posted
I want to pick an English class to finish off the last of my gen ed requirements. After this it's just a year of straight History classes (oh sweet historical bliss! I can't wait!), until I have to clean up some other requirements.
But I went looking at what was left, and there's ENG 303, which is Fiction, and ENG 105, which is Intro to Shakespeare. To my knowledge I've never actually sat down and read Shakespeare before. One, it always looked a little daunting to me. But I've always kind of wanted to. My fear is that I'll get into the class, look at the text, try to read it, and will be unable to stay awake while reading it, and as a result I'll suffer. I'd like my GPA to stay in the green, so I want a class I can 3.5 to 4.0 in.
So near as I can tell, pros and cons:
Shakespeare - Pros: It's an intro 100 level class, so the grading requirements and coursework are likely to be less than the 100 level class. Cons: I might end up not liking it, and will be undermotivated to actually get my work done. The class is earlier in the morning, and I was hoping to actually get some sleep this semester. It's at 9am, and it's (in Winter) probably a half hour drive to class.
Fiction - Pros: I've already read one of the books in it (I'll put a reading list at the bottom of the thread), and there's more variety so more of a chance that I won't get stuck with something I hate. I write really good papers, so that might be rewarded more at the 300 level, though I suppose it'd stick out more at the 100 level. Hard to say. Cons: Novellas and stories make me leery. Plus it'll be more work and harder work, and I'll already be taking a science class, which is outside my comfort zone, and another 300 level class, (Gilded Age American history, I'm very excited about that).
Reading list: For Shakespeare it's just the Collected Works of Shakespeare.
For Fiction, it's:
Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" which I read both in high school for AP English and in a separate African history class.
East, West: Stories by Salman Rushdie
The Autobiography of my Mother by Jamaica Kincaid
Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai
Small Island by Andrea Levy
There was only one spot left in both classes, so I signed up for the Fiction class, figuring if I couldn't decide, I'd at least get one that I was mildly okay with rather than dithering and missing out on any. But I honestly am throwing a dart in the dark. Both are likely outside my normal genres of reading, so I was hoping to get a more experienced perspective. Any advice is appreciated.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't have an experienced perspective, but I'd go with the 303. I wouldn't want an entire semester of Shakespeare.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've always found that with a Shakespeare class, if you don't understand or cannot read, then the internet provides many sites that both help to explain texts and summarize his works.
However, I took a beginning fiction class and it was great. I would take the fiction class, especially if you want to learn about something that isn't readily available or known, like Shakespeare. For me, I always wanted to take the class that taught the obscure rather than the obvious because you always learn more that way. Besides, we all know Shakespeare, but there aren't many who know about Chinua Achebe.
Posts: 457 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The fiction class is all post-colonial fiction, which is really interesting and will give you a different perspective on social and political issues as well as literature. Having done Eng. Lit. at A-level (and 6 Shakespeare plays in my high school career), I would totally take that class, and in fact I just took one a lot like it.
Having said that, if you haven't done any lit before, I'd be tempted to do Shakespeare. If it's taught well, there's no reason for it to be off-putting. Shakespeare really had a handle on human nature, he coined the most wonderful metaphors, and his plays speak to us today just as they did in Elizabethan times. Not only that, but Shakespearean language has influenced world literature in English - there are very few literary novels that don't refer or aren't influenced by Shakespeare to some degree. Plus, there are loads of excellent film productions of Shakespeare's plays that aren't afraid to keep the language, but make it so much more accessible.
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
How did you get through high school without ever reading any Shakespeare? We read at least one book a year, except for American Lit junior year.
Anyway, if I were you I'd take the fiction class. That's a really good lineup of fiction, and you'll probably get more out of it than just an intro course. Post-colonial studies is an extremely interesting topic, and ties in heavily to recent world history. If you want, I can send you my husband's email address and you can talk to him about it - he was an English Lit major with a focus on post-colonial lit. However, he hates Shakespeare with a passion, so be wary there. Personally, I also don't like Shakespeare all that much; he's very good but I find more recent literature both more challenging (in part because it's building on the foundation Shakespeare left), and more relevant to my daily life. Also, I was never motivated when writing a paper about Shakespeare - anything you'll come up with (at this level of study) has already been said a hundred times, so what's the point? I hate being unoriginal. Finally, I'd take the fiction class just because you're going to be reading stories by Rushdie, and he's the best author alive, and one of the best to ever live.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am not a huge fan of post-colonial fiction...just not my cup of tea. I loved Shakespeare, and the only one I took was an upper-level course cross-listed as upper level undergrad and graduate class.
That doesn't seem like much of a reading list for a 300 level course. I would expect a course at that level to cover more than just the works you've listed.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Alright, I've decided to stick with the Fiction class. Mostly I think the variety will be cool, and I'd like to get my hands in a number of different pots rather than being stuck in a single one. I still want to try Shakespeare at some point on the future, but I'm feeling better about the Fiction class now.
