Dr. Michael Bryson
Sierra Tower 832
818-677-5695
michael.bryson@csun.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the sonnets and eight of Shakespeare's plays, drawn from early, middle, and later periods of his writing career. In Shakespeare’s time, daughters (and often sons) are regarded as the property of their fathers, to be disposed of maritally as the fathers see fit. (To be specific, daughters are the sexual property of their fathers—and this dynamic can take some very dark forms, even as the dynamic is protested against by the plays themselves.) This course will explore these dynamics over the course of Shakesepeare’s career.

This version of the course is conducted wholly online, in asynchronous mode. This means a few things:

• The “lectures” for this course are in written form, enhanced with links to outside content, images, and occasional videos. (You will find them in the weekly modules, along with each week's readings.) Most of the lecture notes are more-or-less exact transcripts of the lectures I have delivered for previous in-person versions of this course. A few of the later lecture notes are adaptations of material I have written and published on these works, and all of the other lecture notes you will read here will eventually be published, whether in another book, or an article/series of articles. I view scholarship and teaching as mutually-informing and mutually-supportive activities, and much of my published work comes out of my teaching, and all of my teaching is informed by the scholarship I do.
• All “office hours” will be held virtually, via email (Zoom meetings, if desired, can be arranged on an individual basis). In other words, there will be no set time to come in and ask me questions (that seems to me to violate the entire spirit of an asynchronous class), but questions are encouraged, and I will get back to you with the best answers I have within 24 hours (and usually sooner). If you are having difficulty with the material, tell me. I’ll do the best I can to explain things more clearly, or answer any questions you have.
• However, I will not serve as a pre-grade reviewer for written work like the midterm and final. That’s the kind of help you can get more efficiently from the CSUN Writing Center, which offers online consulting services.
• As the Spring semester begins on a Monday (1/25/2021), I will arrange the various readings and assignment due dates around the succeeding Mondays during the term. So, while we will have no set meeting times, due dates will be set on Mondays (11:59 PST), with the exception of the midterm essay, which will be due on Friday, 3/26 at 11:59 PM (PST), and the final essay, which will be due on Friday, 5/21/at 4 PM (PST).

EVALUATION METHOD: 5 Reading Quizzes, Midterm essay, Final essay. Each quiz will acoount for 100 points, and the Midterm and Final will account for 250 points apiece (1000 points total).

An "A" essay shows deep thought, attention to detail, and critical thinking. It is well organized and flows naturally, leading the reader through the subject easily. Sentences show variety and planning, and paragraphs are carefully put together. The essay is engaging and interesting to read, and the treatment of the subject is original and intriguing. Clichés, triteness, and "stilted" language are absent. Finally, an "A" essay displays no mechanical, spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors—it has been written as carefully as a letter of application for a job, and has often been revised several times.

A "B" essay possesses most (but not all) of the qualities of an "A" essay. The "B" essay typically shows a fair amount of thought, attention to detail, and some evidence of critical thinking. It may have slight organizational problems; it may have a few mechanical, grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors, or it may employ clichés or trite language in a few places.

A "C" essay is an average effort. It displays most (but not all) the qualities of a "B" essay, with additional problems in thought, organization, and expression. Triteness or clichéd language may be present, or the treatment of the subject, though competent, may be uninteresting or unoriginal. Mechanical and/or spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors are a consistent problem. The essay is understandable and the reasoning adequate.

A "D" essay is below average. In a "D" essay, difficulties with structure, organization, or content make the essay difficult to follow. The treatment of the subject may be inadequate, or the reasoning seriously flawed. Problems with mechanics, grammar, punctuation, and spelling interfere seriously with the essay's effectiveness.

An "F" essay is one in which all of the problems listed in the "D" essay are severe enough to make the paper incomprehensible.

An essay that is plagiarized, or simply not submitted at all, will receive a grade of zero.

In general, the grading scale will be as follows:

ASSIGNMENTS:

First, a note on what I find to be valuable and what I find to be a waste of time in terms of literature courses and the learning experience.

When approaching the literature of any given period (or author):

1.  The most valuable thing is simply this: careful and attentive reading (I am still surprised by how many people skip this step.)

2. The second-most valuable thing is paying careful attention to the various contexts (historical/social/political/artistic) that surround the works in question (just a little more of this kind of attention would head off many of the more absurd notions that persist around Hamlet, for example)—such contexts can be gleaned from a wide variety of sources: your instructor (if you have a good one...not always a guarantee), reference works (yes, even Wikipedia, which is actually quite reliable for most things that are not contemporary and politically-disputed in nature), and published scholarship—books and articles about the author/works/time, sometimes written by literary scholars, but often by academically-trained historians of the period(s) in question.

3. And finally, what is of value is returning to the text (the play, poem, etc.) again and again, always trying to keep in mind that what is actually in the text has to be our guiding authority—clever interpretations sometimes have value, and sometimes can be misleading. I am not opposed to such work, in fact, I engage in it myself. But, when doing such work, always try as much as possible to let the text itself—not an academic theory about the text/applied to the text—be your guide.

