Back to English Offered Courses
Up to Index
Search the Calendar

Telephone ID #: 05520763
A study of a wide range of Canadian literature, including works by fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and critics, such as Callaghan, MacLennan, Laurence, Grove, Davies, Lampman, D.C. Scott, Klein, Pratt, Birney, Avison, Atwood, and Frye.
This study of Canadian literature in English will be historical, following the development of writing in Canada from early times to the present, though most attention will be paid to literature of the twentieth century. Close and critical reading of individual works will also be emphasized.
T.B.A.
Session: Winter Evening
Telephone ID #: 05520863
A broad survey of the development of literature in America from the early Colonial period to the twentieth century.
The reading will include excerpts from journals, letters and various historical documents presented as cultural and historical background to the issues explored in American literature. Questions to be explored include: What is the make-up and significance of the American Dream? What is distinct about the American Hero? How are such human dilemmas as good versus evil, or sin versus redemption, presented and interpreted in an American context? Shorter works from a wide variety of writers will be featured (Mather, Bradstreet, Dickinson, Twain, James, O'Connor, Fitzgerald) as well as several longer works intended to represent some of the many different cultural points of view operating within the framework of the American experience.
Exclusion: ENG250
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05521163
An exploration of a variety of dramatic forms with close attention to questions of the theatrical production of texts.
The course introduces students to a wide range of drama through the study of at least twelve plays, including, Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Aristophanes, Lysistrata; and Marlowe, Dr. Faustus. Other plays will be selected from the work of modern dramatists, including Beckett, O'Neill, Pinter, Shaw, and at least one Canadian writer.
Exclusion: DRM100, ENG222
Session: Winter Evening
T.B.A.
Telephone ID #: 05521463
A study of fictional strategies and techniques, drawing on a wide range of examples from early periods of narrative to the present day.
About 16 works will be studied, including short stories, novels, and novellas. Emphasis will be placed on the forms and conventions of fiction rather than on chronological development and historical background. The course will consider such aspects as the significance of beginnings and endings, the role of the narrator, and the relationship between realism and fantasy. Texts to be announced.
Session: Winter Day
T.B.A.
Telephone ID #: 05522463
A study of Canadian fiction in English from its origins in the eighteenth century, through the search for form and tradition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the contemporary period of new exploration and consolidation.
The course examines authors confronting the problems of finding a fictional form and voice for their responses to Canada and of locating themselves in a viable tradition; it focuses on several contemporary novelists both in terms of that tradition and through close readings of specific novels.
Texts will include Ross, As for Me and My House; Callaghan, Stories; MacLennan, Two Solitudes; Atwood, Surfacing; Ondaatje, Running in the Family.
Exclusion: ENG252
Session: Summer Evening
T.B.A.
Telephone ID # (F): 05522533
Telephone ID # (S): 05522553
A study of contemporary short stories written by Canadian authors.
This course will not be a historical survey, but an examination of collections by eight of the contemporary writers whose work has brought the Canadian short story into international prominence. Attention will also be paid to technical aspects of the short story as a literary form.
The course will use single author collections rather than an anthology. Reading will begin with Alistair MacLeod's The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and will include selections from: Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter, Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg; Mavis Gallant, The End of the World and Other Stories; and Hugh Hood, Flying a Red Kite.
Exclusion: ENG215
Session: Summer Evening
T.B.A.
Telephone ID #: 05522653
A study of twentieth century Canadian drama in English, with special emphasis on the period from 1960 to the present.
After a brief survey of earlier developments in Canadian drama of this century, this course will focus on the recent explosion of dramatic activity in Canada. A wide range of plays will be read, including plays by John Herbert, George Ryga, James Reaney, Sharon Pollock, Carol Bolt, David Fennario, David French, David Freeman, Tomson Highway.
Exclusion: ENG223
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05522763
Telephone ID #: 05525063
A discussion of the work of women writers, and the history of women as students, teachers and writers of literature.
Through a variety of texts (novels, poetry, drama, essays) we explore a rich tradition of women writers from the seventeenth-century to the present day. Topics for debate include: the question of gender in literary production and reception; publishing history; "women's writing" and women's relationship to language and a literary tradition that has historically been male dominated.
