The majority of students take at least one English course during their
undergraduate career. While the curriculum focuses on literary study, students are
encouraged to develop an appreciation for the English language that will stand them in good
stead in all other fields of academic and professional endeavour. English is, in fact, a
central study. The language is every student's essential instrument of understanding and
expression, and the subject-matter of the literature touches on every area of human
knowledge and experience. More and more, under the increasing threat in our society to the
Humanities and the values they embody, the vital importance of English must be stressed.
With urgent reason, English has become "the central humanity."
ENGL 3011 (3CR)
SURVEY OF MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: ENGL 2201 and 3 other credits of English at the 2000 level; or
permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3011 (Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Literature).
A study of selected literary texts produced in England from the
fifth century to the fifteenth century. Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and
Celtic texts will be read in modern translations, Middle-English texts
will be read in the original. Major texts and authors such as Beowulf,
the Anglo-Saxon elegies, Chaucer, Lydgate and Malory will be included
along with anonymous texts.
ENGL 3021 (3CR)
MIDDLE-ENGLISH LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: ENGL 3011; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3021 (Later Medieval Literature)
This course will concentrate on Middle-English literature produced
in the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Prose and poetry genres,
including lyrics, romances, dream visions and frame narratives may be
studied in conjunction with a specific theme or subject. The texts will
be read in the original Middle-English language.
ENGL 3211 (3CR)
ADVANCED STUDIES IN SHAKESPEARE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: ENGL 2211 or ENGL 3311 and three more English credits at the
2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3300
A study of a selected number of Shakespeare's plays at an advanced level, requiring
students' engagement with current issues in Shakespearean scholarship and
criticism.
ENGL 3231 (3CR)
SIXTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course will examine development of literary forms and genres in the English
Renaissance. It will provide an overview to the non-dramatic literary developments in the
16th Century, and will provide samples of the tremendous range of literature being
produced in the Tudor period.
ENGL 3241 (3CR)
MAJOR TEXTS IN EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Note: Please contact the English Department for the specific subject for each
year.
This course will examine a major text, genre or theme from the Medieval and
Renaissance periods. Topics will rotate from a selection of long texts and long
text-based genres. Examples of such texts are: Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Piers
Plowman, Morte D'Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Faerie Queene, and
Arcadia.
ENGL 3311 (3CR)
ENGLISH DRAMA TO 1642
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: Either ENGL/DRAM 1701 and 3 more English credits at the 2000 level or permission
of the Department, or English/Drama 1701 and third-year standing in the Interdisciplinary
Drama Program
Exclusion: ENGL 3100, 3111, 3121
A study of English dramatic literature and production, excluding Shakespeare, from
the Middle Ages to the closing of the theatres in 1642.
ENGL 3351 (3CR)
LITERATURE OF THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3350
A study of the poetry and prose of the early seventeenth century, focusing on the
work of authors such as Donne, Jonson, and Herbert.
ENGL 3361 (3CR)
LITERATURE AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3350
A study of the poetry and prose which emerged from the political, religious, and
social revolutions of the mid-seventeenth century, including the work of Marvell, Milton,
and Bunyan.
ENGL 3411 (3CR)
RESTORATION AND AUGUSTAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3400
This course examines British writing of the Restoration and early Augustan periods
(1660-1720). The variety of genres and authors to be studied includes early novels by
Behn, Defoe, and Swift, formal verse satire by Rochester and Pope, verse epistles and
lyrics by Philips and Finch, and diaries and memoirs by Pepys and Manley.
ENGL 3421 (3CR)
LITERATURE IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3400
This course examines British writing from the Age of Reason to the Age of
Sensibility (1720-1780). The range of genres and authors to be studied includes satires
by Pope and Johnson, novels by Haywood, Fielding, Sterne, and Burney, lyric odes by
Carter, Collins, and Gray, and the first Gothic novel by Walpole.
ENGL 3431 (3CR)
RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DRAMA
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: Either ENGL/DRAM 1701 and 3 more English credits at the 2000 level or permission
of the Department, or English/Drama 1701 and third-year standing in the Interdisciplinary
Drama Program
Exclusion: ENGL 3430
This courses examines the major British playwrights and dramatic forms emerging
between the time of the Restoration of the Monarchy (1660) and the end of the eighteenth
century. Works will be assessed both in light of their contemporary theatrical conditions
and as cultural artifacts of their respective ages.
ENGL 3451 (3CR)
LITERATURE IN THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3451 (Literature in the Age of Revolution)
This course examines British writing from 1780 to 1810, a period of profound
cultural transformation under the impact of the American, French, and Industrial
Revolutions. Romanticism was one response to this context, and the course will explore
representative examples from the poetry of Blake, Smith, Coleridge, and William
Wordsworth. Other genres to be studied will include the Gothic novel, the Jacobin novel,
diaries, and epistolary essays.
