Web address for syllabus: http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/Herman/Eng260001.html
Purpose of the Course:
Welcome! This course is designed to improve your ability to appreciate, analyze, and write coherently and persuasively about literary (and other) texts, equipping you with intepretive skills that will assist you in your lifelong practice of reading. In order to familiarize you with interpretive strategies geared to different kinds of texts from different historical epochs, the course covers a variety of works-including drama, poetry, nonfictional prose, and narrative fiction-written by both women and men over a period of around four-hundred years. We will also study a number of approaches to these texts, including feminist, Marxist, structuralist, deconstructive, psychoanalytic, and other approaches.
Required Texts:
Charles E. Bressler, Literary Criticism: An Introduction to
Theory and Practice, THIRD EDITION ONLY (published in 2002)
David Lodge and Nigel Wood, Modern Criticism and Theory: A
Reader, SECOND EDITION ONLY (published in 1999)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Frederick Douglass, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea
Grading, Exams, Papers:
Please note that I use a +/- system of grading and a 10-point grading
scale. Your grade for the course will be determined by the following
factors:
1. Active class participation, including a ten-minute oral presentation
to be given by every student in the class (10%). I'll pass out a
sign-up sheet so that you can be scheduled to give a presentation.
In your presentation, you should discuss what happens when you bring to
bear on particular works the various "approaches" or (models for interpretation)
that we are also studying this term. How did the approach or model
you are examining give you new insights into the work? Conversely,
were there aspects of the work that this approach or model could NOT help
you get at?
2. Mandatory attendance (10% or more [see below]).
4. Three papers. Click here
for some general guidelines for composing and formatting your essays.
Attendance:
You will be allowed a maximum of 3 absences to accommodate hardships that may arise during the semester. Any additional unexcused absences will cause you to receive an "F" for a component of the course worth 10% of your overall grade. More than 6 unexcused absences will cause you to receive an "F" for a component of the course worth 25% of your overall grade.
Completing Assignments:
All assigned readings must be read before the date listed on the syllabus. All out-of-class assignments are due at the beginning of class. If an emergency arises and prevents you from turning in your assignment on time, always call me and leave a message on my voicemail if I am not there. In the absence of any previous consultation with me, work handed in late will be graded down, normally one letter grade for each day that it is late.
Class Schedule:
Below is a list of readings for all class meetings. This list is meant to provide a common frame of reference for all readings and assignments, but we may have to adjust the schedule as the semester proceeds.
August
M 19 Introduction to the course
The Origins and Recent History of Literary Theory and Criticism; The New Criticism
W 21 Ferdinand de Saussure, "The Object of Study," in Lodge and Wood; Bressler, pages iii-36
F 23 Bressler, pages 37-54; also, read Browning's "My Last Duchess,"
available at:
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/browning1.html
Structuralism and Narratology
M 26 Bressler, pages 75-93; Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in Lodge and Wood (read pages 30-38)
W 28 Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, chapters 4 and 7 (on electronic reserve; click here to access these chapters)
Interpreting Douglass from New Critical, Structuralist, and Narratological Perspectives
F 30 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, both "Prefaces" and pages 12-42
September
M 2 Labor Day
W 4 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, pages 43-80; also read the essays by McFeely, Ripley, and Stepto in the back of the Norton edition
Reader-Response Criticism and Deconstruction
F 6 Bressler, pages 55-74; Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process," in Lodge and Wood
M 9 Fish, "Interpreting the Variorum"; Barthes, "The Death of the Author": both in Lodge and Wood.
W 11 Bressler, pages 94-118; Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play," in Lodge and Wood
F 13 Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play" (continued); Paul de Man, "The Resistance to Theory," in Lodge and Wood. FIRST PAPER DUE: Two-page essay (500 words) using Iser's, Fish's, or Barthes's essay as a model for interpreting Browning's "My Last Duchess": http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/browning1.html
Interpreting Shakespeare and Behn from Reader-Response and Deconstructive Perspectives
M 16 Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I; also read the essays by Montaigne included in the back of the Norton edition of Oroonoko
W 18 Shakespeare, The Tempest, Acts II and III
F 20 Behn, Oroonoko, "Preface" and pages 5-35.
