A prerequisite course for enrollment in ENGL 1313 for students scoring below 22 on the Reading section of the ACT or below 570 on the SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW). Students with no available test scores will also be enrolled in ENGL 1303. ENGL 1303 is an introduction to the principles of composition accomplished through the study of grammar, standard English usage, and rhetorical techniques and strategies. This course emphasizes basic grammar and composition and focuses on sentence structure and on organizing and developing the short essay. ENGL 1303 does not meet the Liberal Arts Core requirements for either the BA or the BS degree but does carry elective credit.
An introduction to the principles of composition and rhetoric accomplished through the writing of expository essays and through the study both of the principles of composition and of essays which employ specific rhetorical strategies.
This course continues the study of composition and rhetoric introduced in English 1313: Composition and Literature I. Students will gain an understanding of why reading literature is deeply important for Christians, learn the conventions of such literary genres as poems, stories, novels, and plays, study methods of literary analysis, interpret literature from a Biblical perspective through the exploration of Biblical archetypes, typology, language constructions, and metaphor in classic works of English literature, and learn to write well-constructed and well-written arguments about literature and life in standard English including the use of research in MLA format and the writing of a fully developed research paper.
A reading course in the literary heritage of western civilization. This course includes readings from the Greeks, the Romans, and the Middle Ages.
Topics are selected on basis of student need and academic qualifications of staff. If regular lectures are not given, a minimum of 30 hours of work for each hour credit must be included. Laboratory may or may not be included. This course may be repeated for credit.
A reading course in the literary heritage of western civilization. This course includes readings from the 18th century to the present.
A survey of the historical development of English literature from its beginning through the eighteenth century: historical background and major authors of each period. The course will provide requisite information for advanced study in major periods of English literature. For English majors or by permission of the instructor.
Topics are selected on basis of student need and academic qualifications of staff. If regular lectures are not given, a minimum of 30 hours of work for each hour credit must be included. This course may be repeated for credit.
A survey of the historical development of English literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: historical background and major authors of each period. The course will provide requisite information for advanced study in major periods of English literature. For English majors or by permission of the instructor.
This course examines the beginnings of America’s literary self-definition in the Colonial Period and covers the rise of American Romanticism and its culmination in writers such as Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, and Dickinson. For English majors or by permission of the instructor.
This course examines American literary trends after the Civil War, including Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism. Writers under consideration include Twain, S. Crane, Frost, Stevens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner. For English majors or by permission of the instructor.
The course addresses the way the American West has shaped American culture and popular culture. It examines the Frontier Myth, Manifest Destiny, Regeneration through Violence, America’s cowboy archetype, the savage archetype, and the American dream. Students read literature written by authors from a variety of cultures, including Anglo, Mexican-American, and Native American. Students view television shows and films to examine how popular culture has created and enforced stereotypes. The course is designed for non-majors seeking upper level elective credit or to fulfill Liberal Arts Core requirements.
This course will acquaint students with literature by and about women from the medieval period to the present. Through a study of various literary genres, students will learn that the issues that concern women transcend time, place, race, religion, and ethnicity. This course is designed for non-English majors seeking upper level elective credit or to fulfill Liberal Arts Core requirements and for persons seeking certification in Language Arts Grades 6-8 and Grades 8-12.
This course covers selected novels of Jane Austen and Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte, influential 19th century writers who wrote of affairs of the heart with insight and passion. Students will study the authors’ social and intellectual milieu and discuss their works and compare them to some of the film adaptations of these popular works.
An introduction to the art of film. Students are provided with a methodology and a vocabulary for understanding film and are encouraged to consider how different directors guide and shape our perceptions of reality, how different genres generate their own unique vision of the world and of humanity, how the multi-media aspects of film affect us as viewers, how film provides us with a record of cultural values and cultural change, and how screen writers, actors, directors, and cinematographers translate literary genres into visual terms. This course may be used for elective credit.
The study of major periods and masterworks of Hispanic literature, read and discussed in English. Introduces literary/cultural figures of medieval and early modern Spain (El Cid, Don Quixote, Don Juan); and includes major 20th-century writers, as well as literary movements that were propagated from Latin America to the rest of the literary world (e.g., magical realism). This course may not be used to fulfill requirements for the Spanish major. (Offered also as SPAN 3370.)
Students complete a close reading of the seven novels that make up the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Students assess how and to what extent the chronicles successfully foster spiritual maturity, strength of character, and moral virtue. Special focus will be placed on the Christian allegories that underlie each of the novels.
