Representative authors have included Percy, Styron, McCarthy, Morrison, DeLillo, Pynchon, and Gaines, with a major emphasis on fiction written in the past 20 years by writers such as Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Stone, and Tim O'Brien. (Credit, full course.) Carlson, Clarkson

A study of American poets whose major work was published after World War II, concentrating on Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, Donald Justice, Robert Lowell, Howard Nemerov, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Richard Wilbur, and Mona Van Duyn. Among others, John Berryman, Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich, X.J. Kennedy, and Derek Walcott are also considered. (Credit, full course.) Prunty

A study of 20th-century literature written in English from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, concentrating on colonial and post-colonial themes, as well as issues of gender, politics, and nationalism. Possible authors include Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, V.S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott. (Credit, full course.) Staff

A study of literary criticism from Plato and Aristotle to the New Historicism, beginning with an examination of current critical theory and proceeding by study of the major critical documents in our literary tradition. Emphasis is placed on practical application of critical theory as well as on its history and development. (Credit, full course.) D. Richardson

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (Credit, full course.) Prunty

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (Credit, full course.) K. Wilson

Discussions center on students' plays. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. (Credit, full course.) Bragen

This is a writing course in contemporary song. Using what the student learns from studying the form and technique of traditional and popular “standards,” the student composes his/her own songs. Students are expected to co-write with the other members of the class as well as with the professor. The final project is a “demo” (a CD recording) of the student’s one or two best compositions. The course includes field trips (two or three afternoons) to Nashville to visit a licensing agency, a record company, a publishing house, and a management company. (Credit, half course.) Huber

Discussions center on students' poems. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. Writing-intensive. Prerequisite: Engl 409 or permission of instructor. (Credit, full course.) Prunty

Discussions center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. Writing-intensive. Prerequisite: Engl 410 or permission of instructor. (Credit, full course.) K. Wilson

Discussions center on students' plays. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. Writing-intensive. Prerequisite: Engl 411 or permission of instructor. (Credit, full course.) Bragen

To meet the needs and particular interests of selected students. May be taken more than once for credit. (Credit, variable from half to full course.) Staff

Graduating seniors only. Permission of the chair of the department is required. (Credit, full course.) Staff

The student meets regularly with the staff of the Sewanee Review to discuss matters of publishing history, the literary marketplace, and all levels of the editorial process. Through these discussions and analysis of primary sources, the student learns the history of the American quarterly in its various modes — from specialized academic journal, to ephemeral “little magazine,” to cultural review with strong political content, to literary review with a critical program. The student writes two to three book reviews as well as a final paper graded by the editor. Open only to the Aiken Taylor Fellow. (Credit, full course.) Core