This booklet contains short descriptions of the courses being offered by the English Section in the autumn semester 2007, together with lists of the required reading (pensum) for these courses. In some cases, recommended further reading is also listed here.
Fuller descriptions of the courses – including teaching schedules, submission dates for term papers, etc. – will be available through It’s:Learning.
Note that if you do not register for a course, you will not have access to information regarding that course on It’s:Learning. If you are interested in taking a particular course, you should register at an early stage (you can withdraw from the exam later should you decide not to complete the course).
Further information regarding the courses offered by the English Section is available in the web version of the studiehåndbok. This is the best place for checking details of obligatory assignments and the means of evaluation for each course.
Whatever courses in English you are taking you should have an English-English dictionary and an English-Norwegian/Norwegian-English dictionary.
English-English
In the final examinations for courses in English you are allowed to consult an English-English dictionary – but not any English-English dictionary. You will find a list of dictionaries which have been approved for use in examinations in the Studiehåndbok (pp. 150-51), and we recommend that you obtain one of these. The following are approved:
Collins COBUILD English (Advanced Learner’s) Dictionary (britisk)
The Concise Oxford Dictionary (britisk)
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (britisk)
Random-House Webster’s College Dictionary (amerikansk)
Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary
Note that for use in an examination your dictionary should NOT contain your own notes. Your dictionary may be checked during the examination, and removed if it does not meet the criteria for acceptability.
English-Norwegian/Norwegian-English
We recommend:
Engelsk blå ordbok: Engelsk-norsk/norsk-engelsk (Kunnskapsforlaget)
This is a relatively cheap publication which will cover most of what you need for your studies.
We also recommend:
Engelsk stor ordbok: Engelsk-norsk/norsk-engelsk (Kunnskapsforlaget)
This is a more comprehensive dictionary – but it is also more expensive. If you intend to study English up to a high level, it may be worthwhile investing in this volume.
Pronunciation Dictionary
We recommend:
J. C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary
Dictionaries of synonyms and idioms
There is a wide range of books of this kind, and it is difficult to isolate the most useful. However, these may prove to be of most interest to Norwegian students of English:
S. Follestad, Engelske idiomer
The Longman Dictionary of Idioms
The Penguin Dictionary of English Synonyms & Antonyms
English, more than any other language, is now the language of global communication – it is arguably the first global language. ‘Global English’ is an interdisciplinary course which explores the phenomenon of English in the world from a range of different intellectual viewpoints, using the methods associated with the different sub-disciplines within English studies.
Why has English become a global language? What is the historical basis for the current status of English in the world? How does a language attain international currency? How does English vary around the world? Why are there so many varieties of English in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling? What are the personal consequences of having a language imposed upon you, or of growing up with two or more languages? Is English a valuable lingua franca or a linguistic tyrant?
Questions such as these are explored through a series of lectures presented by a team of teachers from NTNU’s English Section. These teachers examine global English from their various specialist perspectives, and an additional function of the course will therefore be to introduce the different types of academic activity within English studies: linguistics, the history of English-language societies, literary studies, and so on.
Pensum
David Crystal, English as a Global Language, latest edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Laurie Bauer, An Introduction to International Varieties of English (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002)
‘Global Engelsk’, a compendium of texts reproduced by Tapir Akademisk Forlag and available through the Tapir bookshop.
Begin by exploring the bibliographies in the Crystal and Bauer books.
Since this course addresses a phenomenon which is still changing, you are encouraged to look out for stories in the contemporary media concerning the spread of English, the threatened status of small languages, the role of English in Norway, and international language politics in general.
The course gives an introduction to the main problem areas in formulating written English for students whose first language is Norwegian. Language proficiency is practised through translation from Norwegian to English, and various types of written exercises. The course focuses on central contrasts between Norwegian and English, for example, in relation to grammatical and pragmatic differences and equivalences. Written English conventions associated with a variety of applications are described, and an introduction is given to various text genres.
The main goal of this course is to increase students’ awareness of the English language, central aspects of the writing process, and their own level of proficiency. In this course, students are introduced to various English language conventions and to techniques for developing their own language abilities, and students will practice skills associated with structuring texts and different text genres.