ENGL 3461 (3CR)
LITERATURE OF THE REGENCY
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3450
This course examines British writing of the early nineteenth century from the
Regency through the reign of George IV (1810-1830). The literary genres to be studied
will include Romantic poetry, Regency satire, the historical novel, and the novel of
manners, written by such authors as Byron, Austen, Keats, the Shelleys, Scott, Hemans,
and Landon.
ENGL 3481 (3CR)
EARLY VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3450
This course examines British writing from the 1830s to the 1860s. Genres and
authors to be studied include the novels, essays, and poems of such authors as Carlyle,
the Brontes, Tennyson, Gaskell, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Robert
Browning.
ENGL 3491 (3CR)
LATE VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3450
This course examines British writing at the zenith of the British Empire
(1867-1900). The variety of genres and authors to be studied includes novels by Eliot,
Thackeray and Hardy, essays by Arnold, Ruskin, and Pater, and poems by Webster, Field,
Arnold, Hopkins, the pre-Raphealites, Christina Rossetti, and Wilde.
ENGL 3511 (3CR)
EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3511 (The Rise of Modernism)
This course examines British writing from the turn of the twentieth century
to the end of the Second World War. Although this period saw the formation of literary
modernism, many British authors continued to write in more conventional modes. Many writers
sought to understand how Western culture and civilization could allow for the destruction caused
by total war.
ENGL 3521 (3CR)
LATER TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: ENGL 3511; or permission of the Department
This course examines various British literary works written since the Second World War.
While some writers continued to experiment with style and form, other post-war British writers
retreated from the experimentalism of the major modernists.
ENGL 3551 (3CR)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN DRAMA
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: Either ENGL/DRAM 1701 and 3 more English credits at the 2000 level or
permission of the Department or ENGL/DRAM 1701 and third-year standing in the
Interdisciplinary Drama Program
Exclusion: ENGL 3500
A study of representative modern plays including works by Pirandello, Brecht, and
Beckett chosen to illustrate the major developments in dramatic literature and production
in the twentieth century.
ENGL 3561 (3CR)
CONTEMPORARY DRAMA
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: Either ENGL/DRAM 1701 and 3 more English credits at the 2000 level; or
permission of the Department or ENGL/DRAM 1701 and third-year standing in the
Interdisciplinary Drama Program
Exclusion: ENGL 3500
A study of selected contemporary plays and playwrights.
ENGL 3611 (3CR)
DRAMA, THEATRE, AND SOCIETY
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: Either ENGL/DRAM 1701 and 3 more English credits at the 2000 level; or
permission of the Department or ENGL/DRAM 1701 and third-year standing in the
Interdisciplinary Drama Program
This course examines ways in which drama may both reflect and influence society,
using as examples the complex relationship between Restoration comedy and its society,
efforts at social engineering in Eighteenth-Century bourgeois tragedy, the role of
melodrama in reflecting nineteenth century society and culture, and the "birth" of social
drama late in the nineteenth century. In addition, it carries these ideas forward to
include study of political theatre of the 1920's and 1930's, as well as works by
contemporary social playwrights.
ENGL 3621 (3CR)
READING FILMS
Format: lecture 3 hours, laboratory 2 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course focuses on affinities between printed and cinematic narrative forms,
introducing students as well to some of the principles of semiotics, and to the place of
film theory within the context of cultural studies more generally.
ENGL 3651 (3CR)
LITERATURE BY WOMEN TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3650
A study of literature by women before the twentieth century. This course employs a
variety of critical approaches to define a tradition of writing by women. Works by such
writers as Mary Godwin Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning will be examined.
ENGL 3661 (3CR)
LITERATURE BY WOMEN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3650
A study of literature by women in the twentieth century. The course attempts to
identify the major developments in the literature, using contemporary critical
approaches. Works by such writers as Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys and Margaret Atwood will
be examined.
ENGL 3711 (3CR)
AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE CIVIL WAR
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3711 (Early American Literature)
A study of American Literature from its beginnings to 1865. This course focuses on
various canonical texts which have become central to American culture and self-understanding;
however, the course also makes room for voices of dissent, for those who criticized colonial
practices and, after 1776, the newly formed United States of America. Finally, the course
will consider various literary responses to what was called the "peculiar institution" that would ultimately
divide the nation: slavery.
