ENGL 36508 – 48167 MoWe 2:00PM – 3:15PM Online Course

Instructor: Václav Lucien Paris Email: vparis [at] ccny.cuny.edu Office Hours: Zoom meetings by appointment

Virginia Woolf and her World

 

All writers create their own world, but few are as rich, as strange, and as influential as that of Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s world is not easy to enter. Her novels, ranging from her early Voyage Out to her late Between the Acts are complex psychological structures that make few concessions to lazy readers. Her networks were often private. Orlando, a fantasy about (among other things) transsexuality and living through centuries, is also a love letter to her friend, Vita Sackville-West. But once you get into Woolf, you’ll find that it’s even harder to get out. Woolf changes the way you see things. She gives you a vocabulary for what is going on under the surface, for understanding pervasive features of everyday life that you didn’t even suspect before. Reading most of Woolf’s major novels, a range of her essays and short fiction, and some of the works of those in her circle, this course offers a way into her world, which is also—as we will come to see—increasingly our world.

 

Aims of the course

 

I hope you will bring your own questions and problems to this course, and I invite you to use the reading, writing, and classes to respond to these. More generally the course aims to help you to:

• understand difficult works of literature and to develop your sensitivity to the possibilities of fictional writing by looking closely at Woolf’s texts.
• appreciate the innovative ways in which Woolf’s fiction (and modernist fiction more generally) represents inner consciousness and our lived experience of the world.
• reflect on many aspects of everyday life that are typically passed over in silence, partly because we don’t know how to express them or don’t have words for them: including death, childhood trauma, fleeting sensations of love, and the sensual, embodied, experience of living in a city.
• broaden your understanding of the evolution of the novel form in the early twentieth century.
• write critically and lucidly about difficult literature, for and with an audience of peers.
• establish a clear and original written thesis about writing and why it matters.
• talk fluently about modern literary methods, forms, contexts, themes.
• build your vocabulary and express yourself precisely.
• appreciate the evolution of the novel form in the early twentieth century.
• understand the origins of theoretical feminism in the twentieth century.
• understand some of the ways in which the world changed in the first half of the twentieth century and why these changes are still important.
• open your imagination (often in ways that cannot be anticipated in advance).

 

 

Requirements and Evaluation

 

Your grade for this course will be evaluated on the following basis (please also read the policies at the end of the syllabus):

 

20% Reading and in-class participation: All students are asked to turn up to all classes having done the reading, bring their books, contribute intelligently, and generally support the esprit de corps. If you don’t understand, say so. If you think you can help others, do it! I will be taking attendance. If you miss more than three classes, this will affect your grade.

 

30% Discussion Board Posts. You need to post three times. Each post is worth 10%. See below for instructions.

 

30% Discussion Board Responses. You need to respond to three posts from fellow students. Each response is worth 10%. See below for detailed guidelines on posts and responses.

 

20% Critical Paper: A critical analysis of a text by Virginia Woolf. This should be at least 1000 words long, include your fully cited research, notes and a bibliography. It should be (but doesn’t have to be) a development of one of your discussion posts, taking into account feedback from other students and class discussion. It is due one week after the end of the semester. We will discuss the critical paper in class.

 

 

Required Texts

 

This is an OER (open educational resources) course. All texts are available through the course Blackboard page for free. If you (understandably) prefer print copies of Woolf’s novels, you are welcome to buy whichever editions you like.

 

Schedule of Classes and Reading

 

All readings are required before the class, except those with an asterisk (*), which are optional but recommended. Each of Woolf’s novels is split into three classes. For each class you must read at least 1/3^rd of the novel. A Room of One’s Own is split into two classes. You must read at least the first half for the first class and finish it for the second class.

 

On average there are about 75 pages of required reading a week. Some weeks, however, have more reading and some weeks have less. Please plan accordingly so that you don’t run out of time.

 