Readings: prose fiction: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Alice Munro; Open Secrets; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Drama: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Anne-Marie MacDonald, Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet); Poetry: Selections from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh; Sylvia Plath; Christina Rossetti; Adrienne Rich; Essays: Mary Wollstonecraft, selections from A Vindication of the Rights of Women; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own.
Exclusion: ENG233
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05533063
A study of most of the Canterbury Tales, The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde. Background readings: Roman de la Rose, Consolation of Philosophy (in translation.) Texts: F.N. Robinson, ed. The Works of Chaucer.
Chaucer's poems are studied mainly as artistic productions, but also in relation to their historical and intellectual backgrounds.
Prerequisite: ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y
Exclusion: ENG300Y
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05533363
A survey of the English Drama from the reign of Henry VIII to the closing of public theatres in 1642; the course will examine Tudor interludes and moral plays, Italianate comedies, Senecan and pre-Shakespearean tragedies, Elizabethan Romantic and Jacobean City Comedies, and the dark, social tragedies of the Stuart period.
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y] or [ENGB11Y]
Exclusion: ENG332
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05533863
At least twelve works, including one or more by Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Austen and Scott.
This is an historical course on the development of the novel from the early eighteenth century to the Romantic period. It includes the best comic novels in the language; serious moral, social, and psychological studies; and works that reveal and comment on some of the literary fads of the time--fashions for terror, pathos, and the nostalgic representation of the past. Works to be studied include Defoe, Moll Flanders, Richardson, Pamela; Fielding, Tom Jones; Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Smollett, Humphrey Clinker; Austen, Emma. Not for people who don't really like reading.
Exclusion: (ENGB17) ENG322
Prerequisite: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y] or ENGB14Y
Session: Winter Evening
J. Kay / T.B.A.
Telephone ID #: 05534163
Recent English-language fiction by contemporary authors from Britain, America, Canada, and elsewhere. While the course will look at a range of recent novels, there will be an emphasis on fictional investigations of identity and on the use of fiction as a way of reassessing history and tradition. Works to be studied include Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King; John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman; Robert Kroetsch, Badlands; Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle; Kazuo Ishiguru, Remains of the Day; Don DeLillo, White Noise; Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters; Sky Lee, The Disappearing Moon Cafe; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Jane Urquhart, Away; M. G. Vassanji, The Book of Secrets; and two or three further texts.
Exclusions: ENGC53F/S and ENGC54F/S; ENG329H and ENG361H
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y] or [ENGB14] or [ENGB24]
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05534263
A study of the verse and non-fiction prose of the turbulent period of 1789-1832.
The core of the course is the lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Selections from the prose writings of these and other authors are included to shed light on the great poems and to provide a broader understanding of the period as a whole.
Prerequisite: ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y
Session: Winter Day
The poetry of Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and selections from other poets, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Meredith, Swinburne, Hardy.
The Victorian period was a time when poetry was broadly accessible and widely-read, and poets were particularly concerned about their public role in society. This course concentrates upon poems of the mid-Victorian period and the poets' responses to such crucial issues as the impact of evolutionary theory and the changing role of women. A selection of poems from the later period reveals increasingly darker ironies, leading to the introverted and sensual poetry of Aestheticism and Decadence.
The course focuses both on poetic style and on nineteenth-century thought. Texts will include: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, (Fifth edition), Vol. 2; Tennyson, In Memoriam (Norton); Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (The Women's Press).
Exclusion: (ENGB06)
Prerequisites: (ENGA01, ENGA02) ENGB01, ENGB02 or ENGB15
Session: Winter Evening
Telephone ID #: 05534663
A study of the development of the English novel in the Victorian period.
This course cultivates an understanding of the English novel in its most assured period of creation through study of the following works: C. Bronte, Jane Eyre; E. Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Thackeray, Vanity Fair; G. Eliot, Middlemarch; Dickens, David Copperfield, Hard Times; Caroll, Alice in Wonderland; Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure; Moore, Esther Waters.
Students are advised to read as many of these novels as possible before classes begin.
Exclusion: (ENGB16)
Prerequisites: ENGB01, ENGB02; or ENGB14; or HISD21
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05535063
A study of developments in British, American and European drama in the twentieth century.
