| Dr. M. Diane Krantz | English 3080 |
| 344 Social Sciences | MWF 10-10:50; Spring 2006 |
| Off. Hours: M 4 pm; T 10:-11; F 11, or by appointment. | Phone 626-6543 |
| dkrantz@weber.edu | http://faculty.weber.edu/dkrantz |
| Text | Course Description | Course Goals |
| Grading | Notices | Weekly Schedule |
Required Texts: A
Practical Introduction to Literary Study Brown and Yarbrough
The
Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
A
Doll's House Henrik Ibsen (online)
"Is
There a Text in This Class?" Stanley Fish (ereserve)
Description: You will be introduced to the basic theories of and different approaches to literary criticism, which plays a central role in the study of literature. We will focus on several active reading strategies to help you learn to see literature from diverse perspectives and to appreciate the social and cultural impacts of creating and critiquing literary texts. You will practice and refine your writing according to literary conventions. Although the writing component is relatively heavy, there will be no midterm or final exams which should make the workload reasonable. As an English major, you are expected to read and reread descriptions and assignments carefully and correctly. Feel free to ask questions: they mark you as a serious scholar.
Course Goals:
1. You will be able to identify and explain several major theories and
demonstrate that you can apply these critical approaches to literary texts.
2. You will be able to use the major terms/devices/conventions to read, speak about, and write about a number of literary genres.
3. You will show skill in finding, evaluating, and using research to produce critical papers.
4. You will demonstrate an understanding in your papers of conventions surrounding the interpretation and explication of texts.
5. You will demonstrate familiarity with and be able to document correctly using the MLA method.
Grading:
Short Papers 25%. These include a 2-page explication (7%) and two
two-page summaries (9% each) of the critical theories. They are to exhibit
the qualities that mark a proficient writer at a university. Consult these links for
basic aids to writing.
Goals 1, 2, 4.
Discussion Leaders 5%. You must lead once to get this credit. I will begin discussions for week one and, subsequently, 2 of you will lead each week. You are to take one of the reading questions or an equally penetrating idea to discuss. goals 1, 2.
Participation 10%. The sole way to gain these points is to participate by being in class. You are allowed four absences for the semester without a penalty. Thereafter, no matter the reason, the participation grade drops for each day you miss. Ignoring attendance drops your highest possible grade to a "B." Goals 1, 2.
Weekly Logs (10 total for 3% each). These
are to focus on the week's readings. They are to consist of 4 parts:
1. New vocabulary in the reading with definitions.
2. Close reading of a poem, a scene from a play, or section of a short story
or novel with page numbers. This is a New Critical reading that aims at telling
what literally is happening.
3. Response to the assigned reading. Here's a sample
response with good and unacceptable pieces described.
4. Predictions as to what the characters will do next or how they'll live.
Logs are formal and focus on your own ideas about any one reading you
have done.
Goals 1, 2, 4.
30% Long Paper This will be a researched paper of 10-12 pages (2500 word minimum for the body) that will apply one or two of the critical theories discussed to a single literary reading. If you choose to use a reading other than one we've done for class, you must have permission beforehand. Goals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Omission of any one of the papers or of more that one
log will result in an "E" for the course.
Students with Disabilities: Any student
requiring accommodations or services due to a disability must contact
Services for Students with disabilities (SSD) in room 181 of the Student
Service Center. SSD can also arrange to provide course materials (including
this syllabus) in alternative formats if necessary.
Ethics: Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, collusion, falsification, accessing unauthorized course or test information, using unauthorized resources, or breaching copyright law. The penalty for such dishonesty will be an E in this course, and it may result in charges issued, hearings held, and/or sanctions imposed.
Readings are due the week for which they are listed. If a chapter refers to one of the readings in Part Six, you are expected to do that reading also. The log is due by Friday of the week for which the readings are given. Discussion leaders are to come with questions or observations for comment by Monday morning each week.
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 |
| Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 |
| Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13 | Week 14 | Week 15 |
Week 1
Introduction and Overview; Writing explications and analytical response papers
Majoring or minoring in English requires becoming a professional at both reading
and writing. This week read the chapters in your book that pertain to reading.
You will consider what makes a work worthy to be placed in the canon (the accepted
body of literature used in the university), what questions have been asked
about the canon (historically, but in recent years much more probingly), how
to read literature like a professional, and how to respond to a poem.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh Chapters 1-5 Be
sure to use the suggestions for reading actively.
Log Response to
Joyce's "Araby." pp. 303-306.
