Spring 2007

Monday, January 22

First day: Introductions and course outline

• Read the fiction section of Connections, following external links if and when you want to. Come to class prepared to apply the reading to a story.

Also, please go to the class discussion board and write a solid paragraph or two introducing yourself to the class. Aside from the obvious introductory function of this assignment, it also ensures that we flush out any technical problems before moving farther into the term.

Bring your short story anthologies to class.

We will do an in-class assignment designed to familiarize you with the terminology of fiction writing.

• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Introduction and opening, 3-37
  • You'll find good , bad , and outdated information alike from Mitsuharu Matsuoka's Brontë Sisters Web, but it's still the best starting point on the Web.

Group I Response: On the basis of the first pages of the novel, discuss images that strike you as interesting or potentially important. What patterns of images, in other words, would you suggest we follow as we read more of the novel? This definition of literary imagery may be helpful.

Note: here and throughout this syllabus, the first (less indented) reading or link is required, while the second (more indented) reading or link is supplemental and optional. Here, for example, the reading from Wuthering Heights is required, whereas exploring the website is optional.

• Wuthering Heights, 37-80

Group II Response: Use the last set of responses as the basis for these, either by following up on someone's suggestion or by pointing out a new development that you would like to follow.

• Wuthering Heights, 80-138

Group III Response: open response.

• Wuthering Heights, 138-208

Group IV Response: open response.

• Wuthering Heights, 208-256

Group V Response: open response.

• Wuthering Heights, 256-288, and criticism, 333-347

Group I Response: Discuss either a) what you find most surprising or interesting about the history of criticism of this novel or b) how the ending does or does not wrap up the issues we have discussed in the rest of the novel.

• This and the next three assignments work through the critical case study in the back of your copy of Wuthering Heights. The first, for today, is Cultural Criticism, 411-450.

Group II Response: The response assignment will be the same for all four critical approaches. For the approach we read about each day, discuss a point in the article that you consider especially instructive or, on the contrary, to be a misreading of Wuthering Heights. You can talk about more general applications of the day's theory if you like, but every response should start by discussing a specific moment in the day's article.

• Marxist Criticism, 379-410

Group III Response: See the assignment for February 9.

• Feminist Criticism, 451-477

Group IV Response: See the assignment for February 9.

• Psychoanalytic Criticism, 348-378

Everyone: Note that the paper prospectus is due Monday.

Group V Response: See the assignment for February 9.

FICTION ANALYSIS PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE

• Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (anthology)
  • An article from American Literature (2000): "From Wall Street to Astor Place: Historicizing Melville’s 'Bartleby,'" Barbara Foley (school access only)

  • An article from The New England Quarterly (1996): "Melville's Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in 'Bartleby'" (school access only)

Group I Response: open response, perhaps applying one or more of the critical perspectives from Wuthering Heights to the story.

• Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" (anthology)

Group II Response: open response, perhaps applying one or more of the critical perspectives to the story.

• Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal" (anthology)
  • An article from Black American Literature Forum (1983): "Imagery of Imprisonment in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man," Per Winther (school access only)

  • An article from MELUS (1993): "Ralph Ellison and K. S. Maniam: Ethnicity in America and Malaysia, Two Kinds of Invisibility," Tang Soo Ping (school access only)

Group III Response: open response, perhaps applying one or more of the critical perspectives to the story.

• Read the film section of Connections, following external links if and when you want to.

We will do an in-class assignment designed to familiarize you with the terminology of film analysis.

Tuesday, February 27

FICTION ANALYSIS PAPER DUE
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR BY 4:00

• Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (1941)
  • The standard resource: IMDB's page

  • Filmsite.org's page on the film has a lot of interesting information, especially about the Kane-Hearst parallel.

  • Roger Ebert's very good page

  • Reviews from MRQE

Group IV response: Write a response based on any element of the film that you would not experience by reading a transcription of the film's spoken words.

• Welles, Citizen Kane (continued)

We will do an in-class exercise on the film today.

• Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958)
  • The IMDB page

  • The tdfilm.com page indexes some of the many web resources for the film

  • Reviews from MRQE

Group V response: Write a response based on any element of the film that you would not experience by reading a transcription of the film's spoken words.