Students study ethnic literatures, including works by authors from the following cultural voices: North American Indian, African American, Mexican American, Asian American, and Americans of Middle Eastern descent.
A study of selected tragedies, history plays, and comedies, with emphasis on the major tragedies. Some consideration will be given to the cultural and philosophical characteristics of the Elizabethan Age as they are reflected in the drama of Shakespeare. For English majors or permission of the instructor.
Students complete readings from Beowulf and selected Arthurian romances and a close reading of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The course also includes an overview of The Silmarillion and a discussion of how Tolkien was influenced by Norse mythology, Beowulf, Arthurian Romances, his Catholic faith, and his friendship with C. S. Lewis.
This course takes students on an exciting journey through the great literary works of Ancient Greece: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Aeschylus’ Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides), Sophocles’ Oedipus, Antigone, Women of Trachis, and Philoctetes; Euripides’ Medea, Hippolytus and Bacchae. The course examines the nature of the epic and tragic hero and those universal questions we all must answer for ourselves: Who am I?, What is my purpose?, How do I know I am of value? The course will also offer an overview of ancient Greek history and consider Greece’s legacy for Western civilization.
This course takes students on an exciting journey through the great literary works of Ancient Rome and Medieval Italy: Virgil’s Aeneid; Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. The course examines the nature of the classical and medieval epic hero and those universal questions we all must answer for ourselves: Who am I?, What is my purpose?, How do I know I am of value? The course will also offer an overview of ancient Roman history, consider Rome’s legacy for Western civilization, and discuss how Dante, while imitating pagan writers, was able to fashion a Christian epic.
Students read novels, including Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Davis Grubb’s Night of the Hunter (screenplay by James Agee), Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry, and Marilyn Robinson’s Gilead. Students also view films based on these and other novels that portray religion in 20th century American society, and learn to analyze both genres for plot, characterization, metaphors, themes and other literary elements.
C.S. Lewis, the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century, has challenged three generations of readers to think logically and imaginatively about their faith, their moral behavior, and their view of man, God, and the universe. This class will study closely Lewis’s seven major apologetical works (Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Abolition of Man, and A Grief Observed) and seek to determine why these works have had such a phenomenal and growing impact both on Christians of all denominations and on those of other (or no) religious backgrounds.
Although the late 19th century was a golden age for children’s literature, after WWI a more cynical, realistic Europe relegated fairy tales to the nursery. A group known as the Inklings–which centered on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams–played a major role in revising the reputation of fantastical literature. This class will study Lewis’s Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) and Till We Have Faces, Tolkien’s shorter fairy tales and essay On Fairy Stories, and one of the spiritual warfare novels of Charles Williams (Descent into Hell). The class will also consider how the Inklings were influenced by the faerie stories of George MacDonald (Phantastes, Lillith), and the imaginative apologetics of G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man).
This course helps students apply skills developed in the study of English to professional settings. Students will work in an approved position involving writing, editing, or other work related to the study of English language or literature. Positions may be on or off campus. Students must complete 45 clock hours per credit hour. This course is repeatable for credit.
A survey of literary theory from Plato to Postmodernism. The course provides an understanding of the different theoretical structures, schools, and methodologies that have influenced our understanding and appreciation of literature. It explores the presuppositions upon which each theoretical system is founded and the special terminology associated with each system. Students planning to pursue a graduate degree are strongly encouraged to take this course.
This course provides intensive study of the key literature of the Middle Ages in Britain (ca. 450-1485). Works and authors may include Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Langland’s Piers Plowman, and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. As Rome waned, western Europe was transformed politically by the rise of feudal kingdoms and religiously by the flowering of an influential and dynamic Church. In this class, we will examine closely how different works and authors reflect and engage the many facets of medieval culture, including chivalry and heroism, courtly love, practical Christian piety, and the grim realities of war at home and abroad.
This course provides intensive study of the key literature of the Renaissance in England (1485-1600). Works and authors may include William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas More’s Utopia, Elizabeth I, Francis Bacon, Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. In a time of new classical learning, violent religious controversy, and political upheaval, Renaissance England was rich with remarkable creativity and artistic achievement in prose, poetry, and drama. In this class, we will examine closely how different Renaissance writers expressed and explored the human condition at all levels, in a period that speaks beautifully of the True and the Good perhaps more than any other.
This course provides intensive study of the key literature of seventeenth-century England (ca. 1601-1700). Works and authors may include John Donne’s lyric poetry, Ben Jonson’s comedies, John Webster’s macabre drama, George Herbert’s The Temple, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Cavalier poetry, Richard Crashaw, Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson, Thomas Browne, Andrew Marvell, Aphra Behn, and William Congreve. The literature of this period is extraordinary for elaborate form and conceit, intense meditative and devotional lyric, response to revolutionary scientific discoveries, and political satire, polemic, and debate through a period of civil war, regicide, and republican experiment.
