English 3301: Literature and the Contemporary Reader

Spring 2003

Final Examination

Offer a careful, specific intertextual analysis of our class syllabus (copied below). You may prepare notes for the exam, but I want you to compose the actual essay in class on final exam day.

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Course Description & Syllabus

English 3301: Literature & The Contemporary Reader

Spring 2003

Instructor: Steve Wilson

Office: Flowers Hall 214

Office Hours: 11-12:30 MWF, and by appointment

Phone: 245-3717

E-Mail: guadent_anguillae@swt.edu

Texts: Contexts for Criticism, edited by Donald Keesey (4th edition)

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams

Mosquito Coast, by Paul Theroux

American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement, edited by Van

Cleave and Suarez

MLA Handbook (latest edition)

Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms

Course Description: How and why do we read literature? It seems a simple, to some perhaps even an irrelevant question. My mother says she reads "for pleasure," and wonders how I can enjoy a book if I spend so much of my reading time analyzing the text. But to those of us who study literature, the question is of paramount importance. Do we read The Iliad the way Greeks would have understood it? The way a reader in 18th-century England would have read it? The way a reader in 20th-century Borneo would? Do we read it differently on-line than in an anthology?

This course will explore some of the important critical approaches to the question posited above: How and why we read literature? It will allow us as scholars of literature to understand how literature has been studied critically for the past decades, in times of often volatile social and political change. We will apply the approaches we examine in Contexts for Criticism to various literary texts I’ll supply, as well as to the other literary texts required for the course. Through class discussions and student presentations, we will hopefully have a lively, intellectually stimulating course.

Course structure: I will conduct this course as a seminar, meaning student participation will be an essential element of its success. To facilitate this, you will need to consistently read the assigned selections from our texts, and be ready to share your questions and insights on them in class. Be warned that a number of the readings from Contexts for Criticism will be heavy going, so do not plan on reading assignments on the bus traveling to class from Bobcat Stadium. Give them the time they require. Too, I never undertake lengthy lectures, and assume that a student has read the assignments; we’ll move forward from our texts ideas, rather than restate them. Think about the ideas you encounter. Be a curious reader. Engage the texts.

Assignments: Each student will complete the following -- 1) a term paper, on a topic approved by me and related to one of the works of literature assigned for the course, of 6-7 pages -- this essay should be in MLA format; 2) three 1-2 page response essays; 3) a final essay examination on the critical methods we have examined during the semester.

Response Essays: Students will submit three 1-2 page essays at scheduled times during the semester. I’ll divide the class into three groups. For the first two essays, students will write responses to assigned readings from Contexts for Criticism. The third will be on one of the novels we’ll read during the second half of the term. We will develop a schedule for these essays as soon as possible. Each essay should focus on a very particular issue from our class discussions or reading, and should refer consistently to readings for explanation and illustration of the author’s ideas.

Late work: I will not accept late work, for any reason.

Grades: Participation 20%

Term paper 30%

3 response essays 20% total

Final examination 30%

Special Needs: Students requiring special accommodation for disabilities documented by the SWT Office of Disability Services should notify me of this as soon as possible.

Tentative Syllabus:

Week 1: Introductions.

Contexts for Criticism (CC), "Historical Criticism I: Author

as Context"; Watson, "Are Poems Historical Acts?.”

Week 2: CC, "Formal Criticism: Poem as Context"; Brooks, “Irony as a Principle

of Structure”; Ellis, “The Relevant Context of a Literary Text.”

Week 3: CC, "Reader-Response Criticism: Audience as Context";

Iser, "Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader”; Holland,

“The Miller’s Wife and the Professors: Questions about the

Transactive Theory of Reading.”

Week 4: CC, "Mimetic Criticism: Reality as Context"; Paris, “The Uses of

Psychology”; Donovan, "Beyond the Net: Feminist Criticism

as a Moral Criticism."

Week 5: CC, "Intertextual Criticism: Literature as Context"; Culler, "Structuralism

and Literature."

Week 6: CC, "Poststructural Criticism: Language as Context"; Derrida, "Structure,

Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.”

Weeks 7-14: Application of critical approaches to literary texts.