English 206 - Tpc: The History of the Essay

Since the 17th century, prose stylists have written essays to examine, analyze, argue, satirize, and to present social, scientific, and artistic theories. The course focuses on the evolution of the sentence, prose rhythms, grammatical patterns, paragraph coherence, and developmental structures. Students will master the form by writing their own essays. Readings: Francis Bacon, John Donne, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Martin Luther King, Adrienne Rich, Stephen Jay Gould, and others.

Course limited to sophomores, juniors and seniors