Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!
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We will explore landscapes and locales critical to the imaginative literature of England, including Stonehenge, Lyme Regis, Tintern Abbey, Lake District, Yorkshire moors, Cambridge, and London. Our visits will include places critical to the writings of Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Darwin, T. S. Eliot, John Fowles, Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth, and other authors who have drawn motifs and metaphors from landscape and natural history.
As we study major works of English literature in the settings where they were inspired, we will also examine natural history and its scientific basis. Our days will take us on hikes in mountains, through moors, and along the coast, and we will visit major literary and natural history museums. We will synthesize literary interpretations with scientific knowledge to construct our own personal narratives on the experience of landscape and natural history.
Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!
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Welcome
Students arrive on own in London.
Initial meeting (6.00-6.45 p.m.): Welcome and introductions. Overview of course expectations and schedule.
Assignment: Experience of travel and dislocation on initial experiences of place.
Group dinner (7.00).
I do love these ancient ruines:
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Landscape as a tradition in English literature and natural history.
Syllabus will include reading assignment on role of natural history in English literature
Morning (9.00-9.45): Tradition of English literature and the place of the landscape.
Discussion (10.00-10.45): Student experiences and perspectives on literature and place.
Visit Westminster Abbey. (11.30-3.00)
Lunch in vicinity of Westminster Abbey.
Discussion (3.30-4.30): Questions about individuals memorialized in Westminster Abbey. Ideas of memorialization and its role in culture.
Assignment: Discuss experience at Westminster Abbey and ideas of memorialization in relationship to perception of poets and poetry.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Visit British Museum Gallery on Bronze Age and Celtic Britain (4.00-5.30)
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
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Landscape as a tradition in English literature and natural history.
[Syllabus will include reading assignment on natural history collections]
Morning lecture (9.00-9.50): Ideas of natural history. Relationships between science and natural history.
Key scientific concepts to apply in course.
Visit Natural History Museum (11.00-2.00): Students will be asked to consider the role of collecting and museums in development of knowledge and culture.
Lunch at Natural History Museum.
Visit Linnean Society (3.00-4.30): Visit lecture room where Darwin and Wallace’s ideas on natural selection and evolution were introduced. Overview of evolution. Visit Linnaeus’s herbarium. Overview of roles of collecting and taxonomy in natural history.
Discussion (5.30-6.30): Practices of science and natural history. Ideas of ‘ways of knowing.’ Roles of collections and museums in science and natural history.
Assignment: Museums and the urban experience of natural history
Dinner on own and evening free.
We shall not cease from exploration
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Deep history of British Isles
Syllabus will include reading on British prehistory. Excerpts from literature or poetry that uses Stonehenge
Bus/Coach to Stonehenge
Lecture (9.00-9.45): Deep history of British Isles, including overview of natural history and early human migrations and cultures.
Depart hotel (10.30).
Group lunch.
Visit Stonehenge (2.00-4.00)
Bus/Coach to Bath.
Assignment: Senses of Stonehenge in creating ideas of British prehistory.
Dinner on own and evening free.
In nature there's no blemish but the mind; none can be called deform'd but the unkind.
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Industrialization, commidification, and changes in human cultures and the landscape.
Lecture (9.00-9.30): Industrialization and imperialism and their socio-political and environmental effects.
Lecture (9.45-10.30): Poetry and social milieu of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Coach from Bath to Nether Stowey (11.00)
Lunch in Nether Stowey.
Visit Coleridge Cottage (1.00-3.00)
Discussion (3.30-4.30): Coleridge and his times.
Assignment: Consider role of place and culture on creativity of individual.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Biotic diversity and ecology.
Walk Coleridge Way/Quontock Hills (9.00-3.00). Introduce concepts of biotic diversity and ecological organization. Use transects/quadrats to collect data on plant diversity. Use local communities to introduce ecological ideas as well as specifics about natural history of local communities.
Discussion (3.30-5.00): Review observations and interpret data collected. Discuss data from perspective of diversity and ecological concepts.
Assignment: Describe biotic diversity and ecology of Quontock Hills. Include observations on human-mediated changes and management of landscape and ‘natural’ communities.
Dinner on own and evening free.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
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Landscape and creativity.
Bus/Coach to Watchet (9.00).
Explore coastal landscape around Watchet.
Discussion (12.00-3.00, including lunch): S. T. Coleridge, “Rime of Ancient Mariner” and other poems.
Assignment: Landscape as metaphor and inspiration.
Coach to Lyme Regis (3.30).
Dinner on own and evening free.
Ecological specialization and coastal environments.
Morning (9.00-1.00): Study coastal environment at Blue Lias Cliffs. Introduce ideas of ecological specialization and use observations in tide pools and coastal environments to assess possible ecological specializations.
Bus to tide pool habitats.
Lunch on own.
Afternoon free for laundry and relaxation.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Communities and social structures
Syllabus will include readings on island biology, industrial revolution, Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
Discussion (9.00-9.30): Observations from coastal environments. Discuss coastal natural history, especially biotic communities.
Discussion (10.00-12.00): Jane Austen, Persuasion.
Lunch on own.
Lecture (2.00-2.30): Island Biology.
Lecture (2.45-3.15): Effects of trade and industrial revolution on British culture and literature.
Break-out groups (3.30-4.00): Evaluate island effects on natural history and culture of England.
Discussion (4.00-5.00): Island effects on natural history and culture of England.
