Required Texts:
Poetry for the Earth, ed. Dunn and Scholefield, Ballantine Books
Romantic Natural Histories, ed. Ashton Nichols, Houghton Mifflin
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Norton Critical edition, ed. P. Hunter
Walden, or Life in the Wood, Henry David Thoreau, G. W. Zouck
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Ballantine/Random House
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey, Touchstone/Simon Shuster
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard, Perennial, Harper Collins
The End of Nature, Bill McKibben, Anchor Doubleday
Course Aims and Objectives:
What does British Romantic literature have to do with contemporary American nature writing? What does poetry have to do with nonfictional observation of the natural world? Our course will survey poetry and prose by British Romantic writers: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy and Mary Shelley, John Keats, John Clare. We will then set these works in dialogue with nature writers of the past two centuries: Gilbert White, Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Bill McKibben. The course will also be a study of metaphor, of poetic and prose styles, and of the link between literary and naturalistic observation. Our texts will be literary. Our contexts will be historical, environmental, social, and ecological. We will work to answer a series of questions about the relationship between the natural world and human beings who have defined and affected that world since 1750. Are humans just a part of the natural environment? Do they see themselves as distinct from nature? Is nature beautiful and benign (sunsets, daffodils, puffins) or ugly and destructive (hurricanes, AIDS, death)? We will try to understand how literary texts reflect the context of the times in which they were produced and also the times in which they have been received by readers. Our guides will include poets, novelists, essayists, and ourselves. We will examine the current importance (as well as the controversial aspects) of evolutionary ideas, and we will emphasize the role played by literature in the development of our own environmental assumptions and values.
Useful Websites for British and American Nature Writing :
Required Work:
Students will be required to read carefully and come to class prepared to discuss all assigned work (see page 3). Reading quizzes and in-class writing will contribute to discussions. Discussion will form an important part of your evaluation in this course. More than three (2) unexcused absences will be grounds for lowering your grade. You must complete all required work in order to pass this class.
Grading will be based on the following scale:
Class participation-----------10% (includes group
work)
Short essay (one work)------20%
Long essay (authors/works)--30%
Final exam ------------------ 40%
Total
100%
The short essay (4-5 pp.) will ask you to analyze a single text. The longer
essay (9-10 pp.) will ask you to connect at least one work to the culture
in which it was produced. The final exam will be cumulative. I am available
during office hours and by appointment to discuss the course, our readings,
your writing, or your grade.
Academic Honesty
The Dickinson plagiarism policy will be strictly enforced. This class adheres to the College's Community Standards, which clearly state: “Students are expected to do their own work. Work submitted in fulfillment of academic assignments and provided on examinations is expected to be original by the student submitting it.” Please review the Community Standards document for more information.
Statement on Disability Services
In compliance with the Dickinson College policy and equal access laws, I am available to discuss requests made by students with disabilities for academic accommodations. Such requests must be verified in advance by the Coordinator of Disability Services who will provide a signed copy of an accommodation letter, which must be presented to me prior to any accommodations being offered. Requests for academic accommodations should be made during the first three weeks of the semester (except for unusual circumstances) so that timely and appropriate arrangements can be made.
Students requesting accommodations are required to register with Disability Services, located in Academic Advising, first floor of Biddle House. Please contact Marni Jones, Coordinator of Disability Services (at ext. 1080 or jonesmar@dickinson.edu ) to verify their eligibility for reasonable and appropriate accommodations .
TEXT: n.1. main body of matter in a manuscript, book, newspaper, distinguished from notes, appendixes, headings, illustrations. 2. the actual, original words of an author or speaker. 3. any of the various forms in which a writing exists. [ME, ML text(us) wording, L: structure (of an utterance), texture.]
CONTEXT: n. 1. parts of written or spoken statement that precede or follow a word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect. 2. circumstances that surround a particular event, situation, etc. [late ME, L context(us) joining together].
IDEOLOGY: 1) a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture; 2) a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture; 3) the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a social or political program.
LITERATURE: n. 1. writing regarded as having permanent worth through its intrinsic excellence. 2. The entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc. 3. the writings dealing with a particular subject: the literature of ornithology.
ROMANTIC: “writers associated with the Romantic Period valued imagination and feelings as highly as reason and intellect; believed that humans are by nature good, felt that nature is the source of sublime feeling, divine inspiration, and even moral action . . . celebrated the individual rather than the social order . . . Nature was often seen as the antithesis of the materialism and artifice engendered by civilized society . . . Observations on nature frequently served as an occasion for sustained reflection or meditation on the human condition and the individual human ‘self'.” Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms
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Nature and Humans: Questions to Consider
Are human beings just the result of random evolutionary processes over time? Is that all they are?
"Be fruitful and multiply."–Is that a good idea? Is that a waste?
Is AIDS natural? Is spinal bifida? Is death? Is nature "good"?
Does evolution necessarily conflict with the religious teachings of the Christianity? Can the two viewpoints–
religious and scientific–be reconciled?
Nature doesn't care less about you or me? Or does it?
Why have evolutionary ideas and ways of thinking had such a powerful impact on poets and
novelists over the past 150 years?
When do poets and scientists think in similar ways? When do they think in different ways?
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What were
the scientific implications of Darwin's theory?
I. The principle of natural selection determines the survival of species.
II. Species have not existed forever in their present form: Galapagos endemism.
A. Each life form on earth is undergoing continual change.
B. These changes result from chance mutations.
III. The earth and life on earth have existed for an inconceivably long time.
(Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1830)
IV. A record of the earlier stages of evolution can be found in fossils and
in the anatomy
of living creatures.Chambers, Vestiges of Creation, 1844)
What
were the wider implications of the theory?
I. Natural laws
A. The laws of nature are subject to change because the material conditions
that
govern those laws can change.
1.) cooperation: symbiosis or parasitism?
2.) competition: the fittest?
B. There are no "ideals" in nature or natural form.
1.) what is "right" is what succeeds over time.
2.) evolutionary success: shark, horseshoe crab, cockroach
3.) evolutionary failure: dinosaur, human brain (?)
II. Theology--"It is just as noble a conception of the deity to believe he
created primal
forms capable of self-development." --Canon Charles Kingsley
A. Man is no longer viewed as unique
1.) end-product of creation?
2.) human's "mental moral and spiritual qualities evolved by precisely the
same processes that gave the eagle its claws and the tapeworm its hooks."
B. Doubts about the Biblical account of human origins and fate emerge.
1.) 4004 B.C. vs. billions of years
2.) Adam and Eve vs. The Descent of Man
3.) creation as a continuous and self-modifying process
4.) destruction as likewise ongoing and accidental.
III. Social Darwinism
A. All sciences are historical
1.) science always subject to revision (non-Euclidean geometry)
2.) no laws, only theories (quantum physics)
3.) science is "true" based on best possible evidence
4.) science is never about faith; it is only about knowledge
B. Social order is a "struggle for existence."
1.) revolutionary change: Marxist ideology
2.) laissez-faire capitalism
3.) do the ends always justify the means?
IV. Evolutionary psychology
1.) human neural processes evolved by precisely the same means as all of
organic life
2.) the human mind is the dynamic result of constant evolutionary change