4. What is not of particular value, at least in my judgment, are the very elements you will note I have left out of this course:

   • discussion boards which replicate the often-somewhat-aimless "class discussion" model of instruction;

   • weekly journal entries/discussion-board posts of a certain word count which each student is required to generate, in which other students are required to feign interest and to which they are expected to generate responses; and

   • basically any other activity which is (and has long been) foisted upon students in order to simulate something that the instructor pretends to regard as "engagement" with the course and the course material.

5. Your engagement is your reading, and the thinking you do about your reading, especially concerning its relation(s) to other art (literary and otherwise) and its relation(s) to life as you know it, and to what you learn (and have learned) about life as others have known it, both now and in the past. If you do not do this reading and thinking at anything more than a minimal level, no amount of Education-school-inspired "learner-centered" activities will compensate for that. Read. Think. Read again. Think further. And then repeat the entire cycle.

And now, a description of the assignments you will be asked to submit for grading credit:

Reading Quizzes: There will be five of these, with two attempts at each (I am not interested in gotcha approaches—I am interested in you learning something, and evaluation instruments can, and ought to be, designed to emphasize that goal). These will be distributed via Canvas at 12 noon (PST)on the Mondays of weeks 2, 4, 9, 13, and 15. These will be due by 11:59 PM (PST) the Mondays of the following week, and you will have 60 minutes from starting each attempt at the quiz to finish it. If you miss doing the quiz, there is no make-up—so don't miss doing the quiz. Each will be worth 100 points, for a total of 500 points (50% of the grade for the course).

Midterm: worth 250 points (25% of the grade for the course) in the range of 1000 words (3-4 pages), this will be comprised of responses to essay questions, and will require you to present an analysis of characters from the blocks of plays we will have read to that point. These essays will not require secondary sources (though the judicious use thereof—if it helps your argument—is not discouraged), but will require you to read the plays closely, and cite (and quote) evidence from the plays (using MLA citation) to back up your arguments.The midterm will be distributed on 3/8/2021 and be due via Canvas submission by 11:59 PM (PST) on 3/26/2021.

Final: worth 250 points (25% of the grade for the course) in the range of 1000 words (3-4 pages), this will be comprised of responses to essay questions, and will require you to present an analysis of characters from the blocks of plays we will have read to that point. As before, these essays will not require secondary sources (though the judicious use thereof—if it helps your argument—is not discouraged), but will require you to read the plays closely, and cite (and quote) evidence from the plays (using MLA citation) to back up your arguments. If you do decide to use secondary sources, I will not prescribe the number thereof (so don't ask—no more than is useful to you in making your argument). To start looking for what you might need, have a look at the CSUN library's page outlining electronic resources for English. The final essay will be distributed on 5/10/2021 and be due via Canvas submission by 4 PM (PST) on 5/21/2021 .

READING LIST: Complete Pelican Shakespeare, or any collected works which you already own, or Internet editions of the plays such as those available here. For a variety of reasons, there will be slight differences in line numbering from edition to edition, so use the citations in my lectures as approximations of where to find the passages I am referring to in your own texts.

Statement on Academic Dishonesty: Plagiarism is a serious offense that will be treated seriously. Please read the CSUN policy here.

Weekly Preview

Week 1 (1/25)—Henry V. Lecture 1.
Week 2 (2/1)—Henry V. Lecture 2. (Quiz 1 assigned.)
Week 3 (2/8)—A Selection of Sonnets (1-20, 116, 130, 138). Lecture 3. (Quiz 1 due)
Week 4 (2/15)—Contexts. Lectures 4 and 5. see also Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (ebook accessible through the library's website), especially pages 178-194 for a description of parentally-arranged and -controlled marriages of the period. (Quiz 2 assigned.)
Week 5 (2/22)—The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Lecture 6. (Quiz 2 due.)
Week 6 (3/1)—The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Lecture 7.
Week 7 (3/8)—A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lecture 8. (Midterm assigned)
Week 8 (3/15)—Off. Spring Break.
Week 9 (3/22)—A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lecture 9. (Quiz 3 Assigned 3/22; Midterm due 3/26)
Week 10 (3/29)—Romeo and Juliet. Lecture 10. (Quiz 3)  
Week 11 (4/5)—Romeo and Juliet. Lecture 11.
Week 12 (4/12)—Othello. Lecture 12 
Week 13 (4/19)—King Lear. Lecture 13 (Quiz 4 assigned)
Week 14 (4/26)—Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Lecture 14. (Quiz 4 due)
Week 15 (5/3)—Hamlet. Lecture 15 (Quiz 5 assigned)
Week 16 (5/10)—(Quiz 5 due and Final assigned)

(The final essay will be distributed on 5/10 and be due via Canvas submission by 4 PM on 5/21.).