ENG200.003
Introduction to Literary Study
FALL 2009

Prof. Eileen Joy

Peck Hall #0408 (Weds 6:00-8:50 pm)

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. . . . My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin vapors rising I judge; and here will I begin to mine." --Henry David Thoreau (from Walden, or A Life in the Woods)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The stated purpose of English 200 is to introduce undergraduate students to the scholarly study of literature. In order to enhance your ability to truly appreciate and understand literature, to comprehend its multiple levels of reality and unreality, to be able to analyze and discuss it with the proper critical vocabulary, and to really derive enjoyment from it, we will be concentrating upon deepening your knowledge of the artistic techniques and forms that writers employ in their work and of the intellectual strategies that literary critics use to interpret and discuss literary works. This is a course that requires curiosity and demands intellectual rigor, yet also aims to help students be at play in the fields of literature. Some people believe that critical inquiry kills art, and while I believe that a really great poem or story or play often hits us, when we first encounter it, somewhere in the gut, we cannot really understand literature's power over us without returning to that first encounter, again and again, in order to see, how the thing is made, and how the thing works. But what about this "literature's power over us"?

Literature can have no power over us, or give us what I call an "aesthetic rush," unless we are willing to engage in what Guy Davenport, in his essay "On Reading," calls "imaginative reading"--"For the real use of imaginative reading is precisely to suspend one's mind in the workings of another sensibility, quite literally to give oneself over to Henry James or Conrad or Ausonius, to Yuri Oleysha, Basho, and Plutarch." In order to read in this manner, one must be willing to lose oneself in the words and worlds and minds that literature creates, and this requires empathy and openness--the willingness to allow oneself to be generally pushed around by the cadences of new languages and the strangers of fictional countries. We must also take the time to read literary works with care and thoughtfulness; we must engage their ideas energetically and with conviction in discussion with others; and we must seek to understand these works on the multiple levels of imagery and meaning they body forth. You will learn that one does not think well in a vacuum--our ideas benefit immeasurably when exchanged with others in a series of critical dialogues. Preparing for and participating in class are therefore vitally important to your success in this class.

Special Note: As this is also a reading-intensive course, not keeping up with the reading could be extremely detrimental to your progress and final evaluation. One final (but important) word: coming to class without the text under discussion will be automatic grounds for dismissal from that particular class period (and will count as an absence).

Figure 2. Antigone confronting the dead Polyneices, Nikiforos Lytras (1865)

REQUIRED TEXTS

Textbook Rental Services>

Alison Booth et alia, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 9th ed. W.W. Norton, 2005.

Jonathan Safran Foer. Extrememly Loud and Incredibly Close. Mariner Books, 2006.

Sylvia Plath. Ariel: The Restored Edition. Harper Perennial, 2005.

Thomas Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49. Harper Perennial, 2006.

William Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice: Norton Critical Edition. W.W. Norton, 2005.

Bram Stoker. Dracula. Penguin Classics, 2003.

Figure 3. Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931)

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

SHORT PAPERS (50%)

There will be 6 short writing assignments, varying in length and difficulty (and percentage points), that will be posted on the online syllabus that are designed to help you hone basic and practical reading, explication, and analytical skills. Please note that these make up half of your final grade.

CREATIVE GROUP PROJECT - LITERARY VIDEO (10%)

The class will be divided into small groups of approximately six students each, and each group will be responsible for producing a short "video interpretation" of a literary work. These will be presented during the last week of classes.

CRITICAL ESSAY (30%)

Toward the end of the semester, there will be one short critical paper (5-6 pages) in which you will demonstrate your skills at the close analytical reading of literary texts (no secondary research will be necessary or allowed). In this essay, you will practice your hand at literary interpretation, where you produce your own ideas about how a text creates meaning. Through close reading, you will look closely at the language of the text in order to demonstrate not just what you think a text means, but more importantly how it means what you think it does.

PARTICIPATION (10%)

As stated above under "Course Description," participation is vital to your success in this course. That means having a good attendance record, coming to class prepared to discuss the readings (with book or books in hand), and actively contributing to critically engaged conversations with your professor and peers.

LATE ASSIGNMENT POLICY

I do not accept late assignments. If there is an extraordinarily good reason for needing an extension on a due date, let me know in advance, and we will work it out.

ATTENDANCE POLICY

Attendance, promptness, and participation are essential to success in college courses. Faculty members recognize that unexpected occasions may arise when a student must be absent from class, but my general attendance policy is that if you are absent more than the number of required class sessions per week (in this case, that would be more than 1 session), I have the option of lowering your final course grade by one letter grade for each additional session missed. Furthermore, if absences become excessive (more than two weeks' worth of sessions), the SIUE Registrar, at my request, reserves the right to withdraw you administratively. For more information on this, please consult the following: SIUE Class Attendance Policy. Failure to attend class in a responsible and committed manner may thus be grounds for failure in or administrative withdrawal from the course.

ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

Any student found engaging in an act of academic dishonesty will be promptly dismissed from the course with a grade of "F." By "academic dishonesty," I mean PLAGIARISM (the act of representing the work of another as one's own), which the University considers a grave breach of intellectual integrity. All definitions, terminology, concepts, and patterns of organization taken from an outside source must be identified and given credit in any essay or exam you write--whether it be for the English department or any other department. For more detailed information on this, please consult the following: SIUE Plagiarism Policy.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATIONS

If you feel that you are entitled to special academic accommodations for documented disabilities, please contact the Disability Support Services office in Rendleman Hall #1218 (Phillip Pownall, Director), or visit their website, and they will help you fill out the necessary paperwork.

Figure 4. Sylvia Plath at her typewriter in Devon

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Figure 5. Nicholas Cage as Charlie Kaufmann in Adaptation (2002)