Teaching is divided between lectures and group sessions. In addition, students are offered supervision. The lectures cover central contrasts between Norwegian and English, linguistic conventions in English, various text genres, approaches to writing/process-oriented writing, etc. Lectures will also involve student activities in the form of writing, translation, grammar exercises, discussion groups, etc. In the group sessions, the use of English is emphasised through practical exercises such as translation from Norwegian to English, free writing, writing a variety of text types, etc. Students should buy an approved English-English dictionary (see list under the general description) and are expected to bring a dictionary to all classes. Students are also expected to use It’s:learning regularly.
Pensum
Rebecca Stott & Peter Chapman (eds.): Grammar and Writing. (Speak-write series, Longman, 2003).
This course is a genre-based introduction to poetry and drama in English. It complements ENG1303 Prosa, taught in the Spring semester, that concentrates on prose fiction. Presenting works by some of the best-known English-language poets and dramatists, this course explores a selection of plays and poems so as to illuminate the different forms and techniques found within these two major generic categories.
Pensum
Poetry All of the following poems will be found in the Norton Anthology of Poetry (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004, 5th edition)
Anon, “Sir Patrick Spens.”
William Shakespeare, “Shall I Compare thee to a Summer’s Day.”
Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress.”
Jonathan Swift, “A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General.”
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, “The Lover – A Ballad.”
William Blake, “London.”
John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
William Wordsworth, “Westminster Bridge.”
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess.”
Emily Dickinson, “The Soul Selects her own Society.”
Christina Rossetti, “In an Artist’s Studio.”
Ezra Pound, “The Garden.”
Thomas Hardy, “The Convergence of the Twain.”
Wilfred Owen, ”Anthem for Doomed Youth”
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
T. S. Eliot, “The Journey of the Magi.”
Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus.”
Geoffrey Hill, “September Song.”
Drama
William Shakespeare, Othello (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (London: Penguin Classics, 2000)
Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape (London: Faber and Faber, 1998)
Athol Fugard et al., Sizwe Bansi is Dead in Township Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
Additional required reading
M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, latest ed)
“Versification,” and “Poetic Syntax,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry (see above)
This course is an in-depth introduction to the basic issues of the grammar of English and ways of describing and explaining them using advanced theoretical approaches. Students will be introduced to syntactic analysis using the Principles-and-Parameters theory as outlined in the work of Chomsky and others.
Syntax is the study of sentence structure, how words are put together to form larger meaningful units. As well as introducing the theory per se, we will be concerned with syntactic argumentation: how hypotheses are formed and evaluated on the basis of language data and theoretical assumptions and objectives.
The course will largely deal with data from English, but will also consider some facts about Norwegian and related English-Norwegian contrasts. It aims to provide a deeper insight into three areas: (i) the system of grammar of human languages as conceived in current syntactic theorizing (ii) the grammar and syntactic structures of English, and (iii) some English/Norwegian contrasts in the area of syntax, which can be employed both indirectly and directly to problems in translation.
Pensum
Haegeman, Liliane and Jacqueline Guéron 1999 English Grammar: a generative perspective.
This semester’s variant: Literature in eighteenth-century Britain
Outline
The eighteenth century was an era of significant changes for Britain, and with a major expansion of the printing industry it was also a vibrant and dynamic period of literary production. This course provides an introduction to eighteenth-century British literature as well as to the society within which that literature was written and read. The course is structured around major social and cultural issues of the time – for example, urban expansion, the emergence of Britain as a nation, the effects of colonial growth – and the works of literature under scrutiny have been selected for their capacity to illustrate such issues or for their aspirations to intervene in society and influence the ways in which Britain was developing. A broader aim of the course is to open up an examination of the relationship between literature and its historical circumstances, and to stimulate reflection upon how we read literary works from earlier periods and upon the function of historicisation within literary interpretation.
Pensum
The pensum consists of a fairly large number of short texts and extracts which have been selected not only to represent issues within eighteenth-century British society but also to reflect the wide variety of genres employed by writers of the period. The pensum also includes a small number of recent introductory works addressing eighteenth-century society and literature.
Note that the pensum includes extracts from novels rather than whole novels – students are encouraged to read the novels in their entirely, but it is not compulsory. A further list of recommended, non-pensum eighteenth-century novels will be made available for students interested in wider reading of the fiction of the period.