This course looks at the renaissance or rebirth of drama in the last hundred years or so, through a concentrated study of important works of modern and contemporary theatre. We will explore the emergence of such subgenres of drama as realism, expressionism, epic theatre, and theatre of the absurd, and the challenging of such categories by contemporary dramatic experiments. Texts studied will include: Ibsen, The Wild Duck; Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard; Shaw, Saint Joan; T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral; Brecht, Mother Courage; Pinter, The Homecoming; C. Churchill, Cloud Nine; plus works by a number of other playwrights, including Pirandello and Stoppard. Students may be required to see one or two plays.
Session: Winter Day
Exclusion: (ENGB31Y), ENG338
Prerequisites: ENGA11Y or ENGB11Y
Telephone ID #: 05535163
An analytical study of poetry from the advent of the modern period.
The course will explore the modern tradition in twentieth-century poetry, from its beginnings with Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, and Williams to the present. The course will consider the change in poetic theory and practice that took place in the first two decades of this century, and the development of the poets studied. In addition, individual poems will be studied in detail.
Exclusion: (ENGB32)
Prerequisites: (ENGA01, ENGA02 or ENGA08), ENGA11Y; or ENGB15
Session: Winter Day
Not offered 1993/94 or 1994/95
Telephone ID #: 05535263
A study of at least twelve works, chosen from novels, novellas, and collections of short stories.
The early twentieth century was a period of extraordinary creativity and innovation in fiction, as writers broke away from the conventions of the Victorian novel. The focus of this course will be the development of new kinds of narrative, in part to study the nature of art-making, but in part also to consider the philosophical, psychological, and indeed political implications of the way stories are written. Works to be studied will include: James, The Spoils of Poynton, Conrad, The Secret Agent, Joyce, Dubliners, Mansfield, Selected Stories, Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Lowry, Under the Volcano, O'Brien, The Love Object. Students are advised to do some reading in advance.
Exclusion: (ENG328)
Prerequisite: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y] or ENGB14Y
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05535353
Representative works by major British fiction writers of the past quarter century.
Approximately eight works (novels, short story collections) will be studied, including Edna O'Brien, The Love Object; Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman; Drabble, The Waterfall; Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot.
Exclusion: (ENGB35)
Prerequisite: (ENGA01, ENGA02) ENGB01, B02; or ENGB14
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05535433
A study of the range and variety of recent fiction writing in the United States.
Approximately eight novels or short story collections by writers such as Barth, Barthelme, Beattie, Bellow, Cheever, Coover, Didion, Dubus, Elkin, Gass, Gardner, Hawkes, Mailer, Nabokov, Oates, Percy, Pynchon, Updike, Roth, Theroux, Welty, Woiwode.
Exclusion: (ENGB36)
Prerequisite: (ENGA01, ENGA02) ENGB01, B02; or ENGB14
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05535553
A study of developments in drama from 1960 to the present.
The course will focus upon the experimental impulse in the work of playwrights such as: Albee, Barker, Bond, Churchill, Pinter, Rabe, Shaffer, Shepard, and Stoppard. Students will be expected to attend performances of two or three contemporary plays as part of their work in the course.
Exclusion: (ENGB40)
Prerequisite: ENGB01, ENGB02; or ENGB11; or ENGB26F; or ENGC50 (ENGB31); or one DRA course
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05536163
An approach to the concept of "the West" as a myth, a metaphor, and a fantasy fundamental to the vision of settlers of the United States, but challenged by Native North American ideas about life and the world.
We will look, through selected texts, at "the woods" of Hawthorne and Poe, the forests and Indians of Cooper (as well as Mark Twain's parody of his novels), the construction of the American as Cowboy in Owen Wister's The Virginian, fishing and the search for "the one good place" in Hemingway, and the nostalgia for the "true west" in Sam Shepard. By also reading works by Native North American writers--Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and Leslie Marmon Silko--we will be able to study a very different relationship to the "American" landscape. "The West" is also an idea deeply embedded in the popular culture of America. Accordingly, we will also look at "classic" and contemporary Hollywood Westerns.
