Introduction to Literary Studies
English 260
Meegan Kennedy
This course was taught at Trinity College, Fall 2000
Course description:
This course introduces the fundamental
techniques of literary analysis. The goal of the course is to
provide the critical vocabulary and skills with which to
understand not only what a literary text means, but also how it
shapes meaning. The course will apply this critical vocabulary to
close readings of a wide range of literature in English across a
variety of historical periods and genres. The course also
emphasizes development of the skills necessary for analytical
writing about literature and the importance of composing clear
and compelling arguments in the interpretation of a text.
Required of all English majors, beginning with the class of 2002.
Questions we'll be asking this semester:
What tools do writers use to shape their texts?
How does a writer create poetic or narrative authority?
How do writers respond to one another's work?
What constitutes a “literary tradition” and why?
What distinguishes “literature” from other kinds of
texts?
What are the different kinds (genres) of literary texts and how
do they differ?
What is a “close reading”?
What is fiction?
What is the relationship between literature and culture?
What is literary criticism?
How can we decide if a literary interpretation is valid?
How can we construct a persuasive argument about a literary text?
Texts for this course:
Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, shorter 4th edn, W.W. Norton (ISBN 039396924x)
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, W. W. Norton Critical Edition, 2d edn (ISBN 0393964523) [N.B. You should get this edition if possible, as we will be working with historical and critical material included here].
J. M. Coetzee, Foe, Penguin (ISBN 014009623x)
Supplementary course reader
Videos on reserve:
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe) (Buñuel) (1954) (75 min)
Interview with Derek Walcott (Bill Moyers, World of Ideas) (1988) (30 min)
Handouts:
How to Read
Some Basics of Close
Reading
Some Basics of Poetic
Form
Some Basics of Paper
Writing
Paper Guidelines
Class Schedule:
I have organized the syllabus around some literary terms you will need to know. You will notice that, with occasional exceptions, the poems follow a rough chronology and create a trajectory in which literary forms develop in the direction of more complexity and then seem to drop away altogether. I have taken poetic form and some major literary concepts as a kind of groundwork here, to ensure you have a basic vocabulary of literary criticism, but our work in class will explore many different approaches to a literary text.
This syllabus is subject to change. In particular, I've listed more poems for some days than we will be able to discuss. Your responses in discussion will determine which poems I'd like you to concentrate on for the following week. Check the class website every weekend for such announcements. I will notify you by email if any last-minute changes in the schedule arise.
I expect you to read these assignments thoroughly and carefully. Use your “How to Read a Poem” and other handouts as a guide.
W 6 Sept Introduction and close reading
Meter and scansion: Anglo-Saxon meter
Wilbur, “Junk” (N 929-30)
F 8 Sept Blank verse
Milton, from Paradise Lost (N255-56);
Frost, “Birches” (N702)
W 13 Sept Rhyme: heroic couplets, alexandrine
Pope, from “Essay on Criticism” (in course reader);
Bradstreet, “The Author to Her Book” (N260-61);
Cavendish, “An Apology for Writing So Much Upon This Book” (N279)
F 15 Sept Common, long, and short meters
“Mary Hamilton” versions A and B (N78-82);
“Psalm 58” from the Massachusetts Bay Psalm Book (N292-93);
Watts, “Our God, Our Help” (N319-20);
Montague, “A Receipt to Cure the Vapors” (N352);
Dickinson, poems 254, 258, 280, 465, 569, 712 (N631-37);
Herrick, “Delight in Disorder” (N209-10)
W 20 Sept Allegory
Spenser, from The Faerie Queene (N115-28)
F 22 Sept Metaphor/conceit
Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (N182-83) and “The Flea” (N186-87);
Yeats, “Long-Legged Fly” (N687-88);
Frost, “The Silken Tent” (N707-8)
[Family Weekend]
W 27 Sept Symbol
Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” (N681);
Bishop, “The Fish” (N869-71);
Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar” and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (N721-22);
Duffy, “Warming Her Pearls” (N1097)
F 29 Sept Argument, revision, satire
Moore, “Poetry” (760-61);
Dickinson, poem 216 (n630-31);
Koch, “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams” (N950-51)
W 4 Oct Narrative and novel:
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe as domestic and economic man (1719)
F 6 Oct NO CLASS [I'm at a conference]
W 11 Oct Crusoe
Individualism, Locke, and spiritual autobiography (pp. 239-45 of Norton Crusoe)
F 13 Oct Crusoe
Alexander Selkirk, and the question of fiction (pp. 227-38 of Norton Crusoe)
W 18 Oct Crusoe
Crusoe as empire; Crusoe and its critics (pp. 257-79 of Norton Crusoe)
PAPER PROPOSAL DUE
F 20 Oct Responses to Crusoe
