ELL2015S 2007

Monday and Wednesday 3rd period (10am)

This course aims to investigate some alternative and less canonical forms of Victorian expression, in fantastic narratives, texts of dreams and the unconscious, children’s writing, fairy tale, nonsense, horror and science fiction. The course explores these texts as imaginative responses to Victorian society as well as considering their functioning as examples of their specific genres.

COURSE OUTLINE 2007

Course Requirements

You are required to attend at least 75% of tuts; if you are going to be absent, please e-mail or sms me in advance to excuse yourself. I reserve the right to mark you absent and ask you to leave the class if you have not done the necessary preparation set for any tutorial.

In addition to attendance, you are required to write three short exercises and two long essays. I will follow standard English dept. procedure in taking 10% off your essay mark for work submitted up to a week late; essays handed in more than a week after deadline will be accepted for DP purposes, but will receive a mark of 0. Exercises cannot be handed in late, as we'll discuss the readings in detail in class, and there's no real point in you writing the exercise after that.

This seminar has a DP requirement. If you have not submitted all the required work or have attended too few of the seminars without good reason, I may give you an overall DPR symbol for the course, which means you will receive a mark of 0, not an average of the work you have actually done. This means you will fail ELL2015S as a whole.

Mark Breakdown

Essay 1 = one-third of final mark
Essay 2 = one-third of final mark
Average of exercise marks = one-third of final mark.

• You have a choice of essay topics, but must write one from the first half (i.e. on either fairy tale, Lewis Carroll or nonsense verse) and one from the second (i.e. on either Dickens, Stoker or Wells).
• Deadlines are staggered; usually an essay on a particular topic is due the week after the last seminar on that topic.
• Essays should be around 1600 words long. While I do expect you to do some background reading, this should not dominate your essay: I am far more interested in your own response to the text than in your ability to hash together comments from critical sources.

I do not under any circumstances tolerate plagiarism: make sure your debts to critical works are fully acknowledged both in your bibliography and in the text of your essay, each time you use an idea or a quote from another source. See my discussion of plagiarism on the Common Errors page.

Short Exercises

There are three short exercises (600 words each) required for this course: they are responses to specific critical readings. All three must be submitted.

I have found it useful to require students to write these, as a way of coming to grips with theoretical concepts. You are asked to address particular aspects of the reading’s argument, and are not expected to do additional research. This is more of an extended comprehension than an actual essay.

Extensions

I don’t usually mind granting essay extensions if you have a good reason for requesting one, and if you do so IN ADVANCE. I respond really, really badly to requests for extensions on the actual day of the deadline.
Please also note that I CANNOT grant extensions on the short exercises, as we discuss the material in class on the hand-in day; the only exception to this rule is if you are ill on the hand-in day and absent from class, but I require a doctor's note, please.

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