Week 2
As you
read The Great Gatsby over the next two weeks, use it as a "laboratory" for
experimenting with and applying the different theories you are learning
and the vocabulary you are building. Also, read the sample explication carefully.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh Chapters
6 & 8, 12. Begin reading The Great
Gatsby (GG),
pp. 1-102; "Oranges," pp. 320-21.
Suggestions for
reading and analyzing poems. Link to reading
guide questions for Gatsby.
Discussion: Explore the beginning of GG
in terms of characters and setting. Note especially the relationships
of Gatsby to Nick and to Daisy, as well as the class differences suggested
by East and West, the two Eggs, and Ashes.
Log Response to "Oranges."
Explication assigned; sample
explication
Week 3
Read the section on New Criticism keeping in mind that you have most probably
used this form of analysis whenever you've written on a text. Then focus
on how to write a highly structured, but challenging, critical piece–an
explication. The explication is the result of reading like a New Critic
whose focus is on the text "as an entirely self-contained art object
that may be understood entirely from its own words, form, and patterns." Your
explication will be of a poem like "Oranges" (for which New Criticism
works best) or a page or two of Gatsby, and it may ignore the writer, the
history, and the culture from which it springs. This will not, however,
be an emotive response, but an intellectual understanding for which you
argue. Check the sample explication (linked above) for a model.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh Chapter
9-11; New Criticism pp. 211-214
Discussion leader on New Criticism (perhaps applied
to GG)
Log Responses on Gatsby
Week 4
This week apply New Criticism to explicating a poem. The draft workshop
is mandatory. Before writing the final version of your explication, consider
the weaknesses of the student samples given in your book. Use the comments provided
on these examples to critique your own writing.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh Chapters
16-18
Lecture on New Criticism (link);
Discussion leader
on New Criticism applied to GG
Draft Workshop Wednesday.
Explication due Friday
Week 5
Move from reading and explicating (a fairly simple response to a text)
to more complex writing about literature. Much of the reading this week should
be review. If you are good at writing papers, quickly skim the chapters on
writing . One practical ability in both explicating
and analyzing a text is summary. We'll practice objective summary in class
as it is described in the link below for week 6.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh Chapters 14-15; Goblin
Market (GM) pp 307-319; Read GG
pp 103-end. Be sure to use the suggestions for reading actively.
Discussion leaders
and GG or GM; Use any method you choose.
Log Response "Goblin
Market"
Week6
Consider Reader Response Theory both as it is summarized on Brown, p. 219,
and as it is described by Stanley Fish in his essay, "Is There a Text
in This Class?" which is on e-reserve. Reader Response in your text
is listed as a form of Psychological Criticism. It argues (against the
New Critics) that a text is never read "in a vacuum." Although
texts produce meaning only when read, and althought they are the result
of interaction between reader and words, they are interpreted not by individuals
but by what Fish calls "textual communities." Such communities
compensate to a certain extent for how much our personal psychologies
bias our readings. A Reader Response critic focuses on how different
interpretive
communities have thought about a text.
Read Brown p. 207-211
and 219; ; "Is There
a Text in the Class?" on e-reserve; Some hints as
you read Fish's essay.
Due Friday: Write a 2-page Summary of
Fish's essay.
Discussion leaders and GG; Apply Reader-Response
theory to the novel.
Week 7
This week you will be reading and
applying Psychoanalytic Theory. This theory is influenced by the works of Sigmund
Freud, but in its modern application, it is especially shaped by the work of
Jacques Lacan. Freud's "Oedipus Complex" and Lacan's "mirror
stage" are used to consider ways in which the unconscious gets revealed
in texts. You might want to read the play "Oedipus Rex" for insights
into Freudian claims about how a boy becomes a man. Beware, however, of applying
pop psychology to texts you are using. Also beware of trying to psychoanalyze
an author from that author's work of fiction. In preparation of reading drama,
read chapters that apply to it.
Consider that psychoanalytic analysis is also done using the theories of C. G. Jung although many in the academic community look down on this. Nonetheless, Jung's archetypes and his "collective unconscious" are probably a fruitful way of studying "Goblin Market."
Read Brown and Yarbrogh Chapters
7, 13; pp. 214-219.
Lecture: Here's
a link to a page of links for various theories, including a description of psychoanalytic
theory. The link to Lacan should be very useful.
Discussion leaders: Apply Psychoanalytic Theory
to "Goblin Market." For example: how might the girls represent the
id and the superego of the speaker?
Log Response "The
Yellow Wallpaper" pp. 272-84.
