English 110
Approaches to Literature: Heroes and Monsters
Instructor: Siân Echard (sian@mail.ubc.ca)
Office hours: Buchanan Tower 514: M 10:00 - 11:00; W 1:00 - 2:00; or by appointment
This course will introduce students to English studies through a survey of poems, plays, and novels, from the Middle Ages to the present day, that have at their core depictions of extraordinary figures. Some are heroes, some are villains, and sometimes, how we view them depends on our own historical, cultural, and ideological positioning. Clusters within the broader theme of heroism will include heroes and nationalism, female heroes, and unlikely heroes. We will consider contemporary media such as graphic novels, television, and film, alongside the poetry and prose of the past, as we tease out what it is that makes a representation of heroism and its (sometimes negative) reflections compelling. Students should leave the class with the ability to explain how literature “works,” both in the technical sense and in terms of its cultural role.
Texts in the Bookstore:
Beowulf , the graphic novel version by Gareth Hinds
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (Broadview)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Broadview)
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
There is also a course pack, available as a downloadable PDF here
Assignments and Weighting:
Two in-class essays @ 20%; Take-home essay 25%; Participation (tutorials) 5%; Final examination 30%
Reading Schedule: September
W 3
F 5
M 8
Interesting links:
There is a nice annotated hypertext edition of The Dream of the Rood, with translation, here
A beta version of the digital facsimile of the Vercelli Book, the manuscript that contains The Dream of the Rood, has just gone live; only a few poems are included so far, but The Dream of the Rood is one, and you can see it here
The Visionary Cross page has pictures of the Ruthwell Cross and related objects
You can read more about runes on a page I created for another course, here
And you can learn more about Old English poetry on a page I created for another course, here
Download summary notes in PDF for this lecture here
W 10 - M 15
Interesting links:
The home page of Gareth Hinds, the artist of our graphic novelization of Beowulf
The British Library page on the Beowulf manuscript: note that there is a podcast link at the bottom of the page
The British Library English timeline, an interactive site illustrating the changes in English over history
Beowulf in Hypertext is a site that allows you to read the poem in Old English or in a modern translation
Beowulf in Cyberspace has an edition of the poem and many interesting supplementary materials
The homepage of Benjamin Bagby, who performs the poem in Old English
The MIT press page for Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin: you can read a sample chapter on the site
The Joseph Campbell Foundation homepage
Download summary notes in PDF for these lectures here
W 17 - F 19
Interesting links:
Read about Vancouver’s own Viking ship here
The Smithsonian has an online exhibition about Viking voyages here
You can read much more about the sagas in the Icelandic Sagas Database
L’Anse aux Meadows, the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, is a World Heritage site; you can read more about it here
Download summary notes in PDF for this lecture here
M 22 - F 26
Interesting links:
You can see the Winchester Manuscript of the Morte Darthur here
You can read about the historical background of the Arthurian legend on a page I created for another course, here
I have also created a chronology of major medieval Arthurian texts here
You can see the Winchester Round Table here
Download a summary of some major plot points in the Arthurian legend here
Download summary notes in PDF for these lectures here
M 29
Interesting links:
TudorHistory.org is a useful site for information about the Tudors
You can see episodes of the TV series The Tudors here
There is an interesting BBC site about the Spanish Armada here
The most comprehensive site I know of for images of Elizabeth can be found here
Luminarium, a great site for historical British literature, has a well-organized galley called the Faces of Elizabeth I here
The National Portrait Gallery in London has some very detailed images of some of the portraits here
Download summary notes in PDF for this lecture here
October
W 1 - M 6
Interesting links:
The Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource is a huge database of images and materials related to the nineteenth-century British artists whose paintings of medieval subjects, including stories of King Arthur, had much to do with how Victorians imagined the Middle Ages
The online Collections database of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London includes many images related to Victorian medievalism; for example, search for Julia Margaret Cameron to see many of her photographs composed to accompany the Idylls
Download summary notes in PDF for these lecture here
F 3
W 8
Interesting links:
The Victorian Web is a collection of many articles and resources related to Victorian Britain
Download a list of terms for analysing poetry, with examples from the class reading, here
Download summary notes in PDF for this lecture here
F 10
M 13
W 15 - F 17
Interesting links:
Many of the images we looked at in this class came from the First World War Poetry Digital Archive
The Canadian War Museum has many materials online relating to WWI
The Rupert Brooke Society site includes all of Brooke’s poetry
Download summary notes in PDF for this lecture here
M 20 - M 27
Interesting links:
You can see pictures of the Splendor Solis, the alchemical treatise I used to illustrate what some of Faustus's books might have looked like, here
The reconstructed Globe Theatre has a website here
The Christopher Marlowe Society homepage is here
Luminarium has a very useful Marlowe page here
Download summary notes for these lectures in PDF here
W 29
Interesting links:
You can see many examples of “broadside ballads” here
You can visit a site about John Keats here
This online version of the poem includes pictures, and links to more, illustrating Keats’ poem
Download summary notes for this lecture in PDF here
F 31
November
M 3 - F 7
Interesting links:
The whole of the 1910 silent version of Frankenstein is available via the Internet Archive
You can see pages from Mary Shelley’s original manuscript here
Download summary notes in PDF for these lectures here
M 10
Interesting links:
Here is the blog of the artist Jillian Tamaki, who recently illustrated Goblin Market
mydelineatedlife.blogspot.com has images from the comic version by John Bolton
And the site for the exhibition Book Illustrations, Goblins, and Bindings includes many pre-Raphaelite illustrations, as well as a series of illustrations, including the Kinuko Craft Playboy illustration, of Goblin Market
The Victorian Web has a lot of useful information about Rossetti and her works
Download summary notes in PDF for this lecture here
W 12 - M 17
Interesting links:
Neil Gaiman has a home page full of information about his work; he is also on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr
Download summary notes in PDF for these lectures here
W 19 - F 28
F 28
Download the topics and instructions for this assignment in PDF here
Download a brief final exam study guide in PDF here