Session: Winter Day
Prerequisites: (ENGA01Y & ENGA02Y) [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y] or [ENGA11Y & ENGB05Y] or [ENGA11Y & ENGB08Y].
Telephone ID #: 05540163
A study of the central issues of literary theory and criticism, their importance in English literary history, and their relationship to European thought.
What are the major issues and movements in literary theory? How have the questions critics have asked changed over time? The course aims at discussing the assumptions about literature and writing that are reflected in any critical position. Readings will be selected to acquaint students with both current critical debates and the history of theory and criticism.
Exclusion: (ENGC59Y), ENG467
Prerequisite: (ENGA01Y, ENGA02Y) ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y & two further full-course equivalents in English.
Session: Winter Day
T.B.A.
Offered 1996/97 and 1997/98
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further F.C.E.'s in English; or ENGB02; or ENGC30 (ENGB02).
Exclusion: (ENGC03Y)
An advanced seminar treating special topics in eighteenth century literature.
In 1981-82, the topic of the course will be a close study of the early writers of the eighteenth century. We will consider a wide range of work written by Defoe, Swift, and Pope. A good deal of attention will be given to the political, social and philosophical background, but emphasis will be directed to the new rhetorical modes of expression being developed. Students will be expected to present two seminar reports each term.
Limited enrolment: 15
Exclusion: (ENGC05Y)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC38(ENGB17Y); or two of ENGC35(ENGB71H), ENGC36(ENGB72H), ENGC37(ENGB73H)
An advanced seminar treating special topics in nineteenth century literature.
In 1980-81, the topic of the course will be "Garden and Machine: Pastoral Vision and Urban Landscape". We will consider the presentation of country and city as direct comments on industrialization, but the primary focus will be on the garden and the machine as metaphors expressing two conflicting views of man: organic and mechanistic. We will study the impact of an industrial economy and a scientific universe upon man's imaginative and emotional life, and his relationship with nature. Texts include: Wordsworth, The Prelude; Gaskell, Mary Barton; Dickens, Hard Times and Dombey and Son; Morris, News from Nowhere; Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court; Hardy, The Woodlanders and Jude the Obscure.
Exclusion: (ENGC06Y)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC42(ENGB05Y), ENGC43(ENGB06Y), ENGC46(ENGB16Y)
Session: Winter Day
An advanced seminar treating special topics in twentieth century literature.
Exclusion: (ENGC08)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC50(ENGB31Y), ENGC51(ENGB32Y), ENGC52(ENGB33Y).
Session: Winter Day
Exclusion: (ENGC29)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or two full-course equivalents in English including at least one of ENGB07, ENGB25, ENGC02 (ENGB27), ENGC07 (ENGB26)
Session: Winter Day
The South has traditionally been conceived of as a separate and distinctive culture in the U.S. This course will explore the bases and validity of the Southern myth from a broad historical, sociological and geographical perspective while focusing on the poetry, prose and drama of writers in the Southern States. Among the authors and topics to be considered in the present year are: The nineteenth century folklorists and "Reconstruction" novelists; Ellen Glasgow; The "Agrarians"; the "Fugitive" group; Flannery O'Connor; Eudora Welty; Thomas Wolfe; William Styron; William Faulkner; Tenessee Williams, Walker Percy. A complete reading list will be available in May in the Humanities office. office.
Exclusion: (ENGC24)
Session: Winter Day
Offered 1991/92 and 1992/93
In 1990/91, these courses will be as follows:
Telephone ID #: 05541353
A reading of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, as narrative and as myth.
The Faerie Queene is a unique achievement, the most fully elaborated example in English of mythopoeic writing, that is, the myth-creating kind of poetry. The ancient myths of Greece and Rome, stories and legends in or generated by the Bible, the myth of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and various Celtic myths, all contribute to the intricate web of stories that make the poem. Spenser did not merely retell already existent myths; he made up his own, but with echoes and counter-echoes of old stories, reinterpreting them and creating new meanings.
We shall read through the six books of the Faerie Queene, pausing to consider the background of Spenser's ideas where necessary, but mainly concentrating on his story-telling techniques.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGB01, ENGB02 and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC30 (ENGB02); or ENGC32 (ENGB09)
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05541553
An examination of five or six Shakespeare plays from the period 1590-96.
