Third Paper and Final Paper

Third Paper Guidelines—Due 12/10

With the definitions cited below in mind, in an essay of at least 3 pages (double space, 11 or 12 point) discuss the ATMOSPHERE in three literary works on the syllabus on or after Week 8 (Voltaire, Candide) this semester. For instance, referring to the first definition you might describe how the “mood or tone” of a work is created by “the setting or landscape”; in reference to the second definition, how the reader’s expectations are set up by the work’s “emotional aura”.

“Atmosphere: The prevailing tone or mood of a literary work, particularly—but not exclusively—when that mood is established in part by setting or landscape. It is, however, not simply setting but rather the emotional aura which the work bears and which establishes the reader’s expectations and attitudes.”

-- Hibbard, Addison & William Flint Thrall, A Handbook to Literature. Rev. and enlarged by C. Hugh Holman. New York: Odyssey Press, 1960.

“Atmosphere is the mood pervading a literary work, setting up in the reader expectations as to the course of events, whether happy or (more commonly) disastrous.”

--Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 1st edition. New York: Holt Rhinehart, 1957.

Readings List (choose two)

18th Century (Enlightenment) Novel, Voltaire, Candide, pp. 257-319.

Week 9: 19th Century Russian Fiction, Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, pp. 660-737

19th Century German Epic (Theatre), Goethe, Faust “Prologue in Heaven”, and Part I, pp. 353-403

Week 10: Goethe, Faust, Part I, pp. 403-468.

20th Century Anglophone Fiction, Conrad, Heart of Darkness, pp. 898-959.

Week 11: Naturalism in Literature, European Naturalist Theatre; Ibsen, Hedda Gabler, pp. 807-867. Second Paper (Research Critique) Due, 11/14**

19th Century French Poetry: Baudelaire, pp. 555-569.

Week 12: T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”, and The Waste Land, pp. 1147-1167.

Week 13: Women in Literature, 17th to 20th Century, Behn pp. 192-242; Woolf, 1082-1117

Dickinson, pp. 570-75; Akhmatova, pp. 1168-1177.

Week 14: Modernism and Literature, James Joyce, The Dead, pp. 963-992 .

12/10**: Last Class. Review for Final Exam; Kafka, The Metamorphosis, pp. 992-1027. Third Paper Due*