1. Great Books: Seduction and Betrayal
English 102/102G, Sem 2, 2017
Great Books: Seduction and Betrayal
Convenor: Tom Bishop
Lecturers: Tom Bishop
Brian Boyd
Alex Calder
Claudia Marquis
Tutors: Makyla Curtis
Bryonny Muir

3. Faculty of Arts: First Year Experience
We’re here to help you!
Questions about uni? Just ask!
Reply to your mentor!
They’re there for you.
Keep an ear out for your Targeted Learning Session
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attendance for this course
If you are missing tutorials, we will be in touch!
Contact:

4. Kia Ora, Malo e leilei and Talofa lava from your Tuākana!
The Tuākana programme aims to mentor and assist Maori and Pacific students to achieve their full potential
Maria Sopoaga is our English Tuākana for this course; she can be contacted at
We run weekly workshops focusing on the readings and assessments while working to support our teina.
Please check your EC mail for room locations, workshop details and more information on Tuākana.
Office Hours
Maria Sopoaga
See Tuakana link on Canvas

5. Except that actually we are not!
Class reps:
Breana Sinclair
Abbie Marshall
A thousand cheers!

6. Learning Aims and outcomes
Skills and capacities to be developed in English 102/102G include:
-- how to appreciate, evaluate and enjoy complex works of fiction
of different kinds;
-- how to interpret and respond to figurative language and fictional
structures;
-- how to navigate unfamiliar kinds of English, especially
historical ones;
-- how to think about the impact of fictions on other
aspects of culture and history;
-- how to write at an advancing level about works of
language and imagination.

7. Primary Reading (in order of lecturing):
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Various poets, Selected poems of seduction and betrayal
William Shakespeare, Richard III
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Lord Byron, Don Juan (Canto 1)
Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Miller’s Tale” (from Canterbury Tales)
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
Copies of all these works except those by Byron and Chaucer can be
obtained through the University Bookstore. The works by Byron and Chaucer
will be placed on Canvas. Important class notices will also appear on Canvas.
Lecture recordings for all the lectures will also be posted on Canvas.
Make sure you have access to it and can receive notices posted on it in a timely way.

8. Assessment Information
Assessment in this class has the following components:
10 x tutorial quizzes (1 x 10 = 10%),
2 x Short Essays (500 words each; 2 x 10% = 20%)
1 x Essay Plan (1-2 pages; 5%), for:
1 x Longer Essay (1500 words; 15%)
1 x Two-hour exam (2 hrs = 50%).

9. Assessment Information
TUTORIAL QUIZZES (10%)
Tutorial preparedness is assessed by the performance of a series of tasks: quizzes and/or short written answers (worth 1%) in each tutorial. These usually mean answering a question on your reading for that week. There is no way to make up a task from a missed tutorial. (However, absences for good reasons may be taken into consideration in borderline cases at the end-of-semester examiners’ meeting.)
Please note, the difference between one letter-grade and another, and sometimes even between passing and failing, has often depended on regular attendance and participation in tutorials, as evidenced by tutorial quizzes.
Again, and even more strongly: your tutor is your primary point of contact and the principal advocate for your work in the class. If she does not know who you are, how can she argue on behalf of your work when grades are being determined?
In short: Go to tutorials!

10. Assessment Information
SHORT RESPONSES (2 x 10% = 20%)
Two short written responses of about 500 words each, as follows:
RESPONSE #1 (due Friday August 11th):
Write a short description and discussion of yourself as a reader in relation to a quotation chosen from the following website (N.B. there is more than one page to choose from!):
This assignment is a chance to think carefully about how you read, including where and why and for what purposes, and what your own history as a reader has been.
Assessment will consider:
clarity of discussion,
effective presentation of a self-portrait as a reader,
cogency of engagement with your chosen quotation (with which you may agree, or disagree, -- or have some other position), and
the presentation of your work.

11. Assessment Information
SHORT RESPONSES (2x 10% = 20%)
Two short written responses of about 500 words each, as follows:
RESPONSE #2 (due Friday September 1st ):
Write a “close reading”, as discussed in lecture, on one of the passages given on the assignment sheet (available after the first response).
This assignment is a chance to practice and display skills in attending closely to and analyzing the language of what you read and in arguing for your view of how it works.
Assessment will consider:
your attentiveness to details of language and style in the passage chosen,
your clarity of argument and
your presentation of your work.

12. Assessment Information
Essay PLAN (5%; due Friday Week 8, 29 12noon):
A 1-2 page plan for your forthcoming 1,500 word essay. Specific topics will be available after the second response.
Remember: you cannot write on the writer or text in the exam that you choose to write on in this essay.
Your plan should indicate your approach to your chosen topic, the structure of your argument with its main points, the evidence and examples you plan to use to substantiate those points, the secondary materials you are using, and your conclusions. None of these need be unalterable, but they must show how you plan to argue and write your essay.
Assessment of this assignment will consider:
the coherence of your planned argument,
its clarity of structure, and
Your proposed use of primary and secondary materials.