ENGL 3721 (3CR)
AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE PRESENT
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3721 (Twentieth Century American Literature)
A study of American Literature from 1865 to the present. This course examines
American writing and culture during the period when the United States became a colonial
and, later, a world power.
ENGL 3731 (3CR)
AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course offers a survey of African American writing from the eighteenth century to
the present. In addition to "literary" texts, the course will examine selected examples
of the African American vernacular tradition.
ENGL 3741 (3CR)
ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits in English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course offers an introduction to a variety of Asian American writing from the late nineteenth century to
the present.
ENGL 3751 (3CR)
POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3751 (Literatures of the South Pacific and Africa).
This course examines African literature in English from 1950, covering the novel,
drama, and poetry and relating the literature to both Post-Colonial theory and to the
historical developments in African politics and cultures.
ENGL 3761 (3CR)
LITERATURES OF AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3751 (Literatures of the South Pacific and Africa).
This course traces the development, from their beginnings in the 1800's, of the
literatures of Australia and New Zealand, and introduces the more recent literature from
the South Pacific and island states.
ENGL 3771 (3CR)
CARIBBEAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of ENGL at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3761 (Literatures of South East Asia and Caribbean)
This course offers an introduction to the literature of the Caribbean Islands since
1945.
ENGL 3781 (3CR)
THE LITERATURE OF INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course examines the 20th century literature of India and Southeast Asia
against the history of the various independence movements and other ideological movements
important to the cultures of the area.
ENGL 3801 (3CR)
CANADIAN LITERATURE FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO 1914
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3810
A study of representative works of Canadian literature from the beginnings to the
First World War. The development of Canadian literature from the exploration and
settlement stage to Confederation and the beginnings of modernism will be presented.
Works by such authors as Richardson, Moodie, Roberts, and Duncan will be examined.
ENGL 3811 (3CR)
CANADIAN MODERNISM
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3820
This course will examine the developments in Modernism found in Canadian literature
from 1910 to 1950.
ENGL 3821 (3CR)
THE CANADIAN POSTMODERN
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3820
This course will examine the proliferating innovations in the forms and themes of
Canadian literature since 1950.
ENGL 3831 (3CR)
ASPECTS OF CANADIAN LITERATURE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of ENGL at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3810
A study of a selected aspect of Canadian literature.
ENGL 3850 (6CR)
CREATIVE WRITING
Format: seminar/workshop 3 hours
Prereq: Third and fourth-year standing and permission of the department based on
acceptance of a writing portfolio
Exclusion: ENGL 3851, 3861
This course will offer workshops in creative writing, concentrating primarily on
poetry and short fiction; it may also include some work in other forms such as drama and
the personal essay. Admission to the course is based on acceptance of a portfolio of
original creative work. Note that portfolios are due by the end of Reading Week in the
winter term previous to the course.
ENGL 3871 (3CR)
CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY I
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level and minimum third-year
standing; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3880
This course offers an introduction to various contemporary theories of literature;
diverse approaches, such as structuralist, semiotic, post-structuralist and
"deconstructive" will be examined.
ENGL 3881 (3CR)
CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY II
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: ENGL 3871; or permission of the Department
Exclusion: ENGL 3880
This course will draw upon the literary theories introduced in English 3871 while
introducing further theoretical approaches such as psychoanalytic, feminist, and Marxist
theories.
ENGL 3911 (3CR)
STUDIES IN LITERARY GENRE
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course will address one or more popular genres of literature, paying attention
to the emergence and rise of the genre(s) and to the narrative conventions of the
genre(s). Generic literatures examined could include, but need not be limited to,
autobiography, mystery, romance, speculative fiction, utopia or dystopia, etc.
ENGL 3921 (3CR)
CULTURAL STUDIES
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course offers an introduction to the broad field of contemporary cultural
studies, paying particular attention to current theoretical models of 'reading' the texts
of popular culture. Diverse forms of texts will be examined.
ENGL 3931 (3CR)
ASPECTS OF POSTMODERNISM
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course will examine various aspects of the postmodern aesthetic by exploring
post-modern writing, such as that by Barth, Eco, Carter, Calvino, or Acker, within the
context of recent theories of postmodernism; the course will explore implications of
postmodernism as both a cultural and an aesthetic phenomenon.
ENGL 3941 (3CR)
MODERNISM
Format: lecture 3 hours
Prereq: 6 credits of English at the 2000 level; or permission of the Department
This course is an introduction to concepts of modernism in literature and culture.
While the course focuses on modernist literature written in English, its scope is international
and interdisciplinary. Students study foundational modernist literary texts, but also read other
works, in philosophy, anthropology, and psychology, for example, and consider other art forms in
order to understand the cultural forces from which modernism arose.