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.

"You who read Paradise Lost,” wrote one of John Milton’s seventeenth-century contemporaries, “What do you read but everything?” Without making such a grand claim, this class will think about reading and Paradise Lost in three ways: [1] From within Paradise Lost itself. As we ourselves analyze this long poem slowly over an extended period of time, we will discuss how the text is itself implicitly thinking about acts of reading and interpretation while also training us how to do both. [2] Milton’s own reading for Paradise Lost. At least it is no exaggeration that Milton himself read everything—not only other poems and prose but also political, philosophical, religious, and scientific texts in at least 4-5 languages other than English. We will therefore consider Paradise Lost side by side with excerpts from the texts that Milton’s poem is responding to in some way (incorporating, revising, refuting, rewriting, etc.). Examples: excerpted parts of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphosis and other Greek and Roman myths, the Bible, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and perhaps others. [3] Readers and readings of Paradise Lost. We will then look forward to some of the countless authors whose very different works have absorbed and responded to Paradise Lost. Examples may include excerpts from the works of Alexander Pope, Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and William Empson. Of course, discussing reading always involves discussing much more than that, and therefore we will necessarily be taking up questions about what constitutes literary interpretation as opposed to both