1) You need to aim a lesson at yourself. That is, aim the lesson at the most passionate students who are willing to work hard.
2) You need to signpost the content expected in lessons.
3) Each lesson should be enriched by external content.
4) Lessons should include dialectic debate and student presentations on a regular basis.
So, what should a literature curriculum contain?
To understand each of these aspects, at least one situated example is ideal. Preferably 2 or 3 is best in order so a comparison might be formed.
Which texts am I teaching? What can I bring into this curriculum to enrich it?
Novels
Narratology
Characterisation
Structure
Teach each of these ideals with situated examples from key authors.
These key authors can come throughout time.
The key texts around which to structure this are: The Art of Fiction by Lodge; Modern Fiction (texts in Context); Texts in Context Popowlski; Massolit lectures etc.
Contextually this is important... Victorian, Edwardian, Modern... Massolit lecture choices helpful and important?
Plays
Stagecraft
Cultural points
Stanislavski vs Brecht
Teach each of these ideals with situated examples from key playwrights.
Greek Tragedy...
Shakespeare
Early Modern...?
Modern British?
Modern American?
Poetry
Prosody
Poets' lives and cultural points... romantic poets
Songs and Youth Culture
Teach each of these ideals with situated examples from key poets.
Pre-1900?
The Romantics
TS Eliot
Yates
Larkin
Anthology?
Etc...
Non-British Literature
Russian
Media and Non-Fiction
Advertising
Magazines
Films
Language
Gender
Debating
Topics to be debated culturally...
So... using these actual books will structure my curriculum... I can pull these together... plus videos/.mp3s?
Ideas...
Modern Texts
Media Studies and Pop-Culture points... non-fiction approaches...
Podcasts etc... points to note...
Literature also comes in various sections... Victorian/Romantic/War...
Shakespearean... Early Modern etc...
Maybe enrichment modules for students that really want that extra education?
Information on Capitalism and Work
Information on Media Theories and Ideas
Information on Pop Culture
Contextual Figures
Greek Tragedy
Medieval? Chaucer. Sir Gawain.
Petrarchan Poetry
Shakespeare
Marlowe + Kid + Webster + Johnson
Renaissance Drama and Culture
John Donne
Wyatt
John Wilmot
Milton
Lord Byron
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Keats
Wordsworth
Shelley
Blake
Mary Shelley
Defoe
Swift (and Satire)
Austen
Stevenson
Dickens
Bronte, Emily and Charlotte
Rossetti
Eliot
Dickinson
Hardy
Tennyson
DH Lawrence?
Henry James
Oscar Wilde
Edgar Allen Poe
Conrad
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Fitzgerald
Steinbeck
Virginia Woolf
Beckett
TS Eliot
Graham Greene
George Orwell
Hemmingway
Harper Lee
Miller
Williams
Ken Kasey
Jordan Heller
Nabakov
William Burroughs
Anthony Burgess
John Osborn
Pinter
Larkin
John Fowles
Jeanette Winterson
Martin Amis
John Godber
John Updike
McEwan
Ishiguru
Monica Ali
Zadie Smith
Ad. Roy
Carol Ann Duffy
Armitage
