Professor L. Cole
415 Luther Bonney
780-4093 lcole@maine.rr.com
ENG 340: History of Criticism
As described in the
USM catalogue, ENG 340 introduces students to major figures and movements
throughout critical history. In order to help give some shape and substance to
that 2000-year history, this class will be organized around three writers and
the questions their texts raise: William Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, and J.M.
Coetzee. The Tempest, for example, will serve as a touchstone for
discussing ancient, renaissance, and neo-classical concerns about the nature of
tragedy, about the role of imagination in art, and about the process of
canonization. The eighteenth century, which is the subject of section two,
brought with it a new genreBthe novelBand a
new professional groupBcritics.
While the concerns of the ancients remain relevant, Pope, Coleridge, and others
developed a more specific terminology and a more abiding interest in questions
about the relationships among art, politics, and Areality.@
Defoe=s Robinson Crusoe is our case study
here. These critics, moreover, also insisted on.the artfulness and/or
scientific nature of criticism itself, thereby creating the conditions for the
emergence, in the 20th century, of discrete critical schools:
psychoanalytic, marxian, structuralist, deconstructive, and new historicist
among them. While differences between these approaches is properly the subject
of ENG 341, we shall wrestle in this course with the question that underwrites
them all: how does the very nature of language affect our understanding of
ourselves and others? The last section
of the class considers Coetzee=s Foe, a rewriting of Robinson Crusoe, and contains
critical essays by Derrida, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and others.
Texts:
Kaplan and Anderson,
Criticism: Major Statements
William Shakespeare,
The Tempest
Daniel Defoe, Robinson
Crusoe
J.M. Coetzee, Foe
Course
Requirements:
Exams and Essays: The grade will be based mostly on three
examinationsBtwo take-home and one in classBboth of which contain substantial essays
segments. Every student, however, will be responsible for writing a summary of
one critic/philosopher and generating a list of at least three questions raised
by his or work. These assignments will be made at the beginning of the
semester, and the short (2-page) papers will be due at the beginning of the
class in which that writer is under discussion.
All papers should be
typed and should conform to guidelines set forth in the MLA handbook on style.
In-class and
impromptu writing assignments:
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, but
their successful completion is necessary to passing this course.
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.
Missed
examinations, late examinations, 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. Take-home exams will be marked down
one-half letter grade for every day they are overdue. Papers postmarked on the
due date will not be penalized.
Proposed Schedule of Readings:
Please note this schedule is subject to
change. Should you miss a class, please
contact a classmate for information.
I. Tragedy: From
Classical to Neo-Classical
September
Wednesday 3 Introduction
Monday 8 Plato,
all selections
Wednesday 10 Aristotle,
from The Poetics
Monday 15 The
Tempest
Wednesday 17 Sidney,
AAn Apology for Poetry@
Monday 22 No
class--Board of Trustees Meeting
Wednesday 24 Dryden,
AAn Essay of Dramatic Poesy@
Monday 29 Pope,
AAn Essay on Criticism@
October
Wednesday 1 Johnson,
APreface to Shakespeare@
II. Narrative:
Art, Morality, Politics
Monday 6 First
Examination Due
Robinson Crusoe
Wednesday 8 Robinson
Crusoe, cont.; Henry James, AThe Art of Fiction@
Monday 13 No
class--October vacation
Wednesday 15 Tolstoy,
AWhat Is Art?@
Monday 20 Eliot,
ATradition and the Individual Talent@; Ransom, ACriticism as Pure Speculation@
Wednesday 22 Frye,
AThe Archetypes of Literature@
Monday 27 Eagleton,
from Marxism and Literary Criticism
Wednesday 29 Second
Examination
III. Contemporary
Questions
November
Monday 3 Fish,
AIs There a Text in This Class?@
.
Wednesday 5 Barthes,
AIntroduction to the Structural Analysis of
Narratives@
Monday 10 Derrida,
AStructure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses
of the Human Sciences@
Wednesday 12 Derrida,
cont.
Monday 17 No
class--Board of Trustees meeting
Wednesday 19 Foe
Monday 24 Woolf,
AShakespeare=s Sister@ and Showalter, ARepresenting Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the
Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism@
Wednesday 26 Gates,
AThe Trope of the Talking Book@
December
Monday 1 Robinson
Crusoe criticism, TBA
Wednesday 3 Robinson
Crusoe criticism, TBA
Monday 8 The
Tempest criticism, TBA
Wednesday 10 The
Tempest criticism, TBA .
.