These plays are considered in the light of their theatrical and dramatic antecedents, as well as in terms of the Shakespearean drama they precede.
Limited enrolment: 24
Prerequisite: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y and two further full-course equivalents in English] or {ENGB10] or [ENGC33]
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05541653
Textual and editorial, as well as aesthetic and dramatic problems in the later works of Shakespeare.
Primary texts are Pericles, Cymbeline, A Winter's Tale and The Tempest. The new Arden edition of each is preferred. Each student will develop a topic during the term which will be reported on in seminar, before being presented as a written paper at the end of the term.
Limited enrolment: 4
Exclusion: (ENGC60)
Prerequisite: (ENGA01Y & ENGA02Y) [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y, and two further full-course equivalents in English]; or ENGB10Y or ENGC33Y (ENGB12)
Session: Winter Evening
T.B.A.
A study of selected plays by Marlowe and Jonson.
Emphasis will be upon the unique qualities which distinguish these dramatists from Shakespeare and other playwrights of the English Renaissance.
Texts will include: Tamburlaine, parts 1 and 2; Dr. Faustus; Edward II; The Silent Woman; Volpone; The Alchemist.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGB10 and one further full-course equivalent in English; or ENGC32 (ENGB09); or ENGC33 (ENGB12)
Session: Winter Day
A reading of Milton's later poetry, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.
These are the poems in which the ambitious Renaissance tradition of the epic culminates in England. Milton took over that tradition from Spenser, whom he felt to be his poetic father, but completely transformed it, moving from Spenser's static, imagistic style to a swift, dramatic kind of narrative influenced by the drama. All the currents of thought and poetic practice handed down from the venerated Ancients and Christianized in the Middle Ages came to fruition in Milton's last poems. Together with Shakespeare's plays they represent the supreme achievement of the English literary Renaissance.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02 and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC32
Session: Winter Day
A study of the major tales and romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne, including: Twice-Told Tales; Mosses From an Old Manse; Tanglewood Tales; The Scarlet Letter; The House of the Seven Gables; The Blithedale Romance; the Marble Faun.
Limited Enrolment 20
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02 and three further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGB08, ENGC12
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05543053
A study of three major novels.
In this seminar course Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and Little Dorrit will be examined for their particular content of sentiment, humour, expose, and sensation and the general themes and developments of narrative method they reveal. Other reading in Dickens, for instance, Great Expectations, will be useful, as will some knowledge of Victorian England. Videos of Nickleby and Dorrit will be shown. Student assignments will include giving a short seminar report.
Limited enrolment: 20.
Prerequisites: (ENGA01, ENGA02), ENGA11Y and two further full-course equivalents in English; or HISB02 or HISD15
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05543133
A study of Wordsworth's poetic career from his early work to his later role as Poet Laureate.
The course will examine such topics as: Wordsworth and the French Revolution; his relationship with; his relationship with Coleridge; Lyrical Ballads; The Prelude and other long poems; Wordsworth's impact on the Victorian poets; Wordsworth and the Lake District.
Limited enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y] and three other full-course equivalents in English.
Session: Winter Day
The primary focus will be on a close analysis of approximately four novels, reflecting Eliot's development as an artist; readings will include selections from her letters and journals. Students are advised to obtain the Norton Edition of Middlemarch and read that novel in advance. Prior reading of The Mill on the Floss is also strongly recommended.
Exclusion: (ENGC81)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02 and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC42(ENGB05Y), ENGC43(ENGB06Y), ENGC46(ENGB16Y).
Session: Winter Day
A study of Hardy's development as an artist, through close analysis of four or five novels and selected poetry.
Some attention will be given to Hardy as representative of the transition from the Victorian to the Modern. Texts will include Under the Greenwood Tree, The Woodlanders, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Some biographical/autobiographical reading will also be required.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Exclusion: (ENGC84)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC46(ENGB16)
Session: Winter Evening
A study of poetry and painting of William Blake (1757-1827) and W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), with emphasis on the concept of imagination in poetry.