Feb.	M 1	1. Introduction and Syllabus (no reading today). In class we will look at the opening passages of Woolf’s early novels.
	W 3	2. Short Stories “The Mark on the Wall” *“A Haunted House” *“An Unwritten Novel”
	M 8	3. Essays “Modern Fiction” *“Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”
	W 10	4. James Joyce, Ulysses episode 4.
	M 15	PRESIDENTS DAY – NO CLASSES
	W 17.	5. Mrs Dalloway I *“Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street.”
	M 22.	6. Mrs Dalloway II
	W 24	7. Mrs Dalloway III *”The Prime Minister”
Mar.	M 1	8. Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, from The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
	W 3	9. Marcel Proust, from Swann’s Way * “Proust, Woolf, and Modern Fiction,” by Pericles Lewis. The Romantic Review 99: 1 (2008) * Matthew Taunton “Modernism, time and consciousness: the influence of Henri Bergson and Marcel Proust”
	M 8	10. To the Lighthouse I
	W 10	11. To the Lighthouse II
	M 15	12. To the Lighthouse III
	W 17	13. Rethinking Biography “The New Biography” “A Sketch of the Past” *Selections from Flush * Lytton Strachey, Preface to Eminent Victorians
	M 22.	14. Orlando I * Vita Sackville West, The Land * Orlando (film)
	W 24.	15. Orlando II
	M 29	NO CLASS – SPRING RECESS
	W 31	NO CLASS – SPRING RECESS
Apr.	M 5	16. Orlando III
	W 7.	17. A Room of One’s Own I
	M 12	18. A Room of One’s Own II
	W 14	19. Modern Poetry T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land *Hope Mirlees, Paris
	M 19	20. The Waves I
	W 21	21. The Waves II
	M 26	22. The Waves III
	W 28	23. War Part one from Three Guineas “Thoughts on Peace in an Air-raid”
May	M 3	24. Final Paper Discussion – no reading for today.
	W 5	25. Between the Acts I
	M 10	26. Between the Acts II
	W 12	27. Between the Acts III
May	M 17	28. Review – no reading for today.

Policies

 

• This is an online course. Students are expected to keep their video on during classes, unless they have extenuating circumstances, in which case they are asked to notify the professor beforehand.
• In compliance with CCNY policy and equal access laws, appropriate academic accommodations are offered by the AccessAbility Center. Students who are registered with the AccessAbility office and are entitled to specific accommodations must arrange to have the Office notify the Professor in writing of their status at the beginning of the semester. If specific accommodations are required for a test, students must present the instructor with a form from the Accessability Office at least one week prior to the test date in order to receive their accommodations.
• Plagiarism will not be tolerated. The university has a published policy on academic integrity that may be found at: http://www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/la/Academic_Integrity_Policy.pdf. Ignorance of this policy is no excuse. If you use other people’s work you must cite it. Instructions for proper citation can be found here: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. If you are in any doubt about your use of a source, please seek advice from Prof. Paris or the writing center.
• If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to find out what work you need to do for the next one from your fellow students. Write down the name and contact details (telephone number and email address) of two of your fellow students here:

 

 

1. __________________________________________________________________

 

 

2. __________________________________________________________________

 

 

Discussion Board Posts Guidelines

 

Students are asked to post to the discussion board three times during the semester in response to three of Woolf’s novels that we will read. You must post before the last day of classes dedicated to that novel. Note: sine there are five novels, there are also five opportunities to post. You only need to take three of these opportunities. If you post more than three times, I will only count your best three posts in your grade.

Try to keep your discussion board posts to one single-spaced page (about 500 words). Each post must have a title. Each post must begin by quoting a brief passage (a couple of sentences) from the novel that we will be discussing that week. Your post should begin by discussing that passage. The post should then go on to explain its context and to describe what it means. Why it significant? How is the passage contributing to the development of the novel of the whole or to a larger theme? What questions does it raise? The idea is to begin with close reading and to root your post in the text itself (not in your ideas about the text). Ideally this will bring you towards a bigger argument – a position or thesis that you want to defend and back up with secondary sources. But the important thing is to go from the specific (Woolf’s individual words) to the general. That is why you have to start with a quotation. Later in your post you can quote the same passage again or any other passage from Woolf, her critics, or her context.

Your posts are part of the total written work for this course. I expect the quality of your writing to be the same as the quality of a finished essay: full sentences and paragraphs, spellchecked and grammar checked, with all sources cited, and so forth. Avoid the first person (“I”) – this is not about you, but about the text. It is a good idea to write posts in Microsoft Word before copying and pasting them (or attaching them) to Blackboard.

 

 

Discussion Board Responses Guidelines

 

In addition to starting their own online discussions in three original posts, students are asked to respond to three posts by fellow students (i.e. once each for three different novels). Responses must be posted within one week of the last class dedicated to that novel. As with the posts, there are five opportunities for you to respond. Only your best three responses will count towards your grade.

Take some time to consider your responses. They are worth as much as your original post. The idea of the response is to help your fellow student develop their thinking in interesting ways. You want to offer them ideas that could go into a final paper. You also want to develop your own ideas in conversation with someone else. Respond to what you think is interesting. If someone else has already responded to the post you want to respond to that is fine (you should take their response into account in your response) but try to distribute responses if possible.

Write the response that you would like to receive. Start by showing that you have understood what the original post is saying, either by rephrasing it or analyzing it. Be polite. Do not be too critical (although, of course, it is important to question assumptions that need to be dealt with in more detail). You might offer suggestions for further reading and explain why they are relevant, or you might point to other passages within Woolf’s novels that shed light on the original post. In particular, it is helpful to propose a possible larger thesis by identifying the themes that are at stake. There is no set word count for responses, but you are expected to demonstrate a thorough consideration of the original post. As with your posts, you will be evaluated partly on your writing.

 

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