English 497 Modern Medieval Fantasy
Thomas A. Bredehoft
Office: 1190-B Ross
Office Hours: TR 11:00-12:30, or by appointment.
email: tom.bredehoft@unco.edu

Senior Seminar: As a seminar, this course is designed to link up topics and issues discussed throughout the course of one’s English major, culminating in a final paper/research project and including both oral and written work. The specific topic for this class will be "modern medieval fantasy": novels of the twentieth century (British, American, and Canadian) employing (at one level or another) ideas of the middle ages in a fanatasy context. We will read novels intended primarily for children, young adults and adults.

Textbooks:
Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter
Tolkien, The Hobbit
---, Fellowship of the Ring
---, The Two Towers
---, Return of the King
Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
Pullman, The Golden Compass
De Lint, Moonheart
Cherryh, Fortress in the Eye of Time
The books should be available at the Book Stop, 931 16th St.

Class Policies
Attendance: This is not a correspondence course; I expect my students to come to class regularly and preparedly. Failure to do so may result in a lowering of the attendance portion of your final grade.
Grades: Final grades for this course will be computed (on a four point scale) according to the following percentages:

Annotated Bibliography: . . . .20%
Position Paper . . . . . . . . . . .10%
Class Presentation . . . . . . . . 10%
Midterm Exam . . . . . . . . . . .20%
Final Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30%
Attendance and Particpation 10%

Late Work: Work will not, in general, be accepted if it is late. However, if circumstances prevent you from finishing an assignment on time, I may accept it late, provided you discuss the situation with me before the due date.
Assignments: Reading assignments are to be finished by class time on the dates listed below (On Tuesday of each week!). Come to class prepared to discuss reading assignments, or to ask questions about them.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the intentional misrepresentation of work turned in for this course. If you use a work without proper citation it should be considered plagiarism; likewise, if you turn in work to this class which you actually wrote for another class (that too is a misrepresentation of your work). Since UNC expects students to represent their work accurately, plagiarism is not tolerated. No assignment which is plagiarized can be passed, and severe cases of academic misconduct may result in a failing grade in the class or even more severe penalties. And, by the way, the old saw which says that a plagiarizing student only hurts himself or herself is simply untrue: such a student also steals from the plagiarized source and insults his or her teacher in the bargain.

NOTE: Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class are encouraged to contact the Disability Access Center at 351-2289 as soon as possible to ensure that accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion.

Day-by-day Syllabus
Week One
8-26 Course Introduction
8-28 Fantasy in British and American Literature; Fantasy as Literature or Fantasy as Publishing Category?

Week 2
9-2 Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter

Week 3
9-9 Tolkien,The Hobbit

Week 4
9-16 Tolkien, Fellowship

Week 5
9-23 Tolkien, Two Towers

Week 6
9-30 Tolkien, Return. Note—you are required to read all of the Appendices at the end of the book! Skipping them is not allowed.

Week 7
10-7 Lewis, Lion, Witch and Wardrobe
10-9 Midterm Exam

Week 8
10-14 LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Week 9
10-21 Rowling, Harry Potter
10-23 Annotated Bibliography Due

Week 10
10-28 Pullman, Golden Compass

Week 11
11-4 De Lint, Moonheart

Week 12

All Week Reasearch Conferences with Tom
11-11 Cherryh, Fortress in the Eye of Time
11-13 Ditto

Week 13
11-18 Additional Novel TBA

Week 14
Presentations

Week 15
Presentations

Final Exam
Dec 8, 10:45-1:15

ENG 497
Paper Assignments.

1. Position Papers. Each student must write one position paper this term, staking out a position in relation to one of the following questions and supporting that position with appropriate examples, argument, and (where appropriate) citations of secondary sources. Position Papers are due on different due dates, and students can choose their own dates.

a). Due Sept. 18. One of the major changes between the book The Fellowship of the Ring and the film involves the age of Frodo and his companions. Was this change justified or not?
b) Due Sept. 23. Are the Appendices at the end of The Return of the King a necessary and integral part of the novel, or should readers feel free to skip them? (Of course, you know my opinion on this, but don’t worry—you may take either position, as long as you use appropriate argument and support for your position)
c) Due Oct. 2. I am generally inclined to think of The Hobbit as a children’s novel, while The Lord of the Rings is an adult work. Is this an appropriate distinction?

2. Annotated bibliography. Due October 16. An annotated bibliography is designed as a way of entering into a research problem: one imagines a possible research question and attempts to survey the current state of scholarship in relation to that problem. In form, an annotated bibliography can be written as a list (perhaps with a descriptive introduction identifying the research question and a conclusion, summarizing the results of the survey and the prospects for further scholarship). Each item on the list should be a secondary work cited in full MLA format, followed by a brief paragraph of critical summary (i.e. your "annotations" should both summarize the argument and at least briefly evaluate it). Your annotated bibliographies must have at least a minimum of six entries (all chosen to relate to the initial research problem or question), and at least half must come from traditional print publications (and perhaps all of them should?). Because you may wish to use items available through Interlibrary Loan, getting an early start on this task is probably a good idea (also since the task demands that you read and be able to summarize and evaluate critical writings).

3. Final Project. Due Last Day of Classes. Each student must complete a final paper that includes appropriate reference to secondary/research sources. The purpose of such research, as in the annotated bibliography, is to put our own comments and interpretations of a work into the context of the ongoing scholarly and critical discussion. The primary focus of your paper should probably involve one (or possibly more) of the novels assigned for this class (any other choice must be approved by me in advance).

In my opinion, the best writing about literature takes as its primary purpose the challenge of increasing the general understanding of a work. If you write about a novel, your "thesis" ought to try to help us understand that novel just a little bit better. In that sense, you (as critics) are doing a favor for your readers: you are giving us the benefit of your insight and research in order to help us learn how to read and understand a book. This is a valuable and "real" task, and as such I hope students in this class will take it seriously.

I strongly urge students to take the writing of their final projects seriously in other ways as well; although I will not collect them, your papers probably ought to go through multiple drafts, so that you can ensure that their structures and organizations match their theses, and so you have ample opportunity to revise for grammar and correctness. It is in my mind, and it should be in yours as well, that these papers represent the culmination of a semester’s worth of time spent on reading and researching in the general area of modern medieval fantasy, and as such they should be substantial, informative, and well written. Anything else would be uncivilized.

Final papers for this Senior Seminar will be graded according to the degree to which they achieve those things described here. I have in mind papers in the range of 15 pages (double-spaced, of course) or so, and while I might be willing to talk to individuals about producing final products that depart in some ways from the form of a traditional research papers, such departures are always risky and (in the nature of risks) may or may not pay off.

During the last weeks of class, each student will present an abbreviated (10 minute) account of their research project and its results to the class as a whole, and students should anticipate giving answers to questions from the audience.