In this course we will read and discuss some of the most original and accomplished poetry in the English language. Blake and Yeats lived and worked a century apart, but their writings share a common belief in the power of the creative imagination to illuminate and transform the nature of human experience. Yeats discovered Blake early in the 20th Century, produced an edition of his poetry, and wrote a perceptive study of his work. As we shall see, this meeting of great minds not only established Blake's reputation in the 20th Century, but also transformed the poetry of Yeats.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGA01, A02 and two further full course equivalents in English; or ENGC42(ENGB05); or ENGC51(ENGB32).
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05543953
A study of the range of Shaw's dramatic works.
Emphasis will be on the comedies. Plays to be read include Shaw's Arms and the Man, Heartbreak House and Man and Superman. Some plays by contemporary writers who share the Shavian comic sensibility will also be read, including at least one by Tom Stoppard. Assignments will include a seminar report.
Limited enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGB01Y, ENGB02Y (ENGA01Y & ENGA02Y) and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC50Y or ENGC55F/S.
Session: Winter Day
Conrad's development as an artist traced through close analysis of four or five novels and some shorter fiction.
Some biographical and critical material will also be required reading. Prior reading of the following texts is strongly recommended: The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes.
Limited enrolment: 20
Exclusion: (ENGC97)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC52(ENGB33).
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05544133
A study of selected poetry, drama, and criticism by T.S. Eliot.
In addition to the close study of individual works, this course attempts to define Eliot's place in the evolution of twentieth-century literature.
Limited enrolment: 20
Exclusion: (ENGC96)
Prerequisite: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC51(ENGB32)
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05544253
Richard Ellman summarized the importance of James Joyce when he said "we are still learning to be his contemporaries."
Our primary texts will include Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. In addition we will read essays that apply contemporary literary theory to Joyce's fiction in order to align our own various interpretations of Joyce's fiction with the insights we find there. Of special interest to us in our reading of Joyce will be his complex and ambivalent depictions of such presumably "simple" and "self-evident" structures as identity, gender, power, pleasure, sexuality, history, capitalism, popular culture, imperialism/colonialism, advertising, and what has been labeled "commodity culture" in the twentieth century. Always we will be alert to how Joyce outlined, more than fifty years ago, the modern world we struggle to live in and understand today.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y and three further full-course equivalents in English
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05544353
A detailed study of characteristic themes and techniques in Lawrence's shorter fiction.
Works to be studied include: St. Mawr, The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Man Who Died. Emphasis is upon the ways in which Lawrence's ideas are communicated through style, structure, characterization and imagery.
Limited Enrolment: 20.
Exclusion: (ENGC90)
Prerequisite: ENGA01, ENGA02, and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC52(ENGB33)
Session: Winter Day
A study of Virginia Woolf as a novelist, a literary
theorist, and a feminist.
The primary focus will be on a close analysis of Woolf's fiction; reading will also include selections from her non-fictional writing, such as essays and diaries. Texts will include: The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, Between the Acts.
Limited enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC52(ENGB33),or LITB45
Exclusion: (ENGC91)
Session: Winter Day
A study of Faulkner's development as a writer, from his early romantic poetry to his most accomplished novels.
The course examines Faulkner's main concerns as a writer, his style, themes and the development of Yoknapatawpha County. Reading: Sartoris; The Hamlet; The Town; Go Down, Moses; and other material to be announced in class.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC12(ENGB24Y).
Exclusion: (ENGC25)
Session: Winter Day (S)
Session: Summer Evening (F)
Telephone ID #: 05544633
A study of some patterns in American literature between the wars, as they emerge in the work of Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
Texts will include This Side of Paradise, Babylon Revisited and Other Stories; Tender is the Night; In Our Time; The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms; some letters and critical writing.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Exclusion: (ENGC93)
Prerequisites: (ENGA01, ENGA02) ENGB01, ENGB02, and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC12; or ENGC52
Session: Winter Day
A study of some of the plays of two contemporary dramatists.
Texts: Pinter, The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, Old Times; Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, The Real Thing.
Exclusion: (ENGC94)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full course equivalents in English; or ENGC50(ENGB31Y).
Session: Summer Evening
Telephone ID #: 05544933
A study of Beckett's career as innovative playwright and experimental writer of prose fiction.