M 23 Behn, Oroonoko, pages 35-65; also read Lipking, "The New World of Slavery"
W 25 Catch up and review
F 27 Midterm examination
Marxism and the New Historicism
M 30 Bressler, pages 161-78; Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (on electronic reserve: click here to access this item)
October
W 2 Benjamin continued; Bressler, pages 179-96;
F 4 Bakhtin, "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse," and Greenblatt, "The Circulation of Social Energy": both in Lodge and Wood
M 7 Foucault, "What Is an Author?" and Jerome McGann, "The Textual Condition": both in Lodge and Wood
Interpreting Swift from Marxist and New Historicist Perspectives
W 9 Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part I
F 11 Gulliver's Travels, Part II
M 14 Fall Break
W 16 Gulliver's Travels, part III
F 18 Gulliver's Travels, Part IV
M 21 Read Downie, Patey's, and Rawson's essays in the back of the Norton edition of Gulliver's Travels
Psychoanalysis and Feminism
W 23 Bressler, pages 119-41; Jacques Lacan, "The Insistence of the Letter," in Lodge and Wood
F 25 Hartman, "The Interpreter's Freud," and Bloom, "Poetic Origins and Final Phases": both in Lodge and Wood
M 28 Bressler, 142-60; SECOND ESSAY DUE
W 30 Irigaray, "The Bodily Encounter with the Mother," and Juliet Mitchell, "Femininity, Narrative and Psychoanalysis": both in Lodge and Wood
November
F 1 Showalter, "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness," Mitchell, "Femininity, Narrative and Psychoanalysis": both in Lodge and Wood
M 4 Schweikart, "Reading Ourselves," and Spivak, "Feminism and Critical Theory": both in Lodge and Wood
Interpreting Faulkner from Psychoanalytic and Feminist Perspectives
W 6 Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, "April Seventh, 1928"
F 8 The Sound and the Fury, "June Second," 1910"
M 11 The Sound and the Fury, "April Sixth, 1928"
W 13 The Sound and the Fury, "April Eighth, 1928" and "Appendix"
F 15 Read Irwin's, Jehlen's, and Gwin's essays in the back of the Norton edition of The Sound in the Fury
Cultural Studies and Question of Postmodernism
M 18 Bressler, pages 197-213; Said, "Crisis in Orientalism," in Lodge and Wood
W 20 Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations," and Jameson, "The Politics of Theory": both in Lodge and Wood
F 22 Eagleton, "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism," and Eco, "Casablanca": both in Lodge and Wood
Interpreting Rhys from Cultural-Studies and Postmodernist Perspectives
M 25 Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea (Note that Rhys's novel is a postmodern rewrite of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Brontë's novel is accessible online at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/9/948/frameset.html; here's a brief synopsis of the novel: http://www.awerty.com/jane2.html)
W 27 Thanksgiving
F 29 Thanksgiving
M 2 Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea
W 4 Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea
F 6 Catch up; review. FINAL PAPER DUE
Final Exam: Monday, December 16, 8:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Academic Integrity Statement
From NC State's code for student conduct:
7.ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
7.1 The free exchange of ideas
depends on the participants' trust that they will be given credit for their
work. Everyone in an academic community must be responsible for acknowledging,
using the methods accepted by the various academic disciplines, their use
of others' words and ideas. Since intellectual workers' words and ideas
constitute a kind of property, plagiarism is like theft.
7.2 Furthermore, as a reader you
may want to follow other writers' paths of research in order to make your
own judgments about their evidence and arguments. You will depend on those
writers' accuracy and honesty in reporting their sources. In turn your
readers will depend on yours.
7.3 The free exchange of ideas
also depends on the participants' trust that others' work is their own
and that it was done and is being reported honestly. Intellectual progress
in all the disciplines demands the truthfulness of all participants.
7.4 Plagiarism and cheating are
attacks on the very foundation of academic life, and cannot be tolerated
within universities. Section eight (8) of the Code defines academic
dishonesty and provides information on potential sanctions for violators
of academic integrity.
NC State Policy on Working with Students with Disabilities
NC State is subject to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 504 provides that:
"No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States. . . shall, solely by reason of his handicap be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
This regulation includes students with hearing, visual, motor, or learning disabilities and states that colleges and universities must make "reasonable adjustments" to ensure that academic requirements are not discriminatory. Modifications may require rescheduling classes from inaccessible to accessible buildings, providing access to auxiliary aids such as tape recorders, special lab equipment, or other services such as readers, note takers, or interpreters. It further requires that exams actually evaluate students' progress and achievement rather than reflect their impaired skills. This may require oral or taped tests, readers, scribes, separate testing rooms, or extension of time limits.
Section 84.47 (b) of the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare regulations implementing Section 504 deals in particular with academic
and vocational counseling. When advising disabled students, advisers should
be careful not to guide them, because
of their handicap, toward a more restrictive program or career than
would be appropriate for a non-disabled student. Factual information,
such as licensing requirements, etc., that may present obstacles to disabled
students should they decide to pursue a particular career or program, may
be presented in an objective fashion.