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http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/oxford/
Books can be discussed anywhere:
the wealth of architecture, painting, stained glass, stone carvings and other
art forms located at or associated with Oxford must be ³read² on site, and the
literature associated with these sites is best ³performed² there. (See pictures
at course website). Thus we will
meet in our classroom as little as possible. Most of our class time will be
devoted to touring Victorian Gothic colleges at Oxford and comparing their architecture
with the medieval originals they were modeling, and with Ruskinıs essay,
"The Nature of Gothic." We will relate the gargoyles and other stone
carvings to passages in the novels we are reading and the ³Pre-Raphaelite²
stained glass, murals, and tapestries at Oxford to the literature composed by
members of the group. One of our trips will be to William Morris's beautiful
house on the Thames to see his art and perform his poetry. We will rent boats
to recreate the trip on the river during which Lewis Carroll began Alice in
Wonderland, and will locate the stuffed
Dodo who became one of his characters when we visit the Victorian Gothic
University Museum. (Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was a don
at Christ Church College, and wrote the story for the daughter of his Dean.)
We will go on excursions to the
immediate environs of Oxford to perform in their original settings parts of
Hardyıs novel Jude the Obscure and
landscape poems by Arnold and Hopkins. In London we will compare the medieval
Westminster Abbey and Hall with the medievalist Palace of Westminster, see
Victorian painting in the Tate Gallery, and William Morris artifacts at the
Victoria and Albert Museum. In addition, because all students in the program
can attend all excursions, we will connect our course to the sites visited by
the other courses. For example, while at Stratford for Shakespeare we may make
an excursion to Warwick castle; at Jane Austenıs tomb we can also examine the
architecture of Winchester Cathedral; on the Yorkshire moors we can perform
³Gothic² passages from the Bronte novels.
Grades: 20% for attendance at,
preparation for, and participation in class discussion and performance of
literature. Responses to the next day's assigned readings, in journal form, are
due at the beginning of each class. 50% of the final grade will be based on the
overall quality of the journal. The reading journals can be prepared in advance
of arriving in Oxford. 30% of the final grade will be determined by a take-home
final exam.
Texts: Lewis Carroll The Annotated Alice: Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (W. W.
Norton, 1999, hardback, $29.95; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure: An Authoritative Text: Backgrounds
and Contexts Criticism (Norton
Critical Edition, 2nd ed., W. W. Norton, 1999, $11); Max Beerbohm, The Illustrated Zuleika
Dobson (Yale, 2002; $14.95);
photocopies of selections from Dougill's Oxford in English
Literature, Morris's The Oxford
Book of Oxford, Tyack's Oxford:
An Architectural Guide, and other works to
be purchased from Jenn's, 2000 Guadelupe, 473-8669; and two reading journals.