I created these five projects for English 1112 based on units I had earlier developed for English 394 (The Victorian Novel from Dickens to Hardy) at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada]. English 1112 (Introduction to Literature Written in English 2) is a single-semester introductory course for first-yeart students at Lakehead University. Its major emphasis is the study of four major texts determined by each instructor. Although there is no maxmum number of texts for the course, fewer is preferable so as to allow the students the opportunity to investigate the individual texts in depth. The texts, which introduce students to a variety of literatures produced in English since the late eighteenthth century, are chosen to reflect the following principles:

Theory: the course will introduce the students to a variety of theoretical approaches, including both text-based and contextual ones. To this end, the course will include reading material open to different literary theories and critical practices.

History: the course will include at least one text from each of the following historical periods: Romantics, Victorian, Modern, later 20th-Century.

Identity: the course will include works written both male and female authors and that consider various constructions of identity, such as age, sexuality, class, race, culture, etc.

Nation: the course will include texts from at least three national literatures (English, Irish, Canadian, American, Jamaican, Australian, Kenyan, etc.).

Genre: the course will include texts from at least four genres (e.g., novel, short story, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, drama, film, orature, essay, autobiography, etc.); among these will be at least one longer work.

The Exercises

  1. A New Critical Approach
  2. The Textual-Biographical Approach
  3. The New Historicist Contextual Approach
  4. Cinematic Adaptation and Illustration
  5. Close-Reading a Passage
  6. Intertextuality: Hard Times and Charles Perrault "Bluebeard"

Last modified 21 May 2003