English Language and Literature

Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 432.2233
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Directors of Graduate Studies
Jill Campbell [F] (107A LC, 432.2226, jill.campbell@yale.edu)
Linda Peterson [Sp] (107A LC, 432.2226, linda.peterson@yale.edu)

Professors
Harold Bloom, Leslie Brisman, David Bromwich, Jill Campbell, Janice Carlisle, Michael Denning, Wai Chee Dimock, Anne Fadiman (Adjunct), Roberta Frank, Paul Fry, Louise Glück (Adjunct), Sara Suleri Goodyear, Langdon Hammer, Margaret Homans, Traugott Lawler, Lawrence Manley, Donald Margulies (Adjunct), J.D. McClatchy (Adjunct), Annabel Patterson, Lee Patterson, Linda Peterson, David Quint, Claude Rawson, Joseph Roach, John Rogers, Robert Stepto, Katie Trumpener, Alexander Welsh, Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Associate Professors
Murray Biggs (Adjunct), William Deresiewicz, Elizabeth Dillon, Laura Frost, Matthew Giancarlo, Blair Hoxby, Amy Hungerford, David Krasner, Pericles Lewis, Christopher R. Miller, Marc Robinson (Adjunct)

Assistant Professors
Tanya Agathocleous, Nigel Alderman, Ala Alryyes, Jennifer Baker, Shameem Black, Jessica Brantley, Wes Davis, El Mokhtar Ghambou, James Kearney, Sanda Lwin, Stefanie Markovits, Diana Paulin, Lloyd Pratt, Nicole Rice, Elliott Visconsi

Fields of Study
Fields include English from Old English to the present and American literature and language.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
In order to fulfill the basic requirements for the program, a student must:

1. Complete thirteen courses—six courses with at least one grade of Honors and a maximum of one grade of Pass by July 15 following the first year; at least twelve courses with grades of Honors in at least four of these courses and not more than one Pass by July 15 following the second year. One of these thirteen courses must be The Teaching of English, ENGL 990.
   
   
2. Satisfy the language requirement. The requirement can be satisfied in two ways and is to be completed by the end of the second year.
   
   The two-language option: two languages, one to be completed by passing two advanced literature courses (graduate or undergraduate courses taught in and requiring papers in the language in question) with a grade of Honors or High Pass; the other to be passed by departmental exam. One of these two to be Latin or Greek. Students specializing in periods after 1750 may, with the permission of the director of graduate studies, substitute a second modern language.
   
   The three-language option: three languages, all to be passed by departmental exam (in the case of the ancient language, by exam or by a year of successful Yale course work), selected from among the following: (a) Latin or Greek; (b) French or German; (c) one of the preceding languages, or Biblical Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Spanish, or another language agreed upon by the director of graduate studies. Students specializing in periods after 1750 may, with the permission of the director of graduate studies, substitute a third language for selection (a). Two terms of Old English (or one term of Old English and one of the History of the English Language) may be substituted for selection (c). The three-language requirement is to be completed by passing two exams by the end of the first year and the third by the end of the second year.
   
   
3. Pass the oral examination (before or as early as possible in the fifth term of residence).
   
   
4. Teach a minimum of two terms.
   
   
5. Submit a dissertation prospectus from three to six months after passing orals (depending on when these were taken).
   
   
6. Submit a dissertation.
   

Upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus, students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. Admission to candidacy must take place by the end of the third year of study.

Combined Ph.D. Programs

English and African American Studies
A combined Ph.D. degree is available with African American Studies. Consult departments for details.

English and Renaissance Studies
The Department of English Language and Literature also offers, in conjunction with the Renaissance Studies program, a combined Ph.D. in English Language and Literature and Renaissance Studies. For further details, see Renaissance Studies.

Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements. Additionally, students in English are eligible to pursue a supplemental M.Phil. degree in Medieval Studies. For further details, see Medieval Studies.