Thanks for the help guys. I was really dreading this, but I'm feeling a little more excited about it now.
quote:How did you get through high school without ever reading any Shakespeare? We read at least one book a year, except for American Lit junior year.
I'm trying to think back on the English classes I had in high school. Freshman year I was stuck in a composition class, and then my sophmore year I think I took American Literature and the Arts, so I read like the Scarlet Letter and the Crucible. My Junior year I took Argumentation, which is like debate class, and Literature of the Western World, which was a pretty broad class. My senior year I took Advanced Comp (which was a lot more fun and helpful) and AP English, where we read things like Turn of the Screw, Catch 22, Flatland, and the Invisible Man. Shakespeare just never made it in there. And this will be the only English class I probably take in college. I'm considering a couple of other classes for their relation to American history, but it's not something I'm really drawn to.
Thanks again everyone. Advice and suggestions were all appreciated.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It probably won't be the same as today, but what was the work like? By which I mean, how much reading and what were the papers/exams like?
I haven't a clue as to what exams are like in English classes.
I noticed that no one answered this bit, so I'll give you what I've experienced in literature classes, and seen from people who were English Lit majors.
In a 300-level class you may or may not have in-class exams (or any exams at all). If you do have exams, you'll probably have no more than two (midterm & final), and they'll almost certainly be essay exams where you'll be asked to talk about a particular theme of a work, or to compare the protagonists in two works, or to consider the structure of the novel, or something along these lines. Compare and contrast something from 2+ works you've read is very common. It's also common to ask what the purpose of <blank> is, and whether it fulfills that purpose, where <blank> might be a plot point, a secondary character, reoccurring imagery, surprise ending, etc, etc. Giving a short passage, and asking how it fits into the rest of the book can be a good essay question. If your teacher is particularly evil, you might be asked to identify quotes (by author/book/character), or write descriptions of the seven main characters in novel X, or something like that.
So that's exams (which, like I said, may or may not happen, depending on your professor's style). Sometimes there are little "reading quizzes" that a professor will give at the start of a class to make sure everyone is doing the reading - they also help towards attendance in some teacher's syllabi. Often literature classes have a large participation/attendance grade, since discussing the texts in class is key.
The main portion of your grade will likely depend on roughly three or four papers. Typically, you'll have anywhere from one to four shorter papers - think three to eight pages - due over the course of the semester which you'll get back a week or three after you turn them in. Then you'll have a final paper due at the end of the semester that will likely be eight to twenty pages, and might require you read books outside of those listed on the syllabus - basically, pick your own post-colonial novel to read and write on - or it might require you to just write on a book you've already read in class, potentially with some outside research.
Edit: Noticed I left out topics of papers. It will really depend on the professor's style. Some will give you a fairly detailed question that your shorter papers should answer, while others will just want you to "write on book Z" or "write on something we've read so far." The term paper is almost always more open ("write on something related to the literature we've studied thus far"), but can be somewhat specific "write on a theme we've studied, and discuss at least two of the books we've read as well as one of your own choosing not on the syllabus."
posted
My favorite teacher of all time (HS English / GT) told us that if we ever had the chance to take a Shakespeare class in college, that we should jump at the chance.
Any bad teacher can make good subject matter painful, but Shakespeare with a good professor would be one of the best classes you could possibly take in my opinion.
So, you can guess what my suggestion would be.
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I took a Shakespeare class as an undergrad and loved it! I learned a lot in the class. It was challenging sometimes if you didn't stay on top of the material but if you kept up with the reading it was fascinating. I actually found it to be one of the easier classes work load wise because a lot of the attention was on getting the students to simply read, understand, and enjoy Shakespeare. My fiction classes expected you to read a lot more pages per day and write a lot more than my Shakespeare class.
Posts: 416 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Key to enjoying Shakespeare is actually watching the plays performed by a good company (either a movie or live, but it has to be good).
I dug out some essay topics from one of my 100-level courses. Couldn't find exam papers from the 300-level ones. This was the kind of exam you get the paper ahead of time for although I don't have the essay questions, only the short answer, so perhaps they only gave us the short answer? I may have just lost the second page.
This 100 level exam had essay questions and short answer, although I think the more advanced exams tended to skip the short answer and just ask for a couple of essays.
Short Answer examples:
quote:Referring to any one work from the course (poem, fiction or drama) explain what you see as a central preoccupation of modernism.
Explain how any one work from the course revises or updates a traditional literary genre: epic, tragedy, dramatic monologue, Bildungsroman, the elegy, etc.
The essay questions looked like this:
quote:Arguably, the defining social characteristic of our time is the sometimes voluntary, sometimes forced mixing of different cultures and different values. Discuss this collision of differences in any two works from the course.
Using any two works from the course, discuss the difference between the novelist's and the poet's representation of their world, such as differences in subject, perspective, method and scope.
Discuss the importance of the beginning OR the ending and its relation to the text as a whole in any two works of prose, drama or comics from the course.
Discuss the consequences of social expectations about gender in any two works from the course.
