RECENT HANDOUTS, IMPORTANT DATES & WEEKLY SCHEDULE
RECENT HANDOUTS (click item to download pdf)
- Final Project, Part I (Paper 3): Week of Apr 16 (individual conferences)
- Generic Inquiry 5 - Introduction to Tragic Drama (Oedipus the King)
IMPORTANT DATES
Formal Papers
- Paper 1: Thu, Feb 08
- Paper 2: Thu, Mar 15
- Final Project, Part I (Paper 3): Week of Apr 16 (individual conferences)
- Final Project, Part II (Paper 4): Mon, Apr 30 (Instructions included in "Final Project, Part I" above)
Exams
- Mid-Term Exam - Thu, Oct 12
- Final Exam - Tue, Dec 12, 3:30-5:30
Other Important Dates
- Last day to drop without a grade: Sep 10
- Fall Break: Oct 14-17
- Last day to drop with "W": Nov 01
- Last day of classes: Wed, Dec 06
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
UNIT I: WHAT DOES A LITERARY WORK MEAN? THEMATIC INQUIRY
For the first week of the semester, we will consider more rigorous ways of answering a basic interpretive question in the study of literature: What does a literary work "mean"? This basic approach to the study of literature is often called "thematic criticism," or what I will be calling "thematic inquiry." Also, we will find that our inquiries into the meaning of individual literary works often involve matters outside the literary work, including literary trends and traditions.
WEEK 1
Session 1 (Tue, Aug 29) Introduction to Thematic Inquiry
Required reading (in class)
- C. Bukowski, "the trash men" (handout)
- Thematic Inquiry 2 - Susan Musgrave's "Hidden Meaning"
- Thematic Inquiry 3 - Robert Penn Warren's "Driver, Driver"
Session 2 (Thu, Aug 31) The Concept of Literary "Theme"
Required reading:
WEEK 2
Session 3 (Tue, Sep 05) Thematic Concepts: Symbol
Required reading:
- Thematic Inquiry 4 - Symbol and Allegory in Poe and Hawthorne
- Symbol (Norton 186-88)
- "Symbol," "Symbolism," "Allegory" (Handbook to Literature)
- E. A. Poe, "The Raven" (Norton); also online http://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/ravenj.htm
Session 4 (Thu, Sep 07) Thematic Concepts: Allegory in Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown"
Required reading:
- "Allegory" in (Handbook to Literature)
- Thematic Inquiry 5 - N. Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (handout)
WEEK 3
Session 5 (Tue, Sep 12) Myth & Literary Allusion in Poe's "The Purloined Letter"
Required reading:
Session 6 (Thu, Sep 14) An Example of Practical Criticism
Required reading:
WEEK 4
Session 7 (Tue, Sep 19) A Thematic Theory of Literature
Required reading:
- A Thematic Theory of Literature - Notes on Frye's "Levels of Meaning in Literature"
- N. Frye, "Levels of Meaning in Literature"
UNIT II: ANALYTIC INQUIRY: THE INTERRELATIONS OF CONTENT AND FORM
Literature is often distinguished from other kinds of discourse by the degree to which the meaning of any literary work depends on an exploitation of the resources of language. It is for this reason that critics and scholars focus their attention on various parts of a literary work: they are examining the often complex way that literary meaning is composed. In this section of the class, we shift our focus to these aspects of literature in order to see how they can affect the interpretation of literary works.
Session 8 (Thu, Sep 21) Analysis of Poetry - Lines & Stanzas
Paper 1 due
Required reading (in class):
- Analytic Inquiry 1: Sentence and Line in Poetry -- Enjambement and Caesura (9/19)
- Analytic Inquiry 2: Caesura and Enjambment in a Wordsworth Sonnet
- Analytic Inquiry 3 - Poetic Lines and Stanzas
- Analytic Inquiry 4 - Prosody: The "Inner Music" of Words (Poe & McKay)
WEEK 5
Session 9 (Tue, Sep 26) Prosody - The "Inner Music" of Words
Required reading:
Session 10 (Thu, Sep 28) Rhetorical Figures and Tropes
Required reading:
- Analytic 7: Introduction to the Figures of Speech
- Introduction to Tropes: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche, Irony
- Analytic Inquiry 8 - Tropes and Slang
WEEK 6
Session 11 (Tue, Oct 03) Analysis of Narrative - Intertwining of Narrative Voice and Plot Structure
Required reading:
- Introduction to the Analysis of Narrative
- Analytic Inquiry 9 - Analysis of Narrator and Narrative Structure in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”
- Analytic Inquiry 10: Plot and Point of View in Robbe-Grillet’s “The Secret Room”
- A. Robbe-Grillet, "The Secret Room" (handout)
Session 12 (Thu, Oct 05) Narrative Voice and Plot Structure (cont.)
