L202 LITERARY INTERPRETATION
Jennifer Fleissner

PREREQUISITE:  Completion of the English composition requirement.

TOPIC:  “Bad Girls and the Problem of Interpretation”

9932 11:15a-12:05p MWF (25 students) 3 cr., A&H, IW.
9933 12:20p-1:10p MWF (25 students) 3 cr., A&H, IW.

Open to majors and declared minors only.

This class is designed to give students confidence in critically
reading, interpreting, and writing about works of literature.  We
will focus on a series of texts, ranging from Shakespearean drama
through twentieth-century fiction and poetry, which pose the
question of interpretation as one of the issues at play within the
literary work itself.  Specifically, each will approach from a
different angle the problem of how to make sense of a female figure
who seems to step beyond the bounds of social propriety.  While
others within the text spend time trying to make sense of out of
her, we will learn to distinguish our activity from theirs and think
about the text as a whole as containing not only the problem they
seek to solve, but also their own problem-solving activity.  Put
otherwise, the meaning we seek may not reside in the meaning of
the “bad girl” herself, but in a larger set of (social, structural,
conceptual) meanings that her behavior brings forward.
	
We will approach these matters through close analysis of the texts
in question; a series of writing assignments involving in-class
workshops and revisions; and a final project or final exam.  In
addition to primary literary materials, readings may include some
scholarly essays introducing students to various modes of critical
interpretation.