All of the pensum texts can be obtained by buying two collections:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, 8th edition (New York and London: Norton, 2006) [NOTE: This volume is extracted from Vol. 1 of the larger Norton Anthology of English Literature (8th edition) – if you already have this book, you do NOT need to buy Volume C in addition.]
A compendium of texts printed by Kompendieforlaget and available through the bookshop at Dragvoll
The pensum texts are listed below, arranged under thematic or generic headings in the order in which they will be studied during the course:
Introduction to eighteenth-century British society
Extract from Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (Compendium)
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode (Norton, pp. 2658-63)
Authors, readers and the print trade
Extract from John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (Compendium)
Making manners and morals
Essays by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (Norton, pp. 2470-78, pp. 2488-90)
Essays by Samuel Johnson (Norton, pp. 2675-80)
Urban life
Jonathan Swift ‘A Description of a City Shower’ (Norton, pp. 2303-04)
Extract from Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker (Compendium)
Extract from Frances Burney, Evelina (Compendium)
The Spectator, No. 454, ‘Twenty-four hours in London’ (Compendium)
Crime and punishment
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (Norton, pp. 2613-56)
Debates in verse 1
Jonathan Swift, ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘The Reasons That Induced Dr. Swift to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room’ (Norton, pp. 2590-95)
Britain
James Thomson, ‘Ode: Rule Britannia’ (Norton, pp. 2840-41)
Charles Macklin, Love à la Mode (Compendium)
Country life
Oliver Goldsmith, ‘The Deserted Village’ (Norton, pp. 2877-86)
Debates in verse 2
Stephen Duck, ‘The Thresher’s Labour’ and Mary Collier, ‘The Woman’s Labour’ (Compendium)
Private lives
Extracts from Frances Burney’s journal and letters (Norton, pp. 2810-27)
Extracts from James Boswell’s London journal (Compendium)
Consuming the world
The Spectator, No. 69, ‘The Royal Exchange’ (Norton, pp. 2478-81, or Compendium)
Extract from Alexander Pope, ‘The Rape of the Lock’, Canto 1, lines 121-44 (Norton, pp. 2517-18)
Samuel Johnson, review of Jonas Hanway’s Essay on Tea (Compendium)
Slavery
Extracts from Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne (Compendium)
Extracts from Samuel Johnson and Olaudah Equiano (Norton, pp. 2849-59)
In addition, the pensum includes:
The introduction to ‘The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century 1660-1785’ (Norton, pp. 2057-80)
Plus the passages in the Norton anthology on the following figures (listed in order of appearance on the course):
The aim of the course is to provide a thorough introduction to the political system in Great Britain and to Britain’s role in Europe. It will cover theoretical, historical and political aspects of the British political system. It will also focus on Britain’s historical role in the European Union, and in particular on the discussions about British membership in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as on more general developments since then. Attention will also be paid to the multi-level realities of British governance today, from a national and international perspective.
Pensum
Robert Leach, Bill Coxall and Lynton Roberts, British Politics. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
Students who wish to begin reading this text before the start of teaching should concentrate on chapters 2, 10, 13 to 18, 26 and 27.
Recommended reading
Alex May, Britain and Europe Since 1945 (Longman, 1999)
Alex May (ed), Britain, the Commonwealth and Europe: The Commonwealth and Britain’s Application to Join the European Communites. (Palgrave, 2001)
This semester’s variant: The 20th Century American Short Story
Outline
The goals of this course are: to provide an historical overview of the development of the short story in the United States during the twentieth century; to discuss problems associated with formal, ideological, thematic and theoretical approaches to distinguishing the short story from other genres; to introduce some of the most distinctive voices of American prose fiction. The texts will be read in chronological order, beginning with Yezierska. Additional, but non-pensum, critical and theoretical reading will be announced later. The course will be taught through a combination of lecture and seminar, and there will be regular weekly meetings.
Pensum
The following works are required reading for the course. All of the stories are to be found in the Oxford Book of Major American Short Stories (3rd edition, 1994), and in a compendium excerpted from The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th edition, 2003): if you have the Norton, don’t buy the compendium!
Anzia Yezierska, “The Lost Beautifulness” (Norton 1920)
Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River” (Oxford 1925)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Babylon Revisited” (Oxford 1931)
Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six-Bits” (Oxford 1933)
Edith Wharton, “Roman Fever” (Oxford 1936)
William Faulkner, “Barn Burning” (Norton 1939)
Richard Wright, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” (Oxford 1939)
Eudora Welty, “Petrified Man” (Oxford 1941)
Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (Oxford 1955)
All MA students must complete 15 stp in Theory and Method. Starting in Autumn 2007 a new and broader offering of such courses will be available. There are three alternatives.
1. Those who intend to write their master’s thesis on a literary topic must take LITT3000 Litteraturteori og tekstforståelse. This consists of two elements, one fellesdel for all students, and one fagspesifikk del (local element). The fellesdel will be taught by staff from the Department of Nordic and Comparative Literature (INL). The local element, for students taking their MA in English only, will be taught within the Department of Modern Foreign Languages (IFS). INS will be administratively in charge of the emne as a whole, and details of the pensum &c for the fellesdel will be available from INL. Details of the pensum for the local element for students of English are provided below.
2. Those who intend to write their master’s thesis on a language or linguistics topic must take SPRÅK3000 Språkvitenskapens teorier og metoder. This emne also consists of a fellesdel and a fagspesifikk del (local element). The Department of Modern Foreign Languages is administratively responsible for this emne. Details of both halves of this emne are appended below.
3. Those who intend to write their master’s thesis on a civilization topic must choose two from three 7.5 stp emner. These are
HIST3105 Innføring i historisk forskning (7,5 sp)
HIST3115 Historiefagets teori og historie (7,5 sp
EUR3401 Europeisk kulturhistorie: Teori og metode (7,5 sp)
Details of the first two emner must be obtained from the Department of History and Classical Studies. Details of the third emne can be obtained from the pensum booklet for European Studies and Foreign Languages, which is available from the Department of Modern Foreign Languages.
Note: if you have already taken ENG3001 Teori and Metode you are not required to take one of the three variants listed above. However, as ENG3001 covers very different ground from these three variants you may, if you wish, incorporate both ENG3001 and one of the above variants in your portfolio of emner for your MA in English.
Tore Nordenstam (1996): Fra Kunst til Vitenskap. Humanvitenskapens grunnlag i et historisk perspektiv, Sigma Forlag. 240 sider.
Tre disipliner/skoleretninger (ca. 75 sider hver)
Europeisk strukturalisme
Fra Grundbog i semiotik, Anne Marie Dinesen, Akademisk Forlag, København 1994: "Ferdinand de Saussure", 20 sider
Fra Hva er strukturalisme? Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo 1967: "Reglene", 23 sider
Fra Introduction to structuralism Michael Lane Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York 1970: "The structuralist Method", 28 sider
Generativ grammatikk
Noam Chomsky (2000): The Architecture of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 76 sider
Språktilegnelse
Cipollone, N. et al. (1994) The Language files, The Ohio State University, Kapittel 9, (side 267-295), 29 sider
Wilson, R. & F. Keil (1999) The MIT Encyclopaedia of Cognitive Sciences, Kapittel ‘Language Acquisition’ (side 434-438), 5 sider
Tomasello, M. & E. Bates (eds.) (2001) Language Development: The essential readings, General Introduction (side 1-11), 11 sider
Nunan, D. (1997) Research Methods in Language Learning. Kapittel 1 (side 1–23), 23 sider
II: Course description / syllabus for the subject-based (English) component
This part of the course will deal with aspects of word meaning and sentence structure (lexicon, syntax, semantics) within the framework of generative grammar. It will examine the relation between verb semantics and sentence structure patterns; verbs and their arguments; and the notion of diathesis – alternate ways of realising the arguments of a verb in a sentence. Topics covered will include the active-passive relation; unaccusativity; the middle construction; verb alternations such as locative shift; and resultative constructions.
Readings (copies will be made available at the start of the course)
Arad, Maya (2006). The Spray-Load Alternation. In: Martin Everaert, Rob Goedenmans, Bart Hollebrandse & Henk van Riemsdjik (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Volume IV. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 466-478.
Emonds, Joseph (2006). Adjectival Passives: The Construction in the Iron Mask. In: Martin Everaert, Rob Goedenmans, Bart Hollebrandse & Henk van Riemsdjik (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Volume I. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 16-60.
Fagan, Sarah M. B. (1988). The English Middle. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 181-203.
Haegeman, Liliane (1985). The Get-Passive and Burzio's Generalisation. Lingua 66: 53-77.
Hovav, Malka Rappaport & Beth Levin (2001). An Event Structure Account of English Resultatives. Language 77: 766-797.
Levin, B. (1993). Introduction: The Theoretical Perspective. In: B. Levin, English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. 1-19.
Saeed, John (2003). Sentence Semantics 2: Participants. Chapter 6 of J. Saeed, Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell. 148-180.
Schütze, Carson T. (1995). PP Attachment and Argumenthood. In: C. T. Schütze, J. B. Ganger, & K. Broihier (eds.), Papers on language processing and acquisition, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics vol. 26, pp. 95–151 [pages 95-132 only]
Simpson, Jane (1983). Resultatives. In: Lori Levin, Malka Rappaport, and Annie Zaenen (eds.), Papers in Lexical-Functional Grammar. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. 143–157.
Local element (see explanation above; details of the fellesdel must be obtained from the department of Nordic and Comparative Literature (INL))
Pensum
All extracts are from Leitch et al (eds), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2001). This book has been ordered from the university bookshop.
Sir Philip Sidney, part of the extract from An Apology for Poetry. pp. 326–50.
Edward Young, extract from Conjectures on Original Composition. pp. 427–37
Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’. pp. 441–58
Samuel Johnson (i) Rambler no. 4. pp. 462–66 (ii) extract from the Preface to Shakespeare pp. 468–80
Edmund Burke, extract from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. pp. 539–51.
Mary Wollstonecraft, extract from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. pp. 586–93.
William Wordsworth, Preface to ‘Lyrical Ballad’. pp. 648–68.
P. B. Shelley, extract from A Defence of Poetry. pp. 699–717.
Raph Waldo Emerson, extract from The American Scholar. pp. 723–39.
Course description: Conrad is now generally recognized to be one of the great novelists in English of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a key figure in the development of literary modernism.
Conrad’s Polish background, and his life as an exile and an émigré, give his writing a much broader scope than that of most of his contemporaries. His earlier reputation as master-storyteller has been refined in the light of developments in narrative theory and he is now considered to be a major innovator in terms of narrative technique. His fiction confronts a range of issues which, it is now generally acknowledged, engage with many moral, political and existential issues that are central to modern experience. Critics representing a range of recent theories and positions – feminism and masculinity studies, post-colonialism, New Historicism, narratology – have had much to say about Conrad’s work, and such responses to it will be considered in the course.
Primary texts (pensum)
Texts will be studied in the order given below, which generally follows order of publication.
The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’
Karain
An Outpost of Progress
Heart of Darkness
Youth
Typhoon
Falk
Amy Foster
The Secret Agent
Il Conde
The Informer
Under Western Eyes
The Secret Sharer
The Tale
The Shadow-Line
Editions: The following editions will be ordered from the university bookshop: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (Norton Critical Edition); Heart of Darkness and Other Tales (Oxford World’s Classics; this collection includes Heart of Darkness, ‘Karain’, and ‘An Outpost of Progress’); Selected Short Stories (Wordsworth Classics; this collection includes ‘An Outpost of Progress’, ‘Youth’, ‘Amy Foster’, ‘The Informer’, ‘Il Conde’, ‘The Tale’, and ‘The Secret Sharer’); Typhoon and Other Tales (Oxford World’s Classics; this collection includes ‘Typhoon’, ‘Falk’, and ‘Amy Foster’); The Secret Agent (Oxford World’s Classics); Under Western Eyes (Oxford World’s Classics); The Shadow-Line (Oxford World’s Classics).
Both Norton and Bedford/St. Martin’s Press publish some of the set texts in editions which include valuable editorial material (e.g. textual variants) and critical essays.
NTNU, 7491 Trondheim, tlf. 73 59 50 00.
Kontakt oss
Ansvarlig redaktør: Informasjonssjef Christian Fossen
