Ways of Reading: Gifts, Debts, and Promises
ENGL 201E
Spring 2018 not offered
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Ways of Reading courses introduce students to the characteristics thought of as literary and the methods for studying them. This is a gateway course into the English major. Only one of the ENGL201 series may be taken for credit.
Ways of Reading courses develop strategies for careful and close reading, and techniques for the analysis of literary forms such as poetry and drama, and prose narratives such as novels and short stories. They familiarize students with some of the protocols of the literary-critical essay, examine the idea of literature as a social institution, and explore ways of connecting textual details and the world beyond the text. The ways of reading learned in the course are powerful tools for critically assessing discourses that expand far beyond the realm of literature. So while students will become adept literary critics, they also will learn quickly that to be a literary critic is to read critically and carefully all the time: in poems, novels, and plays, but also in political speech, in popular culture, and in the discourses that shape everyday life.
This course will offer an introduction to the formal study of literature. Our discussion will be oriented by a consideration of poems, plays, and novels that address the bonds created among people by the exchange of gifts, promises, and debts. We will consider the way changing ideas about such bonds have been represented in literary texts and the way such ideas have affected our understanding of literature. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ENGL) |
Major Readings:
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Seamus Heaney, trans., Beowulf
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
and selected poems
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Examinations and Assignments:
Seven short essays (3-4 pp), with revision, and a longer research project (8-10 pp) |
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