English Literature

Explores how history and literature intersect and how literature reflects on social issues. Readings may include autobiographical narratives, crime stories, plays, and novels published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Investigates how literary texts respond to serious issues of their times, including plantation slavery and industry labor, as well as, social class consciousness and awareness of race and ethnic divisions. Course readings illuminate how literature develops individual characters within family and community contexts that bring large-scale social forces into perspective. 

Prerequisite: None.

Introduces students to an understanding and appreciation of the major literary genres including the poem, the drama, the short story, and the novel. A range of types and themes will be examined. 

Prerequisite: None.

Studies British drama from its beginnings to the present day, examining the development of plays and theaters in response to cultural and technological changes. Also introduces students to the basic concepts of dramatic analysis, including genres, character types, and plot structures. 

Prerequisites: None.

Allows students to develop sophisticated understandings of poems in terms of narrative, character, and imagery, as well as, the more exclusively poetic concerns of form and rhythm. Also pays attention to the backgrounds—literary and cultural—out of which poems arise. 

Prerequisite: None.

Introduces the short story as an art form through the study of the best stories by a wide range of European, British, and American writers through an analysis of the basic elements of fiction: plot, character, theme, symbolism, structures, etc. 

Prerequisite: None.

Focuses on the study of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays by and about women, ranging across all historical periods of literature in both England and America. We will explore the complex relations of gender and authorship. Particularly focusing on issues related to women's independence, autonomy, and power in various contexts.  We will pay attention to how gender inflects the reading as well as the writing of imaginative texts. 

Prerequisite: None.

The study abroad office has approved the general agreement of collaboration between Pitt-Greensburg and the Universidad de Guanajuato in which faculty and students will be exchanged. 

Prerequisite: Department Consent Required.

Introduction to the basic concepts, methods, and terms of British and American literary criticism. The aim is for students to acquire knowledge of the various ways of reading and writing about different kinds of literature from different periods. 

Prerequisite: None.

Examines seven Shakespearean comedies, histories, and tragedies. Lectures and discussions focus on the structures of the plays, their cultural contexts, their characters, imagery, and themes, as well as, adaptations for text versions and performances on stage and in films. 

Prerequisite: None.

A selection of masterpieces that have influenced the course of English American writing. Works by the following authors will be considered: Homer, Shakespeare, and Melville, within their various traditions. 

Prerequisite: None.

Examines detective fiction in terms of its history, its social meaning and as a form of philosophizing. It also seeks to reveal the place and values of popular fiction in our lives.

Prerequisite: None.

Science fiction speculates on what strange new beings we might become—what mechanical forms we might invent for our bodies, what networks and systems might nourish or tap our life energies, and what machine shells might contain our souls. Offers a foundation in the twentieth-century history of science fiction with strong emphasis on recent and contemporary directions in the field. Texts will include a selection of short stories and novels, including orientation to the graphic novel. 

Prerequisite: None.

Studies satire in general, the techniques of certain satires in particular and the expression of satiric attitudes. Students will examine satires from various times and countries so that they can better understand what satire is, how it differs from other literary forms and its function within the culture that produces it. 

Prerequisite: None.

Introduces students to nonfiction, fiction, drama, and poetry by Irish writers, including Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Evan Boland and Roddy Doyle. Students will become familiar with a variety of literary styles studied in the context of Irish history, politics and culture. 

Prerequisite: None.

Examines the major British writers in the "long eighteenth century" (1660-1800). Those to be examined include Behn, Rochester, Dryden, Swift, Pope, and Johnson.

Prerequisite: Sophomore.

Introduces students to theories about texts and language, and the applications of such theories to the practice of literary criticism. Offers historical perspective on literary theory and criticism as matters of long-term interdisciplinary debate, as well as, continuing discussion in our time. Writing assignments will involve multiple stages of drafting and revision, and engage students in critical reflection and application of theoretical ideas and questions. Readings and assignments will be designed to introduce students to research methods required for the senior thesis in English literature. 

