ENG 245 Introduction to Literary Studies

Professor Lucinda Cole

Luther Bonney 415

This course is designed to introduce English majors to some of the skills and concepts required to complete upper-division coursework successfully. Our section of 245 is arranged more or less chronologically. This means we will be attending, in passing, to traditional literary periodization, and students are expected to develop a general understanding of how to use terms such as "Romantic" or "Pre-Raphaelite" in discussing literature. Much of the course, however, is devoted to discussing and developing the reading, research, and writing skills that characterize the discipline of literary criticism. What skills, for example, do we need when we read a text from the Elizabethan period? Why is romantic literature apparently so amenable to psychoanalytic criticism? How does one's understanding of "social context" shape one's sense of how the 19^th-Century novel works? And why do so many modernist texts rely on formalist assumptions? Literary texts will therefore be read in conjunction with historical and critical ones.

Required Texts:

Shakespeare, The Tempest

Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Burroughs, Tarzan, The Ape Man.

M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms

Hacker, A Writer's Reference.

Instructor's Packet: Works marked by an asterisk (*) will either be distributed in class, may be found on two-hour reserve in the Portland Library, or may be found online.

Course Requirements:

Essays: The grade will be based mostly on five assigned essays of varying lengths, each of them designed to provide practice in a different analytical or interpretive skills. The first paper involves work with the Oxford English Dictionary. The second require students to consider and discuss the relationship between history and interpretation. The third and fourth ask students to incorporate secondary criticism in their analyses, and the fifth calls for original research. All papers should be typed and conform to guidelines set forth in the MLA handbook on style.

In-class writing assignments and reports: On the theory that students should receive frequent feedback, you will sometimes be asked to write short response papers which will serve as the basis of classroom discussion. These papers will be checked rather than graded. In section two, you will be asked to write short response papers which will become the basis of your essay in that section. During the course of the semester, each student will also do two presentations: a group presentation (on a critical article) and an individual presentation (on another literary work by Burroughs.) Both of these assignments require that students use the library and/or online serach engines.

Attendance: No student missing more than three classes may pass this course. For your sake and others', please attempt to attend every class meeting. If your absence is unavoidable, you should contact a classmate for notes, handouts, and syllabus changes. I will give you the opportunity to exchange phone numbers during the first week of class.

Late papers and incompletes: The class is organized so as to minimize the possibility of late papers, and except under the most unusual, unavoidable, and documented of circumstances, I no longer give incompletes. Please keep this in mind as you are planning your semester. Papers will be marked down one-half letter grade for every day they are overdue. Papers postmarked on the due date will not be penalized.

Note: If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, please contact the Office of Support for Students with Disabilities (OSSD), Luther Bonney 242, phone 780-4706 or TTY 780-4395.

Schedule of Readings

Please note that this is a working syllabus which will sometimes be changed in accordance with needs.

I. Focus: Close Reading and Oxford English Dictionary

January 21

Introduction

January 26

Board of Trustees Meeting-No Class

Reading: Abrams, "Periods of English Literature,""Renaissance"

January 28

Quiz!!!

Reading: *Wyatt, "They Flee From Me" (distributed in class); Abrams, "Formalism," "New Criticism," "close reading," "intentional fallacy," "form and structure"

February 2

First Paper Due: 2-3 pages. The first paper is an exercise with the OED and Wyatt's poem.

Reading: "conceit," "figurative language," "imagery" "connotation and denotation"

February 4

Reading: *Shakespeare, Sonnets 55 and 138 (distributed in class); Abrams, "sonnet," "sonnet cycle," "stanza," "theme"

II. Focus: History and Interpretation

February 9

Reading: The Tempest

In-class writing assignment

February 11

Reading: "Sources and Contexts"

In-class writing assignment

vacationFebruary 23

Reading: "Why Study Critical Controversies about The Tempest?" and "Literary Study, Politics, and Shakespeare: A Debate"

February 25

Reading: The Tempest; Kermode, from Shakespeare, the Final Plays

March 1

Reading: The Tempest; Brown, "'This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism"; Abrams, "Poststructuralism"

March 3

Reading: The Tempest; Skura, "Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in The Tempest"

III. Focus: Finding Criticism

March 8

Second Paper Due: 3-4 pages. Analysis of reading practices.

Reading: *Pope, Eloise to Abelard (distributed in class)

March 10

Reading: Abrams, "Neoclassic and Romantic," "Enlightenment," "Sensibility, Literature of"

March 15

Reading: *Coleridge, Christabel (distributed in class); Abrams, "Sublime"

March 17

Reading: *Rosetti, Goblin Market (distributed in class); Abrams, "Victorian," "Pre-Raphaelites"

vacation

March 29

Group Reports

IV. Focus: Reading Criticism

March 31

Third Paper Due. 3-5 pages. Analysis of above poems incorporating one work of criticism.

Reading: Wuthering Heights

Film

April 5

Film

Reading: Wuthering Heights; "Cultural Documents and Illustrations"; Abrams, "novel," "realism," "realistic novel"

April 7

Reading: "A Critical History of Wuthering Heights"; "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Wuthering Heights"

April 12

Reading:"Marxist Criticism and Wuthering Heights"; "Cultural Criticism and Wuthering Heights"

April 14

Reading: "Combining Perspectives on Wuthering Heights"

V. Focus: Writing Criticism

April 19

Fourth Paper due. 3-5 pages. On Wuthering Heights.

Reading: Tarzan, "Introduction"; Abrams, "Modernism and Postmodernism"; "myth," "myth critics"

April 21

Reading: Tarzan; Abrams, "Primitivism and Progress"

April 26

Reading: Tarzan

Individual Reports

April 28

Individual Reports

May 3

Individual Reports

May 5

Individual Reports

Fifth Paper Due Date TBA

NOTES