9:30A-10:45A  TR  (25) 3 cr

COAS INTENSIVE WRITING SECTION

OPEN TO MAJORS ONLY.  DECLARED MINORS OBTAIN AUTHORIZATION FROM
BH402.

This class will be concerned with questions about the nature and practice of literary
interpretation, and we will consider various answers through reading, writing, and class
discussion.  Students are encouraged to keep a journal for this class in which they record
responses to literary as well as to interpretive works.  In addition, they will be required to hand in
one-page response papers at the beginning of each reading assignment.  We will discuss and
examine various poems or short stories (many of which you may already be familiar with) in
conjunction with several competing interpretations in order to clarify our understanding of the
various aims and methods of literary interpretation.  We are also likely to read longer and less
well-known literary texts, and consider some larger questions of literary theory.  This will lead us
to call into question some of our received ideas, while enabling us to test our methods of literary
interpretation on a broader range of texts.