Sketches of a syllabus

Prof. Ortiz-Robles has hinted that this semester's reading will involve George Eliot's Middlemarch, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. I'm not sure whether these texts have been finalized for inclusion on the class syllabus (I think they have), but if you want to do pre-reading here are some suggestions:

• The principle biography of George Eliot is Gordon S. Haight's George Eliot: A Biography. As you can see from the Amazon link, the Haight biography is no longer in print; however, the campus libraries have dozens of copies. Eliot's other major works are not for light readers -- Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda are both in the 650- to 750-page range, depending on how they're printed. This is why Silas Marner is the Eliot that is always taught in schools -- it might not be good, but at least it's short.
• The authoritative Virginia Woolf biography is Hermione Lee's brilliant Virginia Woolf To read To the Lighthouse in the context of Woolf's other works, you might want to read through her slightly more popular Mrs Dalloway and its experimental predecessor Jacob's Room.
• Coetzee is in the middle of writing a many-part autobiography. So far, he has published Boyhood and Youth. John Updike reviewed Youth in the New Yorker. Coetzee's Nobel lecture is available in text and video.

Hi!

Welcome to the class blog for Mike Shapiro's sections of English 216 at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in the spring of 2007!

Beginning in January, this blog will become a repository of assignments, examples, hints and links. My goal is to use this blog to put the resources you need to succeed at your fingertips. On the sidebar to the left, you should already see a link and search bar for the Oxford English Dictionary. In the coming months, that sidebar will become populated with links to authors' biographies, to etexts, and to other invaluable resources on campus.

If you'd like to see examples of the sorts of assignments I give out and the sorts of essays I reward, look around the class blogs I've used in previous semesters:

• Ode on a Grecian URL (English 167, fall 2005 and fall 2006)
• As I Lay Reading (English 168, spring 2006)

Welcome to English 216!