Assignment: Discuss observations of island biology and industrialized/international culture on understanding of Persuasion.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
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Paleontology and human time
Readings: John Fowles, French Lieutentant’s Woman; article on paleontology of Lyme Regis region
Lecture (9.00-9.45): Fossils, paleontology, and evolution
Visit Philpot Museum (10.00-1.00).
Lunch on own.
Discussion (2.30-4.30): John Fowles, French Lieutentant’s Woman.
Assignment: Place and time/natural communities and social structures in Persuasion and French Lieutentant’s Woman.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Evolutionary narratives
Syllabus will include reading from Darwin and essay on Darwin’s influence on Victorian literature
Lecture (9.00-9.45): Principles of evolutionary biology and their influence on Victorian natural history and literature.
Coach to Down House, Charles Darwin’s home (10.30)
Lunch.
Visit Down House (2.00-4.00)
Coach to Reading (4.30)
Assignment: Evolutionary inferences from natural history experiences.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Ecological invasion
Syllabus will include Wordsworth poems, including “Tintern Abbey” and “Nutting”
Discussion (9.00-10.00): Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey” and other poems.
Bus/Coach to Tintern Abbey (10.30)
Lunch at Tintern Abbey.
Visit Tintern Abbey (2.00-4.00)
Bus to Chepstow.
Discussion (6.00-7.00): Human effects on landscape. Destructions of abbeys. Tintern Abbey. Implications of Wordsworth’s poems for our understanding of place and human situation.
Assignment: Response to place and human situation.
Dinner on own and evening free.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
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Personal landscapes and the culture of nature
Readings will include Jonathan Bate’s “The Place of Poetry” pp 205-242 from The Song of the Earth (Picador, London)
Lecture (9.00-9.45): Poetry and place: the signficance of William Wordsworth.
Coach to Grasmere (10.30).
Lunch en route.
Assignment: Personal landscape and place in culture of nature.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Free day
Wordsworth and his circle: Interdependence and symbiosis
Syllabus will include poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge and excerpts from the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth)
Visit Dove Cottage and Wordsworth Museum (9.00-1.00)
Discussion: Wordsworth poetry, Dorothy Wordsworth journals, and Coleridge poetry.
Lunch.
Lecture (3.00-3.45): Biological interdependence and symbiosis.
Assignment:
Dinner on own and evening free.
Forces that shape climate, landscape, and biota
Coach to Buttermere (9.00).Hike around Buttermere to discuss effects of glaciations on landscape and biota. Ideas of climate change. Elevational differentiation in mountain biota. Specializations of mountain plants.
Lunch during hike.
Coach back to Grasmere (3.00)
Discussion (5.00-6.00): Observations from hike.
Assignment: Reading history of landscape.
Dinner on own and evening free.
I have learned
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Conservation
Lecture: Beatrix Potter and the conservation of the Lake District (9.00-9.30)
Coach to Beatrix Potter house in Hill Top (9.45)
Visit Beatrix Potter House (10.30-1.00)
Lunch
Coach to Haworth (2.00).
Dinner on own and evening free.
Character of landscape/landscape as character
Lecture: The Brontës (9.00-9.45)
Visit Bronte Parsonage and Museum (10.00-12.00)
Lunch.
Discussion (2.00-4.00): E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Assignment:
Dinner on own and evening free.
Character of landscape/landscape as character
Coach to Top Withens trailhead (9.00).
Walk to Top Withens (9.30-2.00). Discuss biology of wetlands and moors during hike.
Lunch (on hike).
Coach to Haworth (2.00)
Discussion (2.30-3.30): Poetry of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
Assignment: Metaphor of landscape as means to convey character and mood.
Dinner on own and evening free.
Coach to Cambridge (9.00).
Assignments due (5.00)
Free day.
Imaginative work...is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.
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Dissociation, displacement, and mythic relocation
Lecture (9.00-9.45): Dissociation of humans from natural environment and the reassertion of myth. Relationships between mythic and scientific ways of knowing.
Coach to Great Gidding (10.00).
Walk to Little Gidding (12.00-6.00)
Discussion of T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets” at Little Gidding.
Coach to Cambridge (6.00).
Dinner on own and evening free.
The lovely lady, Christabel,
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Urban ecology
Coach to London (9.00)
Lunch on own.
Walk Embankment and discuss ecology of human-created urban environments.
Evening: Shakespeare play at The Globe.
Dickens and human ecology
Lecture (9.00-9.30): Human ecology
Travel to Greenwich (10.00)
Lunch on own at Greenwich.
Discussion (5.00-7.00): Dickens, Oliver Twist
Assignment:
Dinner on own and evening free.
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced - Even a Proverb is no proverb to you till your Life hast illustrated it.
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Human agency versus alienation in urban environments
Lecture (9.00-9.30): Modernism and alienation
Discussion (9.45-12.00): Eliot, “The Waste Land”
Assignment: Observations of alienation and social means to counter its effects.
Lunch on own.
Student work on final projects (2.00-6.00).
Dinner on own and evening free.
Gardens: urban islands and conservation resources
Travel to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (9.00)
Tour of Kew’s conservation program and discussion of resources.
Tour Kew's Ethnobotanical Collections
Lunch at Kew
Discussion at Kew (2.00-4.00): Virgina Woolf, “Kew Gardens” and Erasmus Darwin, “The Botanic Garden.”
Assignment:
Dinner on own and evening free.
My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
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Students present projects.
Project presentations (9.00-12.00)
Group lunch.
Discussion (2.00-5.00): Synthesis of ideas
Dinner on own and evening free.
Final assignments due.
Group dinner.
Depart for home.
Students responsible for own travel arrangements.
To see a world in a grain of sand
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