Compare how any two works from the course deal with the idea of hope in a time of uncertainty.
As far as I can tell, this kind of essay question is the standard for exam questions, except they expect more as you go up and may demand you do three books instead of two, and may limit the amount of writing on one text to once/exam, so you have to have read and be prepared on the majority of the texts.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm afraid you don't have a choice; being an American, you will always be unmistakably of the lower class.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I lucked out with my English elective. They offered a Horror Lit class. It was great. Every Wednesday night we watched a horror movie, and read Kafka for homework. Easiest "A" I ever got in college. I wrote a paper on a comparison between the original Night of the Living Dead and the remake.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by amira tharani: Plus, there are loads of excellent film productions of Shakespeare's plays that aren't afraid to keep the language, but make it so much more accessible.
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Key to enjoying Shakespeare is actually watching the plays performed by a good company (either a movie or live, but it has to be good).
Absolutely agree. I had a wonderful English teacher my junior year of high school who insisted that Shakespeare was meant to be watched, not read. So we watched Macbeth together as a class. And if we chose any of Shakespeare's plays to write a book report on, we were to either find a live performance of it or rent the movie.
So when you do decide to get into Shakespeare, watch it. And don't worry about the language. How it works for me is, I never understand a word for about the first 15 minutes of the play. And then, it's like a little switch gets flipped in my brain, and I understand everything.
Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
It seems it's too late, but I can only recommend ditching the "post-colonial fiction" for Will S. For one thing, you can more easily and, by the sounds are more likely to, read those works on your own than in a structured environment with a professor explaining things. Frankly I can't believe you've gotten through this much schooling without reading any. What are they teaching these days?!
Shakespeare is just... I can't say enough. His ability to craft language, his graps of universal human themes, and of Story, is... pick your superlative.
I don't agree that one shouldn't read Shakespeare vs. watching him. I consider those two things to be compatible and alternate pleasures. For one thing, you will rarely find a faithful presentation. Too many theater companies think they need to dumb down the story, dress it up (which is usually the same thing), and otherwise bastardize.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, one more thing- I understand the concern for GPA points, but please forget about that. In 10 or 20 years, you won't care about or even remember what's behind the decimal point, but I think you'll be grateful you encountered Shakespeare.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I would suggest Shakespeare for several reasons:
1) You said you didn't want to risk doing poorly. Shakespeare is so widely discussed and performed, that there are lots of ways to take it it, and still get the material. Watching a movie/performance of Shakespeare is sometimes BETTER than reading the original, rather than being a cheap cop-out (just make sure you compare the edition performed to the edition you're supposed to be reading).
2) Shakespeare is so widely read and quoted that a basic knowledge of his most popular works will enhance your reading of lots of other things.
3) I found that I never had time to enjoy the things I read for classes in college. If you're really interested in the reading list for Fiction, copy it for summer reading so that you can read it when there's time to get more out of it. Shakespeare's not included in this, because his work is written to be fun, engaging fluff. It just happens to be brilliant. It's original purpose was to be more like TV than Literature. He wrote to get paid. Where it's dense or difficult, it's a result of changing mores and language.
Posts: 368 | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by GinaG: I understand the concern for GPA points, but please forget about that. In 10 or 20 years, you won't care about or even remember what's behind the decimal point, but I think you'll be grateful you encountered Shakespeare.
posted
It's kind of shocking when you get out college and realize those grades don't mean what you thought they meant- which is anything.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Note: I have been informed by my husband that "post-colonial" is incorrect, and we should all be writing "postcolonial." I'm sure there's some amazingly good reason for this - hyphens being very derogatory or something along those lines - but I changed the topic of conversation to Christmas shopping before he could get into that.
posted
I loved the Shakespeare class I took. I made a lot of connections about the English language in that class. Plus, there was no dearth of research to pull from for papers.
The fiction class could be interesting depending on the level of stuffiness and PC atmosphere surrounding the discussion.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was actually second guessing myself and thinking I'd switch classes and take the Shakespeare class, but when I went back to look, the class was full, so the option isn't even there anymore.
I still feel good about the Fiction class though. Not that it really means a whole lot, but I went to that ratemyprofessor.com website to take a peek at the prof for the class. Everyone had great things to say about her, so, I'm hoping it won't be stuffy. Generally I totally ignore the ratings on that site, as I've had several awesome profs that were horribly rated by students that just don't like to do any work. But some of the positive reviews I sort of pay attention to.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: Note: I have been informed by my husband that "post-colonial" is incorrect, and we should all be writing "postcolonial." I'm sure there's some amazingly good reason for this - hyphens being very derogatory or something along those lines - but I changed the topic of conversation to Christmas shopping before he could get into that.
Carry on.
Both 'post-colonial' and 'postcolonial' are incorrect. The correct term is "during the colonial interregnum". It's only been, what, a bit more than two centuries? Not very long, really. You'll be reabsorbed into the dominions of your rightful masters soon enough.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
