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CS92PROD
Ways of Reading: Narrative Forms
ENGL 201B
Fall 2015 not offered

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 looks at a series of narratives in different forms--lyric poetry, short stories, and a play of Shakespeare's--to see how authors produce stories appropriate to the form they employ and how they develop and transform the form they deem appropriate to the stories they wish to tell. We will also look at one career in greater depth, that of Langston Hughes, to see how he employed narrative over the course of a long career as a story-teller in poetry and prose.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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