Introduction to the Study of Literature

English 213
Section 3294
Spring 2006
Tuesday and Thursday 1:00pm-2:15
Instructor: Dr. Hilary Englert
Office: Karnoutsos 319
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 3:00-4:00 and By Appointment
Phone: X3099
e-mail: henglert@njcu.edu
mailto:englert2@optonline.net

Course Description:

This course is designed to expose English majors to the discipline of literary studies, and specifically to its methods, modes of analysis, types of criticism and major theoretical concepts. We will explore a range of interpretive practices and frameworks, keeping in mind that what texts “mean” depends on the questions we ask of them, and that the questions we ask are inevitably shaped by our culture, our history, our politics, and our individual and collective commitments. In addition to the primary texts on the syllabus, we will read essays and glossary entries designed to help us explicate key terms of the discipline, as well as essays modeling a variety of critical approaches to our primary texts.

Course Objectives:

By the end of the semester, students will be expected to have cultivated a familiarity with the various modes of literary analysis to which they will be exposed as English majors and to be able to recognize and perform readings of individual literary works informed by each of these critical approaches. In addition, students will be expected to have sustained a high degree of competence in close-reading, critical thinking, and formal writing about works of both literature and literary criticism. This will involve the mastery of a range of basic critical tasks, including making sense of literary language in its formal and representational complexity, scanning lines of poetry (reading for meter, rhyme, and other sonic features), identifying key literary elements and tropes (including plot, characters, setting, speaker/narrator, tone, point of view, figurative language, allusion and structure), examining the ideological implications of individual works, both literary and critical, drawing thematic, analytical and historical connections between and among disparate works, both literary and critical, and reading, evaluating and synthesizing published literary criticism.

Required Texts:

[Texts appear here in the order that we will cover them. If you elect to purchase your books somewhere other than the NJCU bookstore, be sure to locate the correct editions.]

Ross Murfin, Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms (Bedford/St. Martin’s)

John Milton, Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Edition)

Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock” (Bedford Cultural Edition)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, (Norton Critical Edition)

Christina Rosetti “The Goblin Market” (Dover Thrift Edition)

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (Penguin)

Requirements:

1. READING

You are required to complete all of the reading assigned, to read closely and to keep up with the pace set by the syllabus. Take a close look at what that will entail – the reading load is manageable, but will require careful planning and organization. Moreover, the theoretical sophistication and unfamiliarity of some of our materials will require you to cultivate patience and perseverance as readers. You will need to be particularly vigilant in your efforts not to fall behind the reading schedule.

2. READING RESPONSES and PARTICIPATION

You are required to attend class and to engage with the concerns generated in and by the class. In an effort to encourage this engagement, I ask that you generate a two-page written response to at least one of each week’s texts, to be handed in each Tuesday except during weeks when formal essays are due. You must carefully organize, type, and proof-read these pieces, which will constitute the most preliminary critical work that you do with the reading material each week, and which we may well use as the point of conversational departure on any given day. Note: this type of participation is a requirement. This task is designed to remind you that your reading process is always an active one – that you think things as you read and that those thoughts are a meaningful part of your basic understanding, not to mention your interpretation, of the materials we cover. If you are not already in the habit of annotating your text as you read, you will want to make a point of it – the notes that you take during your first encounter with a text will frequently provide the richest source for the more formal critical work that you do with it later (including that of the reading response). Note: the reading response is formal academic writing. You ought to avoid self-referential statements (e.g. “it seems to me,” “in my opinion,” “this character reminds me of my mom,” etc.) and be sure to provide ample textual evidence in support of your claims. You should learn something about the text through the process of writing the reading response. If you are unsure of whether or not you are approaching this assignment properly, this is a good test.

Suggested approaches:

You might fashion your reading response as (among other things):

--an examination of a work’s treatment of a particular concept, term, or phenomenon
--a critical discussion of a question or point of confusion about a text that occurs to you as you are reading
--an exploration of a particularly striking feature, passage, pattern, or idea in a text
--an examination of the connections between two or more primary texts’ formal modes, themes, representational strategies, historical contexts, ideological implications or arguments, relationships to tradition
--an interpretive claim or suggestion about the meaning or significance of a primary or secondary text
--an examination of a critical concept or suggestion in a secondary text and its implications for or relevance to a primary text
--an examination of the connections or conflicts between two critical or theoretical texts

To review:

The objective of the reading response is not merely to demonstrate that you have done the reading, but also to begin thinking analytically and in writing about the material (or some of the material) on the syllabus that week. By definition, then, it must be completed and submitted by its deadline. Be sure to type your reading responses and to bring them to class, ready to draw on them during discussion.

Your reading responses will be evaluated on the basis of:

--the evidence they demonstrate of your thoughtful engagement with the texts concerned
--the evidence they demonstrate of your efforts to address limitations to your writing (especially grammatical and/or mechanical problems) that have been identified on previous reading responses over the course of the semester
--their timely submission

3. FORMAL ASSIGNMENTS

In addition to completing the reading responses described above, you will also be responsible for the following formal assignments:

-- Two formal essays (on topics that I will provide during the course of the semester)

-- Three Critical or Literary Term Explication Projects, each of which will consist of a 5-minute in-class presentation followed by a two-page essay (see below)

-- One In-class Final Exam

Explication of a Critical or Literary Term:

Three times during the course of the semester, you will be responsible for preparing a presentation in which you carefully define and explain a specific, pre-assigned critical or literary term and apply it to the primary text the class is reading that week. You should derive your understanding of the term you are assigned from the Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. The list of terms to be covered each week appears on your syllabus. The length of each presentation must be limited to five-minutes.

Presentations should be given from notes (while memorization is not necessary, do try to resist reading aloud to the class).

Keep in mind, this is a highly focused, two-part task. You must first define your term in a clear, concise manner and then apply the term to a primary text. You are not being asked to comprehensively explicate the primary text or discuss any aspect of it other than its relationship to the term that you have defined. Remember that everyone will be responsible for understanding the entire catalogue of terms by the end of the semester. The clearer and more instructive you can make these presentations, the more helpful they’ll be to the class. Moreover, the more closely and actively you engage with others’ presentations, the more prepared you’ll be for the final exam.

The Explication Presentation will be evaluated on the basis of:

--your preparedness
--your adherence to the task and time limit
--the clarity, organization, and thoroughness of your discussion
--the thoughtfulness of your engagement with the materials concerned

A two-page, typed, double-spaced, written essay based on the Explication Presentation will be due in final form one week from the day on which the oral presentation is given. Before submitting your written essay, you may choose to revise your discussion in light of comments or questions raised during discussion of the in-class presentation. This is strongly advised.

Your formal essays (including the essay based on the Explication Presentation) will be evaluated on the basis of:

--the clarity of your prose
--the persuasiveness of your argument (the effectiveness of your use of evidence and of the organizational framework of your discussion)
--the thoughtfulness of your engagement with the materials concerned
--the closeness of your engagement with the question posed

Policies:

1. EXTENSIONS: If you are unable to finish an assignment in the allotted time, you must request an extension before the deadline, rather than granting one to yourself or failing to show up with the work completed. Absence is no excuse for missing a deadline. When deadlines have not been extended, late papers will not be read.

2. ATTENDANCE: More than four absences and/or chronic lateness may result in a lowered final grade.

3. OFFICE HOURS: Please feel free to drop by my office hours, to call me, to see me after class, or to set up an appointment outside of regular office hours to discuss academic questions, assignments, plans etc. You need not have a specific problem or clearly formulated agenda for us to both greatly benefit from a visit.

4. EVALUATION: Because I want you to regard the thinking and the writing that you do in the course as a developmental process and not as a collection of finite assignments or exercises, your grade will be calculated with emphasis on persistent effort, improvement and sustained achievement. Nonetheless, the mathematical formula I will use to calculate your final grade looks like this:

5. PLAGIARISM: The NJCU student handbook defines plagiarism as the attempt: “to pass off ideas or words of another as one’s own,” “to use material without crediting the source” and/or “to present as new and original an idea, phrase or statement derived from an existing source.” In other words, if you submit an essay that you did not write, or an essay containing a passage – even one sentence – or a substantial idea that you have copied from an internet or print source without using quotation marks, footnotes, parenthetical citations, a bibliography and/or a works cited page to document that source, you have plagiarized. Because the English department considers plagiarism a flagrant violation of academic integrity, plagiarism in this or any English course will result in an automatic dismissal from the course, a grade of F for the course, and a report of the incident to the Dean of Students. Note: For all assignments in this course, you will be best off limiting the texts you engage to the primary and secondary material assigned. In other words, a typical google search on any of the works on the syllabus will be more likely to confuse the issue and lead you astray from the concerns of the course than to provide clarification or insight.

