L202 9075 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Karma Lochrie

PREREQUISITE: Completion of the English Composition requirement.

Open to majors and declared minors only.

12:20p-1:10p MWF (25 students) 3 cr., A&H, IW.

To read is to be “wrenched and uprooted,” according to Virginia Woolf, yet this is precisely the opposite of the idea with which many of us read today to be able to identify. If the end of reading literature is pleasure, as Woolf must have believed it was, how is this pleasure experienced and what is the nature of it? This course will address both the assumptions that we bring to our reading of literature and the pleasures that come with even the most disorienting of reading experiences. The course will consider the three major genres of literature—prose, drama, and poetry—in the context of the literary conventions, narrative, language practices, and historical connections of texts. Writing for the course will include four papers and short response pieces. There will be a final exam.