Seminar: Literary Criticism & Theory 4455
M, W & F 12-12:50 pm
Dr. Carol Porterfield Milowski Office Hagg-Sauer 312
Associate Professor of English 755-2807 (Machine for Message)
Off-campus e-mail: CPMilowski@bemidjistate.edu On-campus: CPMilowski
Texts: Criticism: Major Statements,4th ed. Kaplan and Anderson, Editors; Reading Lessons: An Introduction to Theory, Scott Carpenter; The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and Beloved by Toni Morrison.
Course description: English 4455, Literary Criticism and Theory, is an introduction to the theory, history, and methods of literary criticism from Plato to the present. In addition, English 4455 has been designated as the "capstone" course for the literature major and is presently offered as a seminar. As such, students should expect intensive discussion, reading, writing, and oral presentations as well as lecture. The final 10-15 page conference paper will be the capstone project and will be expected to be of publishable quality. A seminar typically has no traditional tests.
Course Objectives: Students should be able to:
• understand the critical terms and historical phrases typically used to discuss or describe a theory,
• understand the major schools of literary criticism and be able to name representative critics associated with each school,
• understand the importance of theory to literature,
• understand how to read in a critical as well as an aesthetic mode,
• understand their own critical stance, and
• understand how to write a critical, annotated conference paper discussing literature from a theoretical perspective.
Class Organization: The class will be run as a seminar, and students are expected to take an active part in the discussion. The class will be divided into two parts--a historical review of the theories and an application of the theories to The Sound and the Fury and. Beloved. The conference papers will be presented to the class as a whole during the final week of the course and, if needed, the final exam period. Attendance at the paper presentations is mandatory. All conference papers are due no later than the final exam period.
Instructor Expectations: Students are expected to come to class having read the material and ready to discuss it. Participation and attendance in a seminar class are taken for granted. Thus, all absences must be cleared with the instructor.
Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on class participation, worksheets on the readings and discussion, three short papers (2-3 pgs) on the classical theories, and a "capstone" conference paper (10-15 pgs) applying the student's choice of critical stance to The Sound and the Fury and Beloved.
Notes on written work: The short papers are devices to get you thinking about the theories in more depth--which did you find most viable and why. The papers should demonstrate a command of the material by using apt metaphors, figures of speech, or key terms and so forth that effectively capsulize the theory--for example, the word "mimesis" for Aristotle, or Sidney's idea that poetry should "teach and delight"--be annotated, and written in a manner appropriate for publication. Papers may be shared orally with the class.
The Capstone Paper: The written paper is to be of publishable quality, virtually error free.You may want to work with an editor to ensure that there are no grammatical or development problems. The copy of the paper presented to the instructor is to in "letter quality" print and will not be returned. However, student's may collect the evaluation sheet.
The paper will also be presented orally in class. You may use your paper as "notes" but you should be able to "talk" us through your argument, reserving "reading" only for those portions where you need an exact quote. Take a look at Book TV some weekend on CSPAN2 to see how authors "talk" about their books
Weekly Assignments:
Historical Survey of Literary Criticism
Wk I, Sept. 5 & 7: Introduction to the course; discussion of the concept of a "seminar"; Reading Lessons 1 - 16
Wk II, Sept. 10 - 14: Plato, Aristotle, Longinus and Horace--Criticism: Major Statements
Wk III, Sept. 17 - 21: Sidney, Dryden, Pope, Johnson--Criticism: Major Statements
Wk IV, Sept. 24 - 28: No class Sept. 24; Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Poe --Criticism: Major Statements
Wk V, Oct. 1 - 5: Arnold, James, Tolstoy, Eliot, Freud, Woolf --Criticism: Major Statements; handout -- Eagleton "The Rise of English;"
Contemporary Survey of Literary Theory
Wk VI, Oct. 8 - 12: New Criticism -- Ransom and Brooks--Criticism: Major Statements; "Rounding Up Some Usual Suspects: Formalism and Structuralism" Reading Lessons, 21 -24
Wk VII, Oct. 15 - 19: Structuralism to Deconstruction -- Bakhtin, Barthes, Derrida, Eco -- Criticism: Major Statements; "Mssng Lttrs": Poststructuralism and Deconstruction" Reading Lessons, 37 - 55
Wk VIII, Oct. 22 - 26: Continue discussion from above.
Wk IX, Oct. 29 - Nov. 2: Marxism -- Eagleton, Foucault, Johnson, Felman--Criticism: Major Statements; Psychological Criticism -- "The remembrance of Things Past: Psychoanalysis" Reading Lessons, 65 - 85. Note: There are no Marxist critics in Carpenter. Interesting.
Wk X, Nov. 5 - 9: Gender Criticism -- Rich, Gilbert/Gubar, Showalter, Sedgwick --Criticism: Major Statements; "Gender Gaps: Feminism and Gender Studies" Reading Lessons, 89 - 110. Note: There are no queer theorists in Kaplan and Sedgwick is the only proto-lesbian theorist. Again, interesting.
Wk XI, Nov. 12 - 16: Cultural Studies -- Baym, Greenblatt, Gates, Bhabha--Criticism: Major Statements; "The Importance of Context: New Historicism and Cultural Studies," Reading Lessons 115 - 131
Wk XII, Nov.19 - 23: No class Nov. 19. Thanksgiving Break
Wk XIII, Nov. 26 - 30: Technology and Reader Response -- Fish, Landow --Criticism: Major Statements; "Click Here : Hypertext and Reader Response, " Reading Lessons 135 - 147
Case Study Begins
Wk XIV, Dec. 3 - 7: The Sound and the Fury and Beloved
Wk XV, Dec. 10 - 14: Begin presentations of capstone papers.
Final Exam: Tuesday, December 18, 3:30 - 5:30 pm--continue discussion of capstone papers; Attendance is mandatory.