The course will explore Beckett's role as one of the creators of "Theatre of the Absurd" and look at some of his challenging experiments in prose fiction. We will explore Beckett's work as director of his own plays, and reading of texts will be supplemented with viewing of Film and television dramas devised by Beckett. Texts will include: Waiting for Godot; Endgame; The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett; some short fiction and a novel.
Limited enrolment: 24
Prerequisite: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y & two further full-course equivalents in English] or [ENGC50] or [ENGB11] or [ENGB26]
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05544953
A study of Beckett's career as innovative playwright and experimental writer of prose fiction.
The course will explore Beckett's role as one of the creators of "Theatre of the Absurd" and look at some of his challenging experiments in prose fiction. Texts will include: Waiting for Godot; Endgame; The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett; some short fiction and a novel.
Limited enrolment: 20.
Prerequisite: (ENGA01, ENGA02) ENGB01, ENGB02 and two further full-course equivalents in English; or ENGC50; or ENGC55
Session: Winter Day
A study of Mavis Gallant's novels and shorter fiction, with particular attention to her development as a short-story writer.
Reading will include the novels Green Water, Green Sky and A Fairly Good Time, and four collections of short stories: The Other Paris; The Pegnitz Junction; Home Truths; and Overhead in a Balloon.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisite: ENGA01, ENGA02, and two further full-course equivalents in English; or any two of ENGB07, ENGB25, ENGB34; or ENGC02 (ENGB27)
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05546153
A study of the existential adventure novel in American literature from Melville to the present time.
Many novelists (like Conrad and Malraux) have used the adventure novel as a vehicle for exploring philosophical questions about life. In this course we will study some nineteenth century and contemporary novels from this perspective. Reading includes: Melville, Typee; Crane, The Red Badge of Courage; Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; Jim Harrison, Sundog; Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise; Richard Ford, The Ultimate Good Luck.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: (ENGA01, ENGA02), ENGA11Y and three other courses in English.
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05546553
A study of late nineteenth-century British and American literature with special attention to the changing nature of gender and culture at the end of the century.
The course focuses on such topics as the interrogation of Victorian social and sexual attitudes in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome; the emergence of "the New Woman" in the fiction of Kate Chopin, George Egerton and Olive Schreiner; the rise of the Victorian adventure romance in Rider Haggard's She and Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King"; the cultural significance of decadent fantasy narratives such as R.L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Elaine Showalter's Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle will provide a starting point for our critical approaches to these topics.
Limited enrolment: 20
Session: Winter Day
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y and two further full-course equivalents in English] or ENGC43Y; or ENGC46Y
Offered 1991/92 and 1992/93
In 1990/91, these courses will be as follows:
A consideration of the love poetry of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Donne.
This course will emphasize intensive reading of the poets studied, and will also locate their work in the European tradition in order to see the birth of modern attitudes toward love and the struggle of the individual writer with inherited conventions.
Exclusion: (ENGC67)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC32(ENGB09Y), ENGB10, ENGC33(ENGB12Y)
Session: Winter Day
A study of the more important women poets in English, American, and Canadian literature.
In addition to a close analysis of individual poets, we shall study how recurrent themes in poetry, poetic techniques, and literary stereotypes have been modified by some women writers. Texts will include anthologies of women poets and the selected poems of authors such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Adrienne Rich, and Margaret Atwood.
Exclusion: (ENGC40)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC51(ENGB32Y), LITB42, LITB45
Session: Winter Day
A study of selected works by nineteenth- century women writers.
Approximately six works, by writers such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton, will be studied. The focus will be on understanding both the nature of fiction and the tradition established by women writers. Texts will include Austen, Mansfield Park and Bronte, Villette.
Limited enrolment: 20
Exclusion: (ENGC82)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC42(ENGB05), ENGC43(ENGB06), ENGC46(ENGB16), LITB45
Session: Winter Day
A study of stories and novels of the late nineteenth and twentieth century written in the realist tradition.
The course will cover some major English and American "realistic" writers. Texts will be selected from a list of writers including Arnold Bennett, Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Orwell, and Steinbeck.
