Dr.  Theodore Price
English Department
Montclair State University
Upper Montclair, New Jersey 07043

Courses, Summer  2003
    ENLT 375 - 41  Modern Drama: Ibsen to O'Neill 

            10 Week Saturdays Only 6/07 - 8/09/03, 09:00am -12:45pm

    ENGL 256 - 11  English Novel to 1900 

            Six Week Day Session, 6/30 - 8/07/03, 09:20 - 10:55am

Ballpark Descriptions:

   Modern Drama: Ibsen to O'Neill

        01.In this course we're going to read -- or see on video -- selected plays by the five greatest modern playwrights of western literature: Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O'Neill, plus several exciting plays from the influential British Angry Young Man (and Woman) period, including one by the brilliant 18-year-old playwright Shelagh Delaney.

        02.Not only are they crackerjack plays, popular plays that have entertained audiences and are still entertaining them to the present day, but they have influenced past and present playwrights, writers, poets, and actors & actresses, so that if you yourself have any creative literary or dramatic ambitions, you should gain enormously from this course. The material we'll be covering is also the warp and woof of graduate record exams in the event that you are planning to go to graduate school or plan to teach in high school.

        03.Grading will be thru (a) multiple-choice exams; (b) probably two assigned papers; (c) a series of short papers, on subjects related to the course but which you'll be able to select on your own, with Dr. Price's approval -- so you'll have lots & lots of freedom to write about subjects that you personally are drawn to; and (d) an end-of-course paper -- equivalent to a take-home final exam, written outside of class, on What You've Learned in the course and how you feel about what you've learned. In my last semester courses, there were very high grades by many students. It's up to you. In my courses, you make your own grades.

    English Novel to 1900

        01.Reading, discussing, & writing about some of the greatest short novels in English Literature: Geofrey
Chaucer's Troilus & Criseyde, about a young man who has a brief affair with an older woman, a widow, who
swears eternal love & then betrays him, all against the background of the Trojan War; Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein (she was only 18 when she wrote it); Robert Louis Stevenson's famous horror novel Dr.Jekyll and
Mr.Hyde; and two short novels by Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist. The design of the
novel as a genre will be studied with selections from George Eliot's (Marian Evans's) Daniel Deronda, currently so
popular that it is making the rounds on tv's Masterpiece Theatre.

        02.The critical "approaches" that will be used to help get a quick grasp on the substance of the novel will
include its relation to (1) the author's Life, (2) the Times in which he or she wrote, (3) the author's Favorite
Books, (4) his/her Recurrent Themes, (5) traditional Myth, and (6) psycho-analysis.

        03.Since several of the novels (Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist) have been so
influential to have spawned famous movie and stage versions, there will be several vhs film showings during the
course, as well as film documentaries to help place the themes, lives, & times of the authors & their works. This
term's course will especially zero-in on Dickens, who has the reputation as the very greatest of English novelists.

        04.For grading procedures see Modern Drama: Ibsen to O'Neill.

        05.Fulfills genre (novel) and before 1800/1900 English Major requirements.

        06..Special Note: If you are unable to take this as a regular during-the-week Day Course, if you can Register
for the Nine-Session-Saturday Mornings MODERN DRAMA; IBSEN TO O'NEILL course, with the very special
permission of the Instructor, you may be able to take this ENGLISH NOVEL TO 1900 as a Distance Learning
Course. For more information, contact Dr.Price by e-mail only at pricet@mail.montclair.edu