04:00P-05:15P TR (30) 3 cr.
PREREQUISITE:L202 with grade of C- or better. NOTE: The English Department will strictly enforce this prerequisite. Students who have not completed L202 with a grade of C- or better will have their registration administratively cancelled .
This course explores the terrains of the text, the world, and the critic. At the beginning of the course we’ll take a brief look at some of the early theories of literature and criticism, from ancients to the present. We’ll look at some of the major critical schools, including New Criticism, Formalism, Reader Response, Relativisms, Marxisms, Feminisms, and Cultural Studies. We’ll pay particular attention to critics who have tried to draw connections between what goes on in the text and its symbolic actions, and what goes in society and the world and their symbolic actions. Those critics include Kenneth Burke, W. J. T. Mitchell, and others. We’ll also look at “ecocriticism” and some interpretations of “nature writing.” For sample literary texts, we will probably use an anthology, such as one of the Bedford introduction to literature volumes. Our works on criticism will likely include Charles Bressler’s Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Student work in the course will consist of a mid-term, a final exam, and a major paper that will be written in parts. The major paper will either engage the work of another critic, or it will be an applied use of some critical method. Students will also write frequent short (paragraph to page length) working papers or response papers.