This course provides intensive study of the key literature of the Long Eighteenth Century (1688-1815). Works and authors may include John Dryden, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Alexander Pope, Laurence Sterne, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. Topics may include Enlightenment thought, Augustan poetry, sentimental fiction, comedy of manners, early gothic romance, satire, coffeehouses, the rise of the novel and of journalism, and developments in literary criticism, biography, the essay, and the dictionary.
This course provides intensive study of the key literature of the Romantic Age (1789-1832). Works and authors may include Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Wordsworth’s Prelude, Coleridge’s Christabel, Byron’s Don Juan and Manfred, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and Keats’s Eve of St. Agnes and Lamia. In this class, we will examine closely the unique zeitgeist of the Romantic Age, one that marks a transition between traditional, pre-French revolutionary Europe and the modern Europe of which we are heirs. Like the great figures of the Renaissance, the Romantics saw themselves as breaking from past traditions while yet carrying on perennial conversations about human nature, the natural world, the imagination, and the divine.
This course provides intensive study of the key literature of the Victorian Age (1833-1901). Works and authors may include Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Idyls of the King, Browning’s Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto, Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, Ruskin’s Stones of Venice, Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, T.H. Huxley’s On the Physical Basis of Life, and Arnold’s Function of Criticism. The Victorian Age was an age during which the orthodoxies of the past were put to the test by new theories of science, progress, philosophy, art, religion, authority, etc. In this class, we will examine closely how each Victorian writer reacted to and wrestled with these challenges.
This course provides intensive study of major authors writing in English in Modern and contemporary letters. Authors may include T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Butler Yeats, among others. Special consideration will be given to the literature of the world wars, modernism, and post-modernism.
This course is an intensive study of both American Renaissances — the one of American Transcendentalism with authors such as Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Hawthorne, and Melville, as well as the renaissance of sentimental American writers such as Longfellow, Alcott, and Stowe.
This course is an intensive study of the great realists and naturalists, including Jack London, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser. Special attention will be paid to the historical context of American realism and its concomitant literary outgrowths, including magic realism and dystopian fiction.
This course is an intensive study of the rise of Modernism and the expatriate movement in American letters, with possible authors including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, H.D., and Wallace Stevens. Contemporary experimental authors as well as the current use of modernist literary techniques will also be explored. Attention may also be paid to music and visual art of the modernist movement.
This course examines the important intersections of health and science in literature. Particular texts and topics will vary based upon the instructor’s expertise and research interests. This is a repeatable course.
This undergraduate course provides intensive study of American literature in the English language. Sections of this course may focus on a variety and range of representative authors, works, genres, movements, and periods form the colonial period up to the twentieth century.
This undergraduate course provides intensive study of literature from the British Isles: England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Sections of this course may focus on a variety and range of representative authors, works, genres, movement, and periods from the early Middle Ages up to the twentieth century.
This undergraduate course provides directed readings of select works that embody a Christian worldview or that readily lend themselves to being analyzed in accordance with a Christian worldview. Works can be taken from a wide range of authors, genres, and/or countries, but all will be viewed through an intentionally Christian lens.
This undergraduate course provides directed readings of works of literature from the modern and contemporary periods. Readings may be selected from a variety of narrative forms, genres, places of origin, and dates from the late 19th century to contemporary approaches to the literary tradition more broadly.
This undergraduate course provides directed readings of select non-English-language literature in translation or literature in English by non-American and non-British authors. Readings can be taken from any country or period from antiquity to the twenty-first century. This course may focus on the major authors and literary trends of a single nation or it may introduce a comparative approach to literary trends across nations and/or time periods.
A course exploring an unusual or specialized topic within the field of literature. Example topics may include literature of a specific author, era, or genre, or literature exploring a particular theme. If regular lectures are not given, a minimum of 30 hours of work for each hour of credit must be included. This course is repeatable for credit.
A course for students developing critical writing and research skills at the graduate level. If regular lectures are not given, a minimum of 30 hours of work for each hour credit must be included. This course is repeatable for credit.
This course continues the research, writing, and defense of a thesis project begun in ENGL 5399. This course earns one credit hour and may be taken twice.
Structures of Poetry teaches students to read poetry thoughtfully, accurately, and wisely. Students who are experienced with reading poetry will emerge from this course as capable readers. Students who have read much poetry will emerge from this course with a much fuller understanding of the way a poem functions.