Limited enrolment: 20
Exclusion: (ENGC45)
Prerequisites: ENGA01, ENGA02, and three further full-course equivalents in English; or one of ENGC46 (ENGB16), ENGC12 (ENGB24), ENGC52 (ENGB33)
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05547453
A study of the medium-length fiction of the twentieth century, with emphasis on the novella as a genre, and close reading of texts by British, American, and Canadian authors.
Readings will include novellas by Conrad, James, Wharton, Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Malcolm Lowry and Mavis Gallant. Main texts: The Norton Introduction to the Short Novel (2nd. ed); On Middle Ground (Methuen).
Limited enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: (ENGA01, ENGA02) ENGB01, ENGB02, and two further full-course equivalents in English; or any two of: (ENGA08), ENGA11, ENGB14, ENGB34, ENGC02.
Session: Winter Evening
A study of postmodernism as a recent literary movement.
Through the study of contemporary short stories and novels from America, Canada, and England (as well as of some non-English influences) and of some manifestoes by recent fiction writers, this course will trace the emergence of a new literary movement that seeks to go beyond modernism. Topics considered will include investigations of alternatives to the novel, the use of self-reflexive forms, and the abandonment of realism. Works studied will be by authors such as Nabokov, Lessing, Borges, Bellow, Roth, Barth, Pynchon, Kroetsch, Atwood, D.M. Thomas, Fowles, Renata Adler, and Julian Barnes. Students are urged to begin reading early when possible. (Reading lists available in H525A.)
Exclusion: (ENGC92)
Session: Summer Evening
Telephone ID #: 05547733
Henry Louis Gates noted recently that Morrison and other African-American women novelists are more widely read by a broader cross-section of the reading public than other African-American writers have ever been. Through a study of selected works by Toni Morrison and her contemporaries, the course explores the rise of the African-American woman novelist.
We will begin by considering a range of critical approaches (feminist, post-colonial, psychoanalytic) to Morrison's work. Topics for discussion will include the relationship of her work to the Civil Rights Movement and black cultural nationalism; her creation of a readership that crosses boundary lines established by race, gender, culture and class; the role of history and memory in her work. We will then attempt some comparison of Morrison's work with that of other contemporary African-American women novelists.
Texts will include: Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz; Alice Walker, Meridian, The Color Purple; Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place.
Limited enrolment: 20
Session: Winter Day
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y & three further full-course equivalents in English]
Telephone ID #: 05547833
An investigation of the myth of the open road in North American fiction, with an emphasis on contemporary writing.
The course will focus on eight books, examining them both as independent works and as part of an ongoing tradition. Texts will include: Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Kerouac, On the Road, Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways; O'Brien, Going after Cacciato; Ann Mason In Country. Further texts to be assigned.
Limited Enrolment: 20
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y, and two further full-course equivalents in English] or [two of (ENGA08) ENGA11Y, ENGB14Y, ENGC54F/S (ENGB36)] or [ENGC02Y (ENGB27)];or [ENGC12Y (ENGB24)]
Session: Winter Day
Telephone ID #: 05548353
"Romance is the kind of literature that deals with the dark or hidden side of the psyche, with imagination, dream and fantasy. In romance our deepest desires and fears come to the surface and act out their parts often in stories of far-flung adventure, strange happenings and improbably quests, but sometimes in seemingly realistic tales that have a mysterious or fantastic underside. Yet romance is not mere dreaming: it aims, not at representing the "facts" of everyday existence, but at probing beneath the surface of life to reveal the truth about us and our relationships to ultimate realities--God, nature, time, death. In this course we shall read texts that chart the course of romance through the ages and explore critical approaches appropriate to this type of literature.
Texts will be selected from the following: Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica; Apuleius, The Golden Ass; Malory, The Tale of Sankgraal; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell; Chaucer; he Wyf of Bath's Tale; The Romance of Merlin; Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book Bk VI; Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott; Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Terry Brooks, The Word of Shannara. Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance may be recommended for background to the stories of the Holy Grail.
Limited enrolment: 24
Prerequisites: [ENGB01Y & ENGB02Y & two further full-course equivalents in English]
Session: Winter Evening
Back to English Offered Courses
Up to Index
Search the Calendar