13. Assessment Information
Essay (15%; due Friday Week 10, 13 12noon):
A 1500 word essay (+/- 150) on a topic chosen from the assigned topics available after the second response.
Remember: you cannot write on the writer or text in the exam that you choose to write on in this essay.
You are expected to undertake critical reading for your essay (it is recommended that you consult at least three critical pieces for this essay). Lists of recommended secondary reading will be made available on Canvas.
Assessment of this assignment will consider:
Innovation and creativity (thinking for yourself);
Argument supported by textual evidence (close reading skills)
Effective writing in developing your argument (writing skills);
Presentation, including proper referencing of sources.

14. Assessment Information
EXTENSIONS for Written Work:
If you are unable to hand in an assignment by the due date, you must put your case for an extension to your tutor (or the convenor); if an extension is granted, you must attach to your submitted essay a formal approval document such as an or written note from the tutor or convenor addressed to you and giving the extension. Normally, extensions will only be granted for compelling reasons, such as illness, or other unforeseen emergencies, and a Doctor’s certificate (or equivalent for other circumstances) must be provided to the tutor or convenor. An extension must be requested in advance of the due date for the assignment, unless there is a genuine cause preventing this, in which case the extension should be sought as soon as is practicable after the due date.
Don’t not hand in work. Do ask for an extension.
Work handed in without an extension granted (including after the fact) will not be marked.

15. Assessment Information
Exam (50%; date TBA):
The exam will offer a series of questions covering the material of the course. You will be required to answer TWO essay-style questions in two hours. There is no requirement to refer to or discuss secondary material in the exam, however, such material can deepen and refine your appreciation of the works under discussion as you prepare for examination.
Notes on the exam: You must not write on any text or writer more than once in the exam. You must not write in the exam on the writer or text you addressed in your longer essay. You MAY write again on the text they considered in your Response #2, the Close reading exercise; however you may not substantially repeat what you said in that piece.
In other words, you must present written responses to a minimum of THREE works over the course of the semester.
NOTE: IT IS A REQUIREMENT THAT YOU SIT THE EXAM FOR THIS COURSE.

16. Academic Integrity 1 Plagiarism: 
The University of Auckland does not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence. The work that you submit for grading must be your own work. Where work from other sources is used, it must be properly acknowledged and referenced. This requirement also applies to sources found on the internet. A student’s assessed work may be reviewed against electronic source material using computerised detection mechanisms.
For further information see:

17. Academic Intregrity 2
The University requires that all students starting a new programme take the online Academic Integrity course.
If you are required to take it and have not already done so, you will have been automatically enrolled in it. You have to complete it by the end of the semester. See:

18. Additional Resources
Library and Learning Services offers workshops on all aspects of essay writing and exams. Check out their workshops (search under “essay”) as soon as possible.
ELE – ENGLISH LANGUAGE ENRICHMENT
If you have difficulty with your English, with writing essays, understanding lectures, doing presentations or any other aspect of English, then the English Language Enrichment Centre (ELE) – located on level 1 of the Kate Edger Information Commons - is the place for you. Have a look at their website for further information.

19. A quick tour of our Canvas site: https://canvas. auckland. ac

20. “Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher (= count) in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense; not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.” Thoreau, from Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) Or, on the other hand:

21. To READ (verb) – Some possible meanings in English and related languages:
To consider, interpret, discern.
To think or suppose (that something is the case).
To guess, make out, or tell by conjecture
To take for something (“I read you a knight”).
To discover, or expound the meaning of (a problem, dream, omen, etc.).
To foresee, foretell, predict (a person's fortune, the future, etc.).
To count, reckon, estimate.
To advise, to deliberate, to explain, to help, to suggest, to convince, to devise, to guess, to plot, to plan, to arrange, to undertake, to rule, to determine, to deal with, to fathom, to comprehend, to see to, to take thought about, to accomplish, to succeed, to take care of, to punish.

22. To look over or scan (something written, printed, etc
To look over or scan (something written, printed, etc.) with understanding of what is meant by the letters or signs of which it is composed.

23. “READ” – Related words in English
“rede” advice: “recks not his own rede” (Hamlet).
“riddle” something requiring interpretation; secret counsel.
“ready” i.e. well advised => prepared (a disputed etymology)
“Aethelraed Unraed” = Ethelred the Unready,
(Noble Counsel, Bad Counsel)
Anglo-Saxon King ( CE)
(“because he was never ready to fight when the Danes were”).

25. “READ” – Related words in other languages
German, Rat-haus = Town Hall; i.e. house of advice.
Latin, ratio => ratio, rational, reason, rate.
ordo => order, ordain, subordinate
Greek, arithmós = a number => arithmetic, arithmancy, logarithm

26. How does this change our understanding of “reading”?
Ultimate origins of the “read” group of words lie in an Indo-European (the furthest back we can reliably look into our, and any human, speech) reconstructed word root:
*ar- = “fit together”
(which also lies behind words like arms, armour, army, arthropod, art, artist, Arts, ornament, and more.)
Reading is, originally, an act of putting it together, making order, making sense.
How does this change our understanding of “reading”?

27. For Lecture Two on Friday, please read this column:
For Lecture Three next TUESDAY, please read the other columns noted on the “Reading about Reading” sheet posted on Canvas.
Also, begin reading “Great Expectations” ahead of the first lecture on it next Thursday. Professor Boyd has devised a staged reading schedule for you to follow, which is posted on Canvas (it starts tomorrow!).