Read the entire “Don’t Go to Art School” series:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
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For year three of our Nearly-Free English Degree, we’ll be covering the Romantic through Post-Colonial times.
Each “course” below is worth one credit. You’ll need to pick three of them, from at least two of the groups, and then pick three electives. One of these other electives can be another literature class from any of the categories for any year, but two of them should be non-English courses from the selections I’ll give you once we’ve covered the English ones.
For each course, you’ll follow the same work pattern: Consult Wikipedia for the “lecture” before you read each book, and then do the reading, using the study techniques you developed in year one (Quiller-Couch’s methods or the highly recommended notebook-based self-study techniques used in the recommended but non-free Bauer title).
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GROUP 1: Romantic Period
Romantic Poetry
“The Norton Anthology” lists a lovely selection here. The major poets included are:
• William Blake
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Anna Letitia Barbauld
• Robert Burns
• Thomas de Quincey
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• William Hazlitt
• John Keats
• Charles Lamb
• Walter Savage Landor
• William Wordsworth
GROUP 2: Victorian Period
Victorian Literature 1: Studies in Dickens
Part 1: Introductory Criticism
• Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens by G.K. Chesterton
Part 2: Selected Shorter Works
• A Christmas Carol
• Some Christmas Stories
• Three Ghost Stories
• Poems and Verses
• Speeches, Literary and Social
Part 3: Great Novels (choose three)
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Great Expectations
• David Copperfield
• Oliver Twist
• The Old Curiosity Shop
• Dombey and Son
Victorian Literature 2: Victorian Poetry
• Victorian Songs by Various Authors
• Browning’s Shorter Poems by Robert Browning
• Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
• Idylls of the Kings by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Victorian Literature 3: Popular Novels of the Victorian Era
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Warden by Anthony Trollope
• The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
GROUP 3: Post-Colonial Period
Post-Colonial Literature 1: Early Canadian Authors
• Roughing it in the Bush by Susanna Moodie
• The Backwoods of Canada by Catherine Parr Trail
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• The Imperialist by Sara Jeannette Duncan
• Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
• Pilgrims of the Wild by Grey Owl (PG Canada)
• The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W. Service (PG Canada)
• In Flanders Fields and Other Poems by John McRae
Post-Colonial Literature 2: Early American Authors
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving
• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Post-Colonial Literature 3: American Slave Narratives
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs
• The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
• Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
• Slave Narratives: A Folk History (multiple volumes)
Coming next: Year Four! Literary Theory and studies in special topics
I am anxiously awaiting word on who will award me with this degree, what evidence of my accomplishment they will require and what payment they might expect.
Frank—here is your answer, from Part 1 of the series: “Don’t get me wrong: I do still think the humanities have value. But I think that what they don’t have any longer is exclusivity. If you want to learn about art and literature, I don’t think you need someone with a PhD to teach it to you. So my advice to all my younger friends would be this: Get a degree in something practical. And study the arts yourself.”
@Johanna, in Part I the topic was art school. Part II shifted from whether it is wise to go to art school or not to pursuing the “nearly free English degree,” Perhaps that should have been the “nearly free equivalent to a degree in English Literature.”
I certainly agree with you that “If you want to learn about art and literature (or anything else), I don’t think you need someone with a PhD to teach it to you.” The one proviso is that you have already learned how to be a successful independent learner. This is the most important objective/outcome in compulsory K-12 education because it opens up all other possibilities.
However, making a livelihood out of what you have learned requires convincing others that you have indeed acquired a recognizable collection of knowledge, understandings, skill and other attributes. A degree awarded by a reputable source achieves that end very efficiently if not perfectly.
Another, more time consuming and effortful, way to become creditable is to build a portfolio of work that convincingly makes and substantiates the same assertion. In the visual arts, this is a path that is often chosen over seeking a degree from an art school. Even for those who do earn a degree from an art school, the hope and expectation is that the portfolio will eventually eclipse the importance of the degree in obtaining meaningful and remunerative work.
Similar choices face the would be writer. Shall I enroll in a creative writing program and seek a Masters in Fine Arts degree or shall I set out on my own to establish a compelling portfolio of publications, awards, associations and so on? Staying alive and well while that happens is quite important.
Unfortunately, it is no longer practical to take this path in the natural and social sciences. It must have been great to have been an aristocratic (self-financing) nineteenth century anthropologist, biologist or physicist.