M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). Students enrolled in the Ph.D. program may receive the M.A. upon completion of six courses with at least one grade of Honors and a maximum of one grade of Pass, and the passing of two of the languages, ancient or modern, by departmental examinations.

Master's Degree Program
Students enrolled in the master's degree program must complete either seven term courses or six term courses and a special project within the English department (one or two of these courses may be taken in other departments with approval of the director of graduate studies). There must be at least one grade of Honors and there may not be more than one grade of Pass. Students must also pass examinations in two languages, ancient or modern. Full-time students normally complete the program in one year.

Program materials are available upon request to the Graduate Registrar, English Department, Yale University, PO Box 208302, New Haven CT 06520-8302.

Courses

ENGL 500a, Old English.  Roberta Frank.
MW 9–10.20
Introduction to Old English language and style as well as reading and critical analysis of representative Old English poems (heroic narratives, elegies, religious meditations) and a few prose selections.

ENGL 500b, Beowulf.  Roberta Frank.
MW 9–10:20
A close reading of the Old English poem Beowulf and related verse such as Deor and The Finnsburg Fragment. Attention is given to the general qualities of the northern heroic tradition, and class members are asked to sample Beowulf scholarship and criticism, early and late. The course includes a final examination and a short paper.

ENGL 505bu, Readings in Old Norse Poetry and Prose: Chronicles of the Vikings. Roberta Frank.
MW 2.30–3.45
An introduction to the literature of earliest Norway and Iceland. Texts (read in the original) include runic inscriptions left behind by the Vikings, verse of their official skalds, the sometimes irreverent mythological poetry of the Edda, and the sagas telling of the Norse discovery of America. Prerequisite: LING 182/582 or permission of the instructor.

ENGL 534au, Piers Plowman.  Traugott Lawler.
W 10.30–12.20
A reading of the whole poem in the B text, with some reference to the A and C texts; regular assignments also in the critical and scholarly literature.

ENGL 546b, Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales.  Jessica Brantley.
T 10.30–12.20
A reading of The Canterbury Tales that places them in the contexts of both medieval culture and modern critical and editorial practices.

ENGL 550a, Sidney and Spenser.  Annabel Patterson.
M 3.30–5.20
This course takes on two of our greatest unfinished literary works, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, a pastoral romance in prose, and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, a romantic epic in verse. Our task is to stretch our minds around these daunting structures; to understand the generic decisions and innovations they make; to theorize incompletion and, in the case of the Arcadia, revision; and to develop our own take on “Elizabethanism” as a cultural phenomenon.

ENGL 577a, Renaissance Poetry.  David Quint.
T 1.30–3.20
A survey of major sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century poets, with attention to the development of genres, explorations of subjectivity and love, classical and continental models. Authors include Skelton, Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Campion, Raleigh, Daniel, Marlowe, Donne, and Jonson.

ENGL 617b, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Evil.  Lawrence Manley.
W 3.30–5.20
An examination of comic elements and implications in tragedies by Shakespeare and his major contemporaries. Special attention is given to the comedy of evil and its relationships to religious performance, villain tragedy, grand guignol, “horrid laughter,” and satire. Plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, Jonson, Barnes, Middleton, and Rowley.

ENGL 672b, Milton.  John Rogers.
F 1–3
This course studies Milton's poetry and some of his controversial prose. We investigate the relation of the poetry to its historical contexts, focusing on the literary, religious, social, and political forces that shaped Milton's verse. We are concerned, in addition, to survey and assess some of the dominant issues in contemporary Milton studies, examining the types of readings that psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist, and historicist critics have produced.

ENGL 713a, Swift.  Claude Rawson.
M 1.30–3.20
In A Tale of a Tub Swift parodied in advance a whole chain of Modernisms, from Tristram Shandy to Beckett, Joyce, the literature of “cruelty” and “black humor,” and some works by Nabokov, Burroughs, and Mailer. The course studies the Tale, the Irish writings, Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and the poems, in the context of a tradition that includes classical and Renaissance precursors, his own contemporaries (especially Alexander Pope), and his future legacy from Sterne to the present.