Prerequisite: None

Surveys the history and development of the popular novel of the American West, from the formulaic fictions of Owen Wister and Zane Grey to the historical romances of Ernest Haycox and A.B. Guthrie. 

Prerequisite: None.

Seeks to discover the “American” quality in great poetry by examining works of major American poets. Whitman, Dickinson, Sandburg, Stevens, Roethke, Cummings, and Ginsberg will be emphasized. Examination of living poets will provide individual projects. 

Prerequisite: None.

Focuses on narrative structure and narration in relation to a wide range of thematic and cultural concerns, in short stories, novellas, and novels. Authors studied have included Joyce, Anderson, Stein, Faulkner, Swift, Melville, Hemingway, Flaubert, DeLillo, Godwin, James, M. Shelley, Kingston, and Mann. 

Prerequisite: None.

A survey of the literature of medieval England, including Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, Arthurian romances, religious narratives, allegories, and lyrics, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Old English texts will be in translation, but many of the 14th- and 15th-century works will be read in the original Middle English. 

Prerequisites: Sophomore; ENGCMP 0020.

Surveys literature from 1500-1675, exploring how the social and ideological shifts of the age created an explosion of literary texts: lyric poetry, drama, epic, and prose. Authors include Wyatt, Queen Elizabeth, Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and others. 

Prerequisites: Sophomore; ENGCMP 0020.

Examines critical approaches to Shakespeare’s verse and plays in depth. The discussions and seminar reports pay close attention to the sources of the plays, their historical and social contexts, the literary conventions in which the works participate, and the historical development of texts and performances. Includes films. 

Prerequisite: ENGLIT 0580 or permission of the instructor.

Studies the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, ranging from vicious tragedies to sly satires to absurd comedies. These playwrights include Kyd, Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, and Webster. 

Prerequisite: None.

Explores thematic concerns and stylistic features of the 19th-century British novels by such representative authors as Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Hardy, and others. 

Prerequisite: None.

Investigates the poetry, prose, and drama produced in a busy century in Britain from the 1790s to about 1900, a time of revolutionary transformation, rapid technological development, and the expansion of a global British empire. Addresses the emergence of Britain’s Romantic Movement in its revolutionary historical context and traces Romanticism’s influence on later Victorian poets, novelists, and playwrights.

Prerequisite:  Sophomore or permission of instructor.

Surveys literature from North America starting in the colonial periods of the 1500s and 1600s and continuing through the literature of the new United States in the late 1700s and 1800s. Investigates how colonial texts contributed to the formation of “American” identities and cultures, distinctive to the western hemisphere, the “New World.” Introduces editing issues and publication history relevant to the distribution and readership of texts from the Americas. Covers a wide range of genres, from Native American oral traditions to the American short story and the poetry of the Transcendentalists. 

Prerequisite: Sophomore.

Covers most of the novels of Jane Austen and explores some film and television adaptations. The lectures and discussions examine the narrative structures of the novels and films and contrast the cultural and aesthetic values of the early 19th-century with those of our current era. 

Prerequisite: None.

Examines major figures—with special emphasis on African American writers—whose novels, plays, stories, and poems speak from urban centers of the 20th century. Writers may include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Edgar Wideman, Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Alice Walker, and others. Lecture, discussion, short papers.  

Prerequisite: Sophomore. Cross-listed as AFRCNA 1244.

Through a close study of literary works by minority women writers of North American, particularly African and Asian American writers, the course intends to help students develop a clear understanding and a critical appreciation of these different “strands” in North American culture. 

Prerequisite: None.

In examining the Realist tradition as articulated in contemporary American literature, the course begins with brief surveys of turn of the century American social writers and American Social Realists of the 1930s, followed by works of contemporary novelists and creative nonfiction writers. 

Prerequisite: None.

Studies the contributions of a group of writers which has come to be called "the beat generation." Concentrating primarily on the fiction and poetry associated with the movement, we will examine their work from its emergence in the 1950s into the 21st century, and explore the impact these writers had on the larger culture. 