Weekly Schedule:

WEEK ONE – Introduction to Literary Studies
January 16^th and 18^th

Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess” (xerox)

WEEK TWO – The Structure of Representation
January 23^rd and 25^th

W.J.T. Mitchell, “Representation” (xerox)
King James Bible, Genesis 1, 2, 3 and 11, Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost

WEEK THREE – Literary Form, Genre, and Close-Reading (Formalism)
January 30^th and February 1^st

John Milton, Paradise Lost, “The Verse” and Book One

WEEK FOUR – Allegories of the Fall I: The Cultural Work of the Poem (New Historicism/Cultural Criticism)
February 6^th and 8^th

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book Eight
Stephen Greenblatt, “Culture” (xerox)
Gordon Teskey, “Introduction: The Life of John Milton,” Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost
Lawrence Stone, from The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800 (xerox)

WEEK FIVE – The Problem of Eve (Feminist Criticism)
February 13^th and 15^th

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book Nine
Julia M. Walker, “from Eve: The First Reflection,” Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost

WEEK SIX – Essay Writing Workshop
February 20^th and 22^nd

WEEK SEVEN – The Mock-Epic (Formalism)
February 27^th and March 1^st

Alexander Pope, “Rape of the Lock”

**First Formal Essay Due**

WEEK EIGHT – Representations of Empire (Marxist and Post-Colonialist Criticism)
March 6^th and 8^th

Alexander Pope, “Rape of the Lock”
Daniel Defoe, “From A Review, No. 3 [‘Of the English Trade,’]” Bedford Cultural Edition of “Rape of the Lock”
Daniel Defoe, “From A Review, No. 65 [‘We do not fight for Conquest, but for Peace,’]” Bedford Cultural Edition of “Rape of the Lock”
Earl of Castlemaine, “From Philosophical Transactions, No. 139 [‘The English Globe,’]” Bedford Cultural Edition of “Rape of the Lock”
Jacob Fuchs, “Postcolonial Mock-Epic: Abrogation and Appropriation” (xerox)
Kathleen Wilson, from “Alexander Pope” (xerox)

WEEK NINE – Spring Break
March 12-18

WEEK TEN – The Politics of the Novel (Marxist Criticism)
March 20^th and 22^nd

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Volume One
Warren Montag, “‘The Workshop of Filthy Creation’: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein (xerox)

WEEK ELEVEN – Literary Tradition, Canon, and Poetic Influence (Aesthetic Criticism)
March 27^th and 29^th

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, “Introduction to the 1831 Edition”
Harold Bloom, “Introduction” Anxiety of Influence (xerox)

WEEK TWELVE – Motherhood and Monstrosity (Feminist Criticism)

April 3^rd and 5^th

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve,” Norton Critical Edition of Frankenstein

WEEK THIRTEEN – Allegories of the Fall II: Sex, Art and Commerce (Feminist Criticism and Marxist Criticism)
April 10^th and 12^th

Christina Rosetti, “Goblin Market”
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, from “The Aesthetics of Renunciation” from The Madwoman in the Attic (xerox)
Terrence Holt, “‘Men sell not such in any town’: Exchange in Goblin Market” (xerox)

WEEK FOURTEEN – Allegories of the Fall III: Post-Lapserian Language and the Fall of Man
April 17^th and 19^th

Paul Auster, City of Glass

WEEK FIFTEEN – Theories of Authorship (Post-Structuralist Theory)
April 24^th and 26^th

Paul Auster, City of Glass
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” (xerox)
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (xerox)
John Zilcosky, “The Revenge of the Author: Paul Auster’s Challenge to Theory” (xerox)

WEEK SIXTEEN – The Fragmented Subject (Post-Modernism)
May 1^st and 3^rd

Paul Auster, City of Glass
Pascale-Anne Brault, “Translating the Impossible Debt: Paul Auster’s City of Glass” (xerox)

WEEK SEVENTEEN – Exam Period
May 8^th

In-Class Exam