This course is a small, faculty-led seminar on the practice and discipline of literary analysis. It is meant for all students who seek an introductory literature course and would like to improve their ability to read and write critically, including those who may wish to major in English. Focusing on the close study of a few works, rather than a survey of many, the seminar will help students develop college-level skills for interpreting literature, while gaining awareness of different strategies and approaches for making sense of literary language, genres, forms, and contexts. The seminar also will develop students’ ability to write about literature and to communicate meaningfully the stakes of their analysis to an audience.

At once less and more than what they say, “voices” emanate from bodies; they have tones and accents; they can be breathy, insistent, hesitant, ironic. In this course, we'll ask how the medium of writing—of print literature—represents voice. How do different genres mediate voice differently? How do we distinguish between the “voice” of narration (in the “first,” “second,” or “third” person) and the represented speech of characters? What is "lyric voice"? What does it mean to hear the “voice” of nature or of conscience--or of a writer? We’ll address these and other questions as we read a selection of poems, novels, and plays (and perhaps two films: Drive My Car and Sorry to Bother You).

Book List

Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia; Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; Juliana Spahr, The Transformation; Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads.

Requisites

• Students with 1-6 Terms in Attendance

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills