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About this Course: Henry James was/is arguably the most significant American man of letters in the nation's history, internationalizing American literature and innovating the psychological development and portrayal of character in the novel. We will spend this quarter in close study of selected novels and shorter works from all three phases of "The Master's" career, with particular attention placed on James's critical and aesthetic contributions to the development of modern narrative and to the American literary heritage. We'll be focusing on the evolution of James's style over a career that spanned half a century and which effectively formed a bridge between nineteenth century realism and twentieth century modernism. James was almost as prolific a critic as a fiction-writer; even his own considerable body of work came under his critical lens during the preparation of the New York Edition of the works. These critical self-evaluations, together with other essays on literary form and aesthetics offer one of the most comprehensive and intelligent expressions of novel theory by a practitioner in existence and are valuable for both their insights into James's own work and for understanding the development of critical reading practice in the modern era.

Work:

• Careful reading (incalculable %)
• Feisty, informed discussion in class (incalculable %)
• And on-list (15%)
• One or more short, provocative presentations (25%)
• Seminar paper based on a shorter work or works of your choice from the collected stories. Students who have completed English 701 & 702 are expected to demonstrate their advanced skills in this paper.  All students are expected to demonstrate graduate-level competence with English composition and usage. All students should rely heavily on reputable print resources, keeping internet research (again, of reputable resources) to a minimum (60%)

This component includes a paper proposal, with working bibliography and an abstract of the completed paper. Please provide enough copies of this abstract for all of us. If you do not turn these in as required, you will not receive full credit for the seminar paper. 

Miscellaneous Policies:

• Academic honesty is essential to the fair and successful conduct of class, and dishonesty will be punished. Dishonesty includes various kinds of cheating, “plagiarism” (defined as the use of the words and ideas of others as if they were your own), and copying the work of another student in a test. Penalties for academic dishonesty can be severe and I will impose them. Please refer to the on-line student handbook for full details: http://www.wright.edu/academics/fhandbook/acadconduct.html#student
• Prepared, routine attendance is likewise essential. Note: James's works are never short and always dense. I've tried to spread out the novels to give you plenty of time to work through them. You should always allow yourself a minimum of one week to get the novels read.
• Occasionally in marking your work, I will offer a plus or a minus in addition to a letter grade. Plusses and minuses have no numerical value, but are merely offered in the nature of encouragement or warning, from me to you, and should be interpreted by you as such. Even more rarely, a piece of written work may receive a split grade. These will be calculated as the average of the two letters. Example A/C = 3; B/C = 2.5.

Calendar 

(Reading must be completed by date indicated. All due dates for written work are bold. Provocative presentations will be assigned separately.)