Week 8
In preparation for the second half of the course, begin
reading on research methods and techniques. Also, apply what you have learned
about reading drama to the play Trifles.
Read Brown Chapters
19 and 20;
Trifles 285-94
Reading Guide: Trifles
Log responses to Trifles
Week 9
The difficult text will be that by Ellen Golub. However, your own attempt
two weeks ago at "psychoanalyzing" Goblin Market should help you
to see what Golub is doing. I suggest not reading the side commentary the
first
time through and then going back and rereading with the side comments. These
side comments are by your text authors and are not part of what Golub has
to say. Note how Golub integrates her sources and gives quotations both from
sources and from the poem. Note also that the references do not outweigh
Golub's own analysis. This piece can serve as a sophisticated model for your
own paper. Finally, be aware that her format for her citations is not up-to-date
and should not
be used as a model for your citations.
Read Brown Chapter
26.
Discussion: How did your reading of "Goblin
Market" compare to Golub's?
Log Response to "Hills Like White Elephants."
pp 296-299.
Week 10
Read Brown Chapters 23 and 24; Writing
the Research Paper; Using MLA format
Assignment of research paper.
No Log due this week, but
email me about the text you will analyze for the final paper and one theory
studied so far that you think you might apply to
it. You may not use New Criticism. You may change your mind on the theory until
the twelfth week of class.
Week 11
This week's theories are the most difficult of those we study. They rely on
Jacques Derrida's notion that philosophical systems undermine themselves,
partly by defining ideas as binary oppositions where one term is always
assumed subordinate to the other. Derrida applied this undermining to opening
literary texts. For thousands of years Western readers believed that the
meaning of texts could be "nailed down." Derrida rejects this
and opens the way to finding multiple meanings. Note that ths doesn't mean
that a text can mean anything, but that different scholars can legitimately
argue for different and contradictory meanings in the same text.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh pp. 220-226 and 300;
Begin reading A
Doll House (link).
This link changes from time to time, but you'll have to download one of the
versions given on the page. Reading
Guide
Online descriptions of poststructuralism.
Write a 2-page summary of
Deconstruction or Psychological Criticism as found in your text, due Friday.
Be sure to include all the subsections of the text devoted to whichever theory
you choose. The format is the same as for the first summary. If you choose
to do your final paper using Deconstruction, you must read and summarize Derrida's "Structure,
Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences."
Discussion leaders on Deconstruction
Week
12
New Historicism, Marxist theory, and
Postcolonialism are often studied as major theories in themselves. Your book
lumps them together under cultural studies. Think of New Historicism as focusing
on history as a text itself, no more "objective" than a creative
piece and just as limited by the culture that produces it. Marxism considers
history and the texts produced in different periods as affected by class and
economic structures in cultures. Foucault sees cultures as networks of power
and all histories produced by cultures as subjective. Postcolonialists see
oppressed peoples as trapped between, and never able to fully participate in,
both the culture destroyed by colonizers and the culture of the colonizer.
Such critics bring this knowledge to the texts produced by or about colonized
people. Ibsen's play lends itself easily to a Marxist reading because one of
its major themes is the impact of money (or its lack) on an upper-middle class
marriage. Consider this as you read the play.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh pp. 234-243;
Online discussion of social/cultural
theories
Discussion leaders on Cultural Studies and/or
New Historicism
Log responses to A Doll House
Email me about the theory or theories you are definitely applying for the
final paper.
Week 13
Now that you have studied most critical theories, note another example of
using such theories to interpret Hemingway's short story. Also, consider which
of the theories you've studied might be most useful to you in analyzing a particular
text.
Brown and Yarbrough Chapters 21 and 22; pp 296-99; Continue
reading A
Doll House (link).
Log response on "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," (p.
300) using a theory you've learned.
Mandatory Draft Workshop on Friday.
Bring one or two copies of your final paper.
Week 14
The major reason for delaying Gender Criticism, including Feminism, until this
week is that scholars using the theories here always use another literary
theory also. British and American critics tend to be liberal activists,
frequently involved with women's and gay rights movements. Liberal feminism
is based historically on 18th-century political philosophy such as that
of John Stuart Mill. French feminism is highly theoretical and more radical
in its assumptions. It relies on Poststructuralist assumptions about language,
especially that of the deconstructionists.
Read Brown and Yarbrogh pp.
226-234; Finish Reading A Doll House (link)
Online discussion of Gender theories
Discussion leaders on Gender Theory
Log Response on the end of A Doll House
Submit Final Paper complete
with bibliography
Week 15
Presentations of final papers shortened to 12-15 minutes.