This introductory course on Victorian Fiction will survey the major novelists from Dickens to Hardy.
Students complete a close reading of the seven novels that make up The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Students assess how and to what extent The Chronicles successfully foster spiritual maturity, strength of character, and moral virtue. Special focus will be placed on the Christian allegories that underlie each of the novels.
Students complete readings from The Lord of the Rings and Beowulf. The course also includes an overview of The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and a discussion of how Tolkien was influenced by Anglo-Norse mythology, his Catholic faith, and his friendship with C. S. Lewis. Emphasis will be put on how Tolkien injects a Christian worldview into a pre-Judeo-Christian society.
Students read novels and short stories by William Faulkner and relate his themes and style to American Modernism.
This course introduces students to the Great Epics of the Classical World: The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil.
This course will cover literature that portrays societies that are utopian and/or dystopian in nature, and feature the use or misuse of technology. The course will begin with Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), then proceed chronologically through the 19th and 20th centuries. We will end by exploring a new literary genre, hypertext fiction, which is not only produced but also consumed using technology, since it can only be read on a computer screen. Students will analyze the works using selected 20th century critical theories.
Examines the fourteenth century as a turning point in English and European culture: the end of the High Middle Ages and the beginnings of the pre-Renaissance. The course emphasizes the rise of vernacular languages as literary languages, particularly in Italy and England, and the role of Geoffrey Chaucer as the father of English poetry.
This course considers the thought and works of John Milton, with special attention devoted to Paradise Lost. Through examination of Milton’s poetry and his major prose writings as well as their historical context and influence, students will explore the artistic, religious, political, and philosophical contributions of this key intellectual figure.
This course provides intensive study of American literature in the English language. Sections of this course may focus on a variety and range of representative authors, works, genres, movements, and periods, from the colonial period up to the twentieth century.
This course provides intensive study of literature from the British Isles: England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Sections of this course may focus on a variety and range of representative authors, works, genres, movements, and periods, from the early Middle Ages up to the twentieth century.
This course provides directed readings of select non-English-language literature in translation or literature in English by non-American and non-British authors; readings can be taken from any country or period from antiquity to the twenty-first century. This course may focus on the major authors and literary trends of a single nation or it may introduce a comparative approach to literary trends across nations and/or time periods.
This course provides directed readings of select works that embody a Christian worldview or that readily lend themselves to being analyzed in accordance with a Christian worldview; works can be taken from a wide range of authors, genres, and/or countries, but all will be viewed through an intentionally Christian lens.
This course provides a selected study of William Shakespeare’s drama and verse, attending to the major genres of history, tragedy, comedy, romance, and non-dramatic poetry. Consideration may be given to Shakespeare’s deployment of the theatre as a locus of human transformation, the role of imagination in early modern questions of faith and politics, and the poet’s creative use of literary, historical, and philosophical sources.
This course provides directed readings of works of literature from the modern and contemporary periods. Readings may be selected from a variety of narrative forms, genres, places of origin, and dates, from the late 19th century to the present day. Consideration may be given to the novel, short fiction, and poetry, as well as modernist and contemporary approaches to the literary tradition more broadly.
Topics are selected on basis of student need and academic qualifications of faculty. If regular classes are not conducted, a minimum of 30 hours of work for each hour credit must be included. This course may be repeated for credit.
This course is for the research, writing, and defense of a literature thesis project that is supervised by a faculty member.
This course uses the Cervantes masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha as a springboard for the study of literary theory that may, in turn, be applied to other literary texts. Contemporary theories such as psychological, mythological-archetypal, formalist, structuralist, and poststructuralist methodologies will be examined and applied to Quixote.
This course provides a survey of American literary traditions from 1620 to 1920, focusing on the historical and philosophical foundations and major figures in American literature. Writers included are: Bradford, Bradstreet, Edwards, Franklin, Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Howells, Crane, Adams, and James.
A survey of mystery and detective fiction since Poe with an emphasis on 20th century British and American writers. By the end of the course, students should recognize the major authors, the major fictional detectives, and the principal varieties, e.g., the inverted detective story, the hard-boiled school, the police procedural, and the locked room puzzle.
This course will study the form and content of satire from antiquity to the modern period as represented in selected poetry and prose. Works studied will be grouped in thematic units to allow comparison of techniques employed by individual writers in addressing common issues.
This course will provide an overview of the life, world, and work of Charles Dickens, the Shakespeare of the English novel. His development as a writer will be traced through his major novels: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit.