ENGL 720a, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature: Prose of the Age of Johnson.  David Bromwich.
Th 9.30–11.20
A consideration of the major writings of Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke, with discussions centered on the emerging language of human nature. Additional reading may include some of Hume's essays and Butler's sermons as well as brief selections from Addison and Steele.

ENGL 725a, The Eighteenth-Century Novel.  Jill Campbell.
Th 1.30–3.20
Study of works by Behn, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen, and of current critical debate on “the rise of the novel” in eighteenth-century En-gland and its shifting canon.

ENGL 769a, Wordsworth and Coleridge.  Paul Fry.
W 1.30–3.20
Emphasis on Wordsworth's poetry and prose, 1796–1815, read in opposition to selected poetry and prose of Coleridge, to which at least two weeks are devoted.

ENGL 770bu, Romanticism and History.  Leslie Brisman.
MW 11.30–12.45
Wordsworth and Blake and the history of the self as an alternative to preoccupation with political history. The Wordsworth reading includes The Prelude in its entirety, with special emphasis on the French Revolution books. The Blake selection includes The French Revolution and Milton. Some attention to the question of history in major poems and drama of Shelley and Byron. This is not a course in which students are asked to produce New Historical work, though we examine some New Historical approaches and their competitors.

ENGL 806b, Dickens and the Grotesque.  Alexander Welsh.
W1.30–3.20
A seminar on the nineteenth century's enthusiasm for the grotesque, as mediated by Shakespeare and other Renaissance texts. Theory of Hugo, Ruskin, Bakhtin; practice of Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, and chiefly Dickens. Also CPLT 855b.

ENGL 810a, Victorian Poetry in Its Contexts.  Linda Peterson.
M 10.30–12.20
Readings in the poetry of five major Victorian writers: Tennyson, the Brownings, Arnold, and one of the Rossettis. We consider the poetry in various contemporary contexts: literary (including its relation to Romantic poetry and questions of genre, especially epic), social (engagement with contemporary social concerns, including education, religion, industrialization, and urbanization), and political and imperial concerns. Supplementary reading in current criticism and scholarship.

ENGL 819b, Dutch Painting and the Realist Novel.  Ruth Bernard Yeazell.
Th 1.30-3.20
Studies in visual and verbal realism, which take their cue from the nineteenth-century practice of comparing the novel to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting. Readings include selected art theory and criticism from Reynolds to the present, and novels by Balzac, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Also CPLT 696b, HSAR 600b.

ENGL 841b, Early American Literature and Transatlantic Print Culture.  Elizabeth Dillon.
Th 10.30–12.20
This course explores the literature of colonial America in relation to its transatlantic production and reception; we also read selected European texts that were widely circulated in the Atlantic world and that bear on questions of colonialism, specifically the advent of new economies and the new science, the encounter with new peoples, and the development of the literary public sphere. The course aims both to read central texts in the literature of the colonial world and to attend to the effects of colonialism itself on the thematics and forms of literature of the Atlantic public sphere in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A variety of genres are considered, including personal narrative, poetry, the novel, and drama.

ENGL 913a, Empire and Its Double.  Sara Suleri Goodyear.
W 3.30–5.20
A course that concentrates on readings of Empire as a “secret sharer” of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British narrative. Rather than solely focusing on images of orientalism, we examine infiltrations of alterity that lie too close for comfort. While attempting to undo the idea of exoticism, we simultaneously address what E. M. Forster calls “aspects of the novel” in order to consider the question, What does the novel want? Texts include Edmund Burke's storytelling in Parliamentary debate, Dickens, Austen, Wilkie Collins, Kipling, Forster, Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Agra Shahid Ali. Our examination of Conrad's trope of the secret sharer causes us to question the singularity of imperial stories and their slippage into theories of nation. Also CPLT 913a.