Bishop, “Crusoe in England,” from Geography III (1976) (in course reader)
Walcott, “The Castaway,” “Crusoe's Journal,” “Crusoe's Island” (1978) (in course reader)
Interview with Derek Walcott (Bill Moyers, World of Ideas) (1988) (30 min) (Video on reserve, to be viewed as homework)
[Mid-term]
W 25 Oct Drama
Walcott, Pantomime (1980) (in course reader)
F 27 Oct Coetzee, Foe (1987)
WALCOTT ON CAMPUS
W 1 Nov finish Foe
F 3 Nov Shakespearean sonnet
Spenser, Sonnet 15 (129);
Shakespeare, Sonnets 12, 18, 116, 130 (N157-61);
Keats, “When I Have Fears” (N496);
Shelley, “England in 1819” (N471)
PAPER DUE
[Homecoming Weekend]
W 8 Nov Petrarchan sonnet
Donne, Sonnets 10 and 14 (N192);
Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (N253-54);
Wordsworth, “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room” (N417);
Keats, “On the Sonnet” (N506)
F 10 Nov Sonnet, continued
Yeats, “Leda and the Swan” (N682);
Frost, “Design” (N707);
Lowell, “Harriet” (N913);
Brooks, “kitchenette building” (N904)
W 15 Nov Other complicated forms: sestina, villanelle
Bishop, “Sestina” and “One Art” (N871-72 and876);
Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” (N898);
Matthews, “Histoire” (N1016-18)
F 17 Nov Pastoral
Milton, “Lycidas” (N232-37) (elegy);
Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (N155);
Ralegh, “The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd” (N109);
Marvell, “Mower's Song” (in course reader);
Roethke, “I Knew a Woman” (N866-67)
VERSE EXERCISE DUE
W 22 Nov NO CLASS [Thanksgiving]
F 24 Nov NO CLASS [Thanksgiving]
W 29 Nov Sublime and picturesque
Blake, “The Tyger” (N395);
Wordsworth, from The Prelude (N407-11);
Smith, “Pretty” (N829-30)
QUIZ on literary concepts due (on course website)
F 1 Dec Freer forms: Biblical parallelism, sprung rhythm, syllabics
Smart, from Jubilate Agno (N376-78);
Hopkins, “Spring and Fall” (N664);
Moore, “Nevertheless” (N765-66)
W 6 Dec Free verse
Whitman, “Song of Myself” (N591-95);
Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (N823);
Williams, “This Is Just to Say” (N729)
F 8 Dec Film
Mr. Robinson Crusoe, dir. Edward Sutherland (1932) (75 min)
FINAL PAPER REVISION DUE
Last Class Stuff [15 min close reading solo]
Assignments:
25% 1-2 pp (double-spaced) weekly reading responses, focused on a single issue and responding to specific textual choices (posted to course website)
25% 6-8 pp paper, in 3 stages (proposal, paper, revision)
10% Verse exercise
10% Quiz on literary concepts (using course website)
10% 15-min close reading improvement score
20% Participation: preparation, discussion, attendance, at least one visit to office hours
Your grade thus depends on several different types of response to a text: verbal and written, short and long, time-limited and unlimited responses; creative and critical writing; weekly drafts of an argument and a cumulative, revised one.
Weekly reading responses:
Weekly 1-2 pp, double-spaced response papers. Please post to the Discussion Board (on the course website) by noon on Tuesday of each week, and bring a clean hard copy to class for me. I will return responses by Friday with my comments. No response paper due the weeks you hand in a stage of your long paper, and you get one week of your choice to skip this assignment.
Consider your response a preface to class discussion and a chance to practice your close reading and “big picture” skills on a brief, informal level. Discuss one narrowly focused point or question you have on one of the readings for that week. Stay close to the text, citing specific words, phrases, patterns, and the like. Then suggest what your observations might help us understand about the text and what it is trying to accomplish. I will help you out with specific questions, which will be posted on the website on Saturday morning, but you are free to address other issues in the reading as well.
Response papers will not be accepted late. They cannot be made up except in case of illness. They will be graded for clarity; evidence of close, careful reading; and thoughtfulness, on a scale of plus, check, minus, or zero (not completed).
Verse exercise:
Rewrite a nursery rhyme or nonsense song in one of the poetic forms we have studied. I am not interested in having you struggle with the content of the verse, but in having you experience how it feels to write inside the discipline of poetic form. The point is not to make you a poet, but to make you a better reader.
Deadlines:
Assignments -- including the reading response -- will not be accepted late unless you have an excused absence for that day's class. If you need a paper extension, I need a written request from you at least one week before the deadline; include name, date, course number, and the date you anticipate finishing, within one week of the deadline. I will sign and date your request.
Attendance:
Mandatory. Please give me notice if you need to be out of town for a class. Let me know if you are sick, so I can excuse you from class. More than two absences during the semester may result in a lower grade for the course. After 10 minutes your late arrival counts as an absence.