Prerequisite: None

Compares American, English, and European texts that reflect the aesthetic, philosophic, and sociopolitical concerns characteristic of much of modern literature. 

Prerequisites:  Sophomore or permission of instructor.

Considers thematic, formal, historical, or cultural topics in late 19th and 20th century literature. It ties these issues to critical and social concerns in international modernism and postmodernism. 

Prerequisite: None.

Examines contemporary literature, primarily in English, written in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, etc. It pays particular attention to its depiction of social, political and moral concerns. 

Prerequisite: None.

Introduces the historical development of English and its current distribution and variety of forms. The study of grammar, phonetics, and geography early in the course provides a base for tracing the social and historical conditions under which the structures and vocabulary of Old English changed to Middle English and then to Modern English. 

Prerequisite: ENGCMP 0020.

In its age-old context, the term “romance” refers to narratives that explore the unfamiliar, the wonderful, strange, and otherworldly—defying natural order and the apparent limits of “reality.” Such narratives are the focus of this course. Explores the early medieval traditions of chivalry and fantastic romance in Europe and the Arabic world, and relates these traditions to the modern and contemporary developments of fantasy literature. Introduces medieval romance in the context of world literature, including The Arabian Nights, and fantasy texts by such writers as Tolkien, Le Guin, Rushdie, Mahfouz, and Gaiman. 

Prerequisite: None.

Offers in-depth study and research of long epic fantasy cycles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Le Guin’s Earthsea series. Provides opportunities to research theories of fantasy writing, and to investigate mythic and epic foundations for the construction of fantasy worlds in our time. 

Prerequisite: None.

Explores tragic literature from its Hellenic beginnings through the Renaissance and into the modern period, addressing issues about tragic heroes and their flaws, about fate and justice, and about understanding tragedy as a literary form as it changes through time and from culture to culture.  

Prerequisite: None.

Deals with the development of the novel from its earliest roots in the romance to its modernist and post-modernist manifestations in the twentieth century.

Prerequisites:  Sophomore; ENGCMP 0020.

Examines literature that has been and is being read by children. There are units on fairy tales, myths and legends, poetry, and fiction, as well as, more realistic fiction. The approach is historical, critical, and creative. 

Prerequisites: Sophomore; ENGCMP 0020.

Examines a variety of children's books from a number of theoretical perspectives: historical, feminist, transactional, structuralist, etc. The implications of theory will be emphasized. We will place children's books and reading in the wider context of the emotional, cognitive, and moral development of the child, the popular culture of childhood, and contemporary multicultural society. 

Prerequisites: ENGLIT 1640 or ENGLIT 1647.

Students will read classics, as well as, modern works written specifically for an adolescent audience. Students will also read and discuss sociological and psychological constructions of adolescents and books of pedagogy. 

Prerequisites: Sophompre; ENGCMP 0020.

Topics vary. 

Prerequisites: Junior; ENGCMP 0020. Corequisite:  HIST 1005.                                            .

Investigates in-depth one or more significant issues relevant to women’s experience as reflected in literature by and about women. Topics have included women’s sexuality, freedom of expression, experiences of travel, and cultural transition.

Prerequisite: None.

This course introduces the selected works by Asian North American writers of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Korean descent. Literary analysis will focus on the theme, form, style, language, and structure of works from a variety of genres, including essays, poetry, short stories, novels, drama, and film. A crritical reading and comparing these selected texts intend to help students recognize Asian North American literary writings as part of the rich diversity of American cultural and literary traditions.

Enables students to combine academic training and practical work experienced related to the major.

Prerequisite: Instructor Consent Required 

In literary theory and criticism, some ancient but mostly modern, examines how literature functions in society, how literature produces meaning, and how literature is judged aesthetically. Students will apply schools of contemporary literary theory to their own research papers. 

Prerequisite: Senior.