ENGL 921a, Ralph Ellison in Context.  Robert Stepto.
W 1.30–3.20
This seminar pursues close readings of Ralph Ellison's essays, short fiction, and novels, Invisible Man and Juneteenth. The “in context” component of the seminar involves working from the Benston and Sundquist volumes on Ellison to discern a portrait of the modernist African America Ellison investigated, with at least Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Romare Bearden also in view. The texts include Ellison, The Collected Essays, Flying Home and Other Stories, Invisible Man, and Juneteenth; K. Benston, Speaking for You; E. Sundquist, Cultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; A. Nadel, Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon. Also AFAM 563au, AMST 921a.

ENGL 942b, Theorizing “Black” and “Asian” Intersectionalities in the United States. Sanda Lwin, Diana Paulin.
Th 3.30–5.20
This graduate seminar approaches racial formation/racial representation through the comparative lens of Asian American and African American literary and cultural production. We read theoretical and primary texts from various fields, including performance studies, literary studies, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, gender studies, legal studies, and postcolonial studies, in order to construct a critical apparatus for understanding race relationally rather than as strictly defined categories of identity that have, traditionally, been studied in segregated disciplines. We interrogate conventional black/white paradigms of race by looking at intersectionalities that unsettle binaries. Authors/artists include Homi Bhaba, Judith Butler, W.E.B. Du Bois, David Eng, Franz Fanon, Kobena Mercer, José Munoz, Vijah Prashad, Mira Nair, Anna Deveare Smith, and Claudia Tate. Also AFAM 722b, AMST 673b.

ENGL 985a, Literary Genres and World Cultures.  Wai Chee Dimock.
T 10.30–12.20
This course uses the concept of “genre” as an entry point to the dynamic interactions between the local and the global, between the persistence of words and the transformative forces of migration, translation, and hybridization. The history of genres is, in this sense, a history of the diverse cultures of humankind. We read clusters of texts in this light: Homer's Odyssey with Derek Walcott's play of the same title, Walcott's Omeros, and Wole Soyinka's “The Eye of the Cyclops”; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe with J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Coetzee's 2003 Nobel Lecture, Walcott's “The Castaway,” “Crusoe's Island,” “Crusoe's Journal,” “The Figure of Crusoe,” as well as “The Adventures of Lo Bun Sun” in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men; Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World. Doing so, we explore the inflections wrought by local cultures on generic terms such as “drama,” “epic,” “novel,” and “lyric.” Also AMST 927a, CPLT 525a.

ENGL 986b, Lyric and Society after Auden.  Langdon Hammer.
T 1.30–3.20
The relationship between lyric and society as a central issue in American and British poetry since the 1930s. Poems by W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, James Merrill, Thom Gunn, John Ashbery, Thylias Moss, Michael Palmer, and Geoffrey Hill, as well as the “9/11” poems, read alongside essays in literary theory and criticism.

ENGL 987a, Fredric Jameson: The Poetics of Social Forms.  Nigel Alderman.
W 10.30–12.20
This course examines the work of Fredric Jameson from his earliest forays into method to his revision of narrative theories to his mapping of periods and systems. By so doing we cover virtually all the major theoretical and philosophical models of the postwar period as well as a range of cultural works including medieval romance, nineteenth-century novel, modernist poetry, postmodern architecture, film, and music. Also AMST 928a, CPLT 518a.

ENGL 990a, The Teaching of English.  John Rogers.
F 10-12
An introduction to the teaching of literature and composition. Weekly seminars address a series of practical problems connected with teaching: preparing syllabi and lesson plans; generating and guiding classroom discussion; lecturing and serving as a teaching assistant; introducing students to various literary genres; formulating aims and assignments in composition classes; grading and commenting on students' papers. Continuing attention to important theoretical issues.

ENGL 995a/b, Directed Reading.  Staff.
Designed to help fill gaps in students' programs when there are corresponding gaps in the department's offerings. By arrangement with faculty and with the approval of the director of graduate studies.

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