Print Syllabus

British Literature (College) - Course Introduction

If you're reading this paragraph while drinking tea out of your collectible Will-and-Kate wedding china, then you're ready to go. Feel free to pick up your nearest Dickens novel and dive right in.

But maybe you're not sure. Maybe you looked at the first line of the first text on this syllabus ("Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote") and glazed over right before hitting Minecraft for the third straight hour.

Let us convince you.

If you're reading this in English—which, since we're writing in English, we assume you are—then part of your cultural and literary heritage is British. Your family may be from Russia or Korea or Ethiopia, but the words you use and the speech patterns you adopt are deeply, profoundly British. Even your way of thinking is influenced by the ways of thinking that developed in British literature, all the way back in the 14th century.

Look, we get it. You hear "British literature" and you think tea cozies, long words, and cucumber sandwiches. We're not going to lie: the works you're going to read in this class do indeed contain tea cozies, long words, and cucumber sandwiches. But that's not all. They also contain illicit sex, high-stakes love affairs, and lots and lots of fart jokes. Yes: fart jokes.

We're going to start way back in the days of monsters and vampires; Beowulf and Frankenstein and Dracula. But don't worry—if you're not into murder and swords, you'll soon find a raunchy poet who used the low-class language of English to write a bunch of naughty stories about religious hypocrites. (You've probably heard of him; his name is Geoffrey Chaucer.) And then we're off on a whirlwind tour of seven centuries of English (and Irish and Scottish) literature. We'll cover the hyper-religious (the King James Bible) and the bawdy and profane (a satirical essay about killing babies). We'll cover the ultra-romantic (Milton—seriously) and the calm and pragmatic (Pride and Prejudice). We'll go serious and comic, and do poetry, drama, and—of course—the novel. We'll visit the mega-modern (Zadie Smith) and the mega-famous (J. K. Rowling).

Keep calm and read on, Shmoopers.

Unit Breakdown (142 lessons)

Unit 1: Here Be Monsters (27 lessons)

Unit 2: Heroes of Old (and Young) (20 lessons)

Unit 3: British Morals...and Lack Thereof (16 lessons)

Unit 4: Are You Joking? Humor and Satire in the British Tradition (10 lessons)

Unit 5: Love, Longing, Lust, and Leave Me Alone (21 lessons)

Unit 6: Seriously Hard Times (18 lessons)

Unit 7: A Challenge to Traditions (17 lessons)

Unit 8: Differences in the Future (13 lessons)

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

  • identify how British literature and English literary tradition has evolved over time.
  • track the history of England through its literature including the cultural significance of historical texts.
  • explain how monster stories revealed cultural values and fears.
  • explain how Beowulf deconstructs the hero myth and traditional warrior values.
  • identify how Dracula represents fears of the "other" while celebrating advancing technology.
  • identify how Frankenstein represents fears of advancing technology.
  • describe how British mythology—including Arthurian legend— shaped British literature (including modern works like Harry Potter).
  • apply Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey to classic mythology.
  • describe classic morality in literature and how literature represents the moral values of culture at the time.
  • explain how race and culture are represented in Othello.
  • explain how Paradise Lost reflects religious values.
  • describe the moral underpinnings of the Canterbury Tales.
  • describe the political use of British satire.
  • identify the significance of Romantic literature to cultural development (specifically women's cultural development).
  • explain the protofeminist themes in Pride and Prejudice.
  • explain Woolf's exploration of the minds of women in Mrs. Dalloway.
  • define the Industrial Revolution through literature.
  • identify how Jane Eyre represented the changing roles of middle class women in the changing economy.
  • explain how The Tempest challenged colonial narratives.
  • explain how gender and setting are challenged in Wild Sargasso Sea.
  • identify how speculative fiction represents English cultural fears about propaganda and technology.
  • describe the literary and cultural significance of the following texts:
    • Beowulf (Heaney)
    • Grendel (Gardner)
    • Beowulf (2007 Zemeckis)
    • A History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffrey of Monmouth)
    • L'Morte d'Arthur (Malory)
    • The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
    • The Once And Future King (White)
    • The Crystal Cave (Stewart)
    • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
    • King Arthur (Pucell)
    • Gawain (Britwistle)
    • "A Modest Proposal" (Swift)
    • The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)
    • The Office (Gervais)
    • Matilda (Dahl)
    • Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
    • Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Smith)
    • Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf)
    • The Victorian City (Flanders)
    • The Tempest (Shakespeare)
    • White Teeth (Smith)
    • Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys)
    • Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
    • 1984 (Orwell)