The assignment topic I chose for EN204 was:
Make a detailed comparison of Maud with Jude the Obscure from a narratological point of view.
The mark was 14/20 but I think I bored him as well as myself. I was relying too much on Barthes’ early work apparently and there were whole vistas of analysis that I left untouched. I’m impressed I got this much done myself.
This subject was second semester 1988 and I should have seen it coming. Dr Con Castan was the lecturer again.
There was just too much material for me to read and I really struggled to keep up with full time work in general practice and two small children at home. We studied five novels – Hard Times, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Portrait of a Lady and Jude the Obscure. There was also substantial amounts of poetry by Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Clough, Rosetti, Hopkins, Patmore and Hardy to cover as well.
Castan had produced ample lecture notes, study guides and reading lists and set Houghton’s The Victorian Frame of Mind as required background reading.
Assessment was an assignment and an examination and I really should have known better. I have no idea how I read as much as I did.
This was in June 1988 and was a two hour closed book examination. There was a choice between two questions on the plays, Doctor Faustus and The Changeling and a choice of questions on poetry.
I have my notes on the paper and I compared two scenes printed from the plays and looked at Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Donne’s “The Sun Rising” of the poems. I avoided the sonnets.
I must have done reasonably well as I got a 6 for the course.
This assignment was submitted mere weeks after the birth of our second child. It must have been a rush job because I hand delivered it, having left it too late to trust to the post. It is still hand typed, but it is now A4 paper, which should make scanning easier. The lack of correction fluid suggests I made my poor wife type the thing while juggling feeding a newborn and chasing a toddler.
Actually the scanning of this one was still difficult as the lecturer’s pencil comments mucked up the OCR and it took a while to get into shape to make a pdf.
It was graded B+ and it appears I did at least try to read the plays closely.
I studied this unit in first semester 1988. Happily, I was out of the hospital system and had my first job in General Practice. I was working on a Certificate of Satisfactory Completion of the Family Medicine Program. At the time this was an acceptable alternative to a FRACGP. My interview for my first job in general practice was basically, “When can you start, I need a holiday.”
Our second daughter was on the way and was born before the first assignment was due and we were settling into our tumbledown house.
None of that stopped me from illogically pursuing my external studies, and having done two introductory courses in English it was time to step up to the meatier subjects.
This course required reading six plays and large selections from both Lyric and Metaphysical poets. The Shakespearean plays were Othello, The Winter’s Tale, I Henry IV, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We also studied Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Middleton’s The Changeling.
As usual the external studies of the era gave an incredible amount of help. The course coordinator and author of the course materials was Mr D. H. Henderson, of whom I can find no trace. There were Lists of References, Study Guides, course materials on all the major sections of the course with relevant supplementary articles provided and sample essays. There was also considerable guidance for the examination, as the assessment was just one assignment and an exam.