WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2013-2014       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Ways of Reading: Influence, Imitation, Invention
ENGL 201H
Fall 2013
Section: 01  

"Ways of Reading" introduces students to the characteristics thought of as literary and the methods for studying them. This is a gateway course into the English major, and 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, 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 Ways of Reading course will consider the way texts respond to one another and to the world, spawning imitations as well as rebuttals of what has come before. Looking particularly at how authors deploy generic and stylistic strategies to do this, we will examine works traditionally thought to use realist or ethnographic modes of representation along with works which break with these ways of seeing. Texts may include works by Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anne Carson, Homer, Derek Walcott, Charlotte Brontė, Jean Rhys, Harold Bloom, Lorraine Hansberry and Bruce Norris.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ENGL)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459