English 2273-WI01 - Course Description
Winter 2023 Course Description
Acknowledgement of Traditional Territory:
We are in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations.
Accessible Learning Services
If you are a student with documentation for accommodations or if you anticipate needing supports or accommodations, please contact Ian Ford, Accessibility Resource Facilitator at 902-585-1520, disability.access@acadiau.ca or Marissa McIsaac, Manager, disability.access@acadiau.ca. Accessible Learning Services is located in Rhodes Hall, rooms 111-115.
Course Description
You must have a personal gmail.com address to take this course. Email that address to the professor immediately.
To get started, read the Letter to Ralegh that comes as close as anything anywhere to enlightening us as to the author's objectives in writing The Faerie Queene.
This is a course devoted to the first two or three books of that long poem, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. If we're able within the amount of time we have this term, we'll study all three books. But the pace we achieve and maintain will determine how much we can study.
Your attendance in every class is required, because in every class you will be called on to speak — quite possibly multiple times. And doing so will contribute to your course grade. So don't miss any classes unless you absolutely must.
You will want to have your computer with you, and fully charged, in every class so you can move independently through your classmates' comments. On this, see Commentaries, below.
You must turn your phone off and put it away during class. This is the professor's rule. The professor assigns your grade for this course. You do not want to generate animosity between you and the person who assigns your grade.
The Acadia Writing Centre
(Could also be called "your best friend" if your plan is to get good grades by writing well.)
The Writing Centre offers free help to students wanting to improve their writing skills. You can sign up online today:
· To book a one-to-one appointment with a trained writing tutor, click here: Writing Tutorials
· The Writing Centre offers a few other, online, resources: Other Resources
Commentaries
Clicking on this Book 1 link will open a google doc in which Book 1 of The Faerie Queene has been sub-divided. In that google doc you can see that each student registered in the class has been assigned a few stanzas upon which to comment. Find your name in the right-hand column and you'll be able to see which stanzas are your responsibility. Your name will appear more than once ; be sure you make all the comments for which you are responsible.
You will need an @gmail.com address to use the Google documents in which we'll do our collective work this term. Send your gmail address to the professor at his @acadiau.ca email address, and you will be invited to join these Google documents. You will then be able and are required to write your comments in the right-hand column, below your name, in the cell beside the stanzas themselves. Sometimes you will have several stanzas on which to comment, other times you may only have one. This will be true for everyone. Keep that in mind if at times your requirement seems heavy in comparison to others. There will be times when your roles reverse. By the end of the term, students always find this system fair.
As for the comments themselves:
Your written comments are due on Sunday, for Tuesday classes, and by 10:00 AM on Wednesday for Thursday classes. This is to provide the professor and your classmates time to read your comments before you speak to your assigned stanzas in class.
In class, you will be called on to orally paraphrase, expand upon, or riff off of your written comments. In no circumstances should you merely read in class what you've already posted for us to read ourselves. Your grade will be apportioned roughly half and half between your written comments and what you say in class. Each is a required element.
You'll find almost immediately that it is extremely difficult (I find it impossible) to simply "drop in" to some point in The Farie Queene and make sense of what you're reading. This means that you won't be able to skip the rest of the poem and read only those stanzas assigned to you. To understand your stanzas you're going to need to read what comes before them — and often what comes after.
In your comments, it is most important that you tell us what's going on in the poem. Try to briefly paraphrase or summarize what is happening on a literal level.
If you can discern any of the allegories, or pick up on any of the poetic devices Spenser uses, great. Even if you merely suspect something in your stanzas must be representative of something outside of or elsewhere in the poem, that would be fair game for comment. But the most important thing is to make us aware of the action in the poem, of what is happening : what characters are in this "scene" and what is each one doing, and where is the action taking place? Ask yourself : can a person better understand your stanzas after reading your comment?
Once the basics of who and where have been addressed, then you might turn your attention to more thematic issues or to more literary qualities.
Remember that almost your entire grade is dependent on this assignment. Submitting your written comments on time and being present in class to comment on the poem are both significant components of this assignment, as is a positive answer to this crucial question: can a person better understand your stanzas after reading your comment?