Required reading:
WEEK 7
Session 13 (Tue, Oct 10) Figures of Speech
Required reading:
- Analytic Inquiry 12 - An Analytic Theory of Literature: Brooks's "Irony as a Principle of Structure"
Session 14 (Thu, Oct 12) Mid-Term Exam
FALL BREAK (Oct 14-17)
UNIT III: GENERIC INQUIRY
In the previous section on "analytic inquiry," we became acquainted with some basic concepts used by literary scholars to talk about the interrelations of content and form. A related feature of literary discourse comes about when particular ways of exploiting language become conventional. When a set of conventions shape a literary work, we have evidence of a genre. We shall begin by examining the thematic and formal conventions of the sonnet. Then we will then shift our attention to short fiction and look at several "initiation stories" and stories of the grotesque; next we examine a genre of non-fiction prose--the essay; and finally we turn our attention to tragedy.
WEEK 8 (Oct 19)
Session 15 (Thu, Oct 19) Sonnets
Required reading:
- Introduction to a Genre-Based Approach to Literature (Generic Inquiry)
- Generic Inquiry 1: Origin and Development of the Sonnet Form
- Development of the English Sonnet - Some Examples
WEEK 9
Session 16 (Tue, Oct 24) Origins of the "Grotesque"
Paper 2
Required reading:
- "Grotesque," entry in the Handbook to Literature
- E. A. Poe, Preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque & "Morella" (handout)
Session 17 (Thu, Oct 26) Another Theory of the "Grotesque"
Required reading:
- F. O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (Norton)
- F. O'Conner, "Some Aspects of Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (pdf from my Droplr account)
WEEK 10
Session 18 (Tue, Oct 31) Aphorisms and the Origins of the Essay
- "Aphorism," "Apothegm" in Handbook to Literature
- Generic Inquiry 3 - Aphorisms
- Generic Inquiry 4 - The Essay as a Literary Genre (w/ writing assignment - due: Tue 10/29)
- M. de Montaigne, "Of Friendship" (pdf from my Droplr account)
- F. Bacon, "Of Friendship" (bartleby.com)
Session 19 (Thu, Nov 02) An Aphoristic Theory of Literature
Required reading:
- K. Burke, "Literature as Equipment for Living" (handout)
WEEK 11
Session 20 (Tue, Nov 07) Tragic Drama: Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos
Required reading:
Session 21 (Thu, Nov 09) Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy
Required readings
- Excerpts from Aristotle's Poetics (handout; different translation available online)
- Notes on Aristotle's Poetics and the Notion of Catharsis (Katharsis)
WEEK 12
Session 22 (Tue, Nov 14) Elizabethan Tragedy: Shakespeare's Hamlet
Required reading:
- W. Shakespeare, Hamlet (Norton)
- Comparing the Conventions of Tragic Drama in Oedipous Tyrannos & Hamlet
Session 23 (Thu, Nov 16) A Critique of Hamlet
Required reading:
- T. S. Eliot, "The Problem with Hamlet" (handout)
UNIT IV. HISTORICAL INQUIRY
How do critics and scholars study the historical dimension of literary works? In this section of the class, we will become acquainted with four modes of historical inquiry into literature: biography, literary history, cultural history, and sociopolitical history.
WEEK 13
Session 24 (Tue, Nov 21) Some Aspects of Biographical History: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and His Theory of Art
- J. Conrad, Preface to Nigger of the Narcissus in Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Edition)
- ___, Heart of Darkness