We will continue discussing Vertigo today. In preparation, (everyone) write up a brief question or issue you would like to discuss on the message board by the usual response time.

• Sam Mendes, American Beauty (1999)
  • The IMDB page

  • Reviews from MRQE

Everyone: Note that the paper prospectus is due Monday.

Group I response: open response.

SCENE ANALYSIS PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE IN CLASS

• Daniel Chandler, Notes on "The Gaze"

Group II Response: discuss how the ideas on Chandler's "notes" might apply to an analysis of American Beauty. We will do in-class work on the film.

• Tom Tykwer, Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run)
  • The IMDB page

  • Reviews from the MRQE

Bring a brief issue or question to class for discussion.

No class session: SCENE ANALYSIS PAPER DUE
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR by 3:00.

• Read the sonnet section of Connections and make notes that will prepare you to analyze the technique of sonnets in class.

• Read the heroic couplets section of Connections and make notes that will prepare you to analyze the technique of sonnets in class.

• Read the blank verse section of Connections and make notes that will prepare you to analyze the technique of blank verse in class.

• Read the ballad section of Connections and make notes that will prepare you to analyze the technique of ballads in class.

• Read the free verse section of Connections and make notes that will prepare you to analyze the technique of free verse in class.

• "Biographical and Historical Contexts" (3-24 of your Coleridge volume)

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 1798 Text (on the left side of the book)
  • The Lyrical Ballads Bicentenary Project is an excellent scholarly site. The best and most authoritative starting point for Coleridge is probably his section of the Voice of the Shuttle Romanticism page. Also see Marjorie A. Tiefert's Coleridge Archive.

  • There is a new electronic scholarly edition of Lyrical Ballads produced by Romantic Circles and Cambridge University Press. The project is on the cutting edge of digital textual scholarship.

Group III Response: open response.

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 1817 Text (on the right side of the book)

Group IV Response: Address one specific change Coleridge makes between the 1798 and 1817 versions of the poem and what significance you see in the change.

• Reader Response Criticism, 97-130

Group V Response: We return to the response assignment for critical approaches. For the approach we read about each day, discuss a point in the article that you consider especially instructive or, on the contrary, to be a misreading of Coleridge's poem. You can talk about more general applications of the day's theory if you like, but every response should start by discussing a specific moment in the day's article.

• Marxist Criticism, 131-167

Group I Response: See April 14th.

• Psychoanalytic Criticism, 220-260

Group II Response: See April 14th.

• Combining Perspectives, 315-342

Group III Response: See April 14th.

• Read this page introducing Imagism.

• William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow"

• Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

• Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"
  • The complete audio archives of William Carlos Williams

Group IV Response: open response using the manifesto from the first link and one of the poems.

• Claude McKay, "If We Must Die," background information on McKay, and commentary

• Langston Hughes, background information, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," "Christ in Alabama", commentary on "Christ in Alabama," this anti-Hughes flier, and "To Negro Writers"

Group V Response: open response drawing on some issue that connects or contrasts McKay and Hughes.

• John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, "The Future of Poetry"

• Ransom, "Here Lies a Lady"

• Tate, "Ode to the Confederate Dead" and commentary

• Background on Ransom and Tate

Group I Response: connect some of the commentary to one or both of the poems.

• Allen Ginsberg, "Howl," background information on Ginsberg, commentary on the poem, and notes on its performance

• Clellon Holmes, "This Is the Beat Generation"

Group II Response: connect some of the commentary to the poem.

• Gertrude Stein, "Objects" from Tender Buttons, background on Stein

• William Carlos Williams, "The Work of Gertrude Stein"

Group III response: open response

POETRY PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE IN CLASS

• Ron Silliman, "Wild Form" and section XVIII (the first one) of You and information about Silliman

• Interview with Bob Perelman

Group IV Response: open response

• Last day of class: wrapping up, questions about the final paper.

FINAL PAPER DUE BY 2:00 P.M.
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR

Note: anyone taking the extension for this paper by the normal procedure will have a deadline of 2:00 p.m. on Friday, May 18.