Spring 2008 Course Calendar
Updated: 3 April
Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30-1:45 in Grainger G16.
Come to each class prepared with the following:
(1) A brief written summary of the critical readings to be discussed. (Make sure you read the relevant editorial headnotes--they will help.)
(2) Written notes that will help you to discuss how the day's readings compare to and constrast with the critical approaches we have discussed previously. (Be prepared to cite specifics, and be prepared to cite specific works of literature as you develop your argument.)
(3) Written notes that will help you to cite and discuss one example of (or from) a literary work you have read that either supports or refutes the critic's claims.
| 15 January | Course introduction. |
| 17 January | Plato, Republic 10 (Richter 30-38). In addition to the preparation stipulated above, please come to class prepared to respond, in particular, to Socrates's question: "must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning with Homer, are only imitators, who copy images of virtue and the other themes of their poetry, but have no contact with the truth?" (p. 33, second column). What, according to Plato, is the relationship between literature and philosophy? What, precisely, is Plato's problem with imitation? Can you think of any arguments like this in modern culture? |
| 22 January | Aristotle, Poetics (Richter 59-81). |
| 24 January | Horace, Ars Poetica (Richter 84-94). |
| 29 January | Longinus, On the Sublime (Richter 97-108). |
| 31 January | Sidney, Apology for Poetry (Richter 135-159) and, in Astrophil and Stella, read sonnets 1, 2, 7, and 9. [You should be able to find these poems in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, or in the Sidney section of www.luminarium.org.] |
| 5 February | Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare (Richter 216-230). |
| 7 February | Short paper #1 due. |
| 12 February | Kant, Critique of Judgment (Richter 251-274). |
| 14 February | Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Richter 306-318). |
| 19 February | Keats, "Negative Capability" (Richter 331-333). |
| 21 February | Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism," "The Study of Poetry" (Richter 415-434). |
| 26 February | T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (Richter 537-541). |
| 28 February | Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One's Own (Richter 599-610); feminism: |
| 4 March | New Criticism/Formalism: Cleanth Brooks (Richter 798-806) and Empson, excerpt from Seven Types of Ambiguity. |
| 6 March | Short paper #2 due. |
| Spring Break. | |
| 18 March | Structuralism: Ferdinand de Saussure, "Nature of the Linguistic Sign," and Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth" (Richter 842-851, 860-870). |
| 20 March | Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play" (Richter 915-926) and Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" (Richter 904-914). |
| 25 March | Reader-Response Criticism: Stanley Fish, "How to Recognize a Poem When You See One " (Richter 1023-1030. |
| 27 March | Freudian Criticism/Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud (Richter 509-533). |
| 1 April | Marxist Criticism: Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (Richter 1233-1249). |
| 3 April | No class |
| 8 April | Feminist Criticism: Kolodny (Richter 1550-1562); Gender Studies: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Richter 1683-1691). |
| 10 April | Abstract and annotated bibliography due in my office by noon. Individual conferences. |
| 15/17 April | Individual conferences. |
| 19 April | Academic Conference: Paper Presentations. Note that this is a Saturday, and that you can expect to be occupied from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. |
| 22 April | Final exam and MFAT exam preparation. |
| 24 April | Final Exam. |
The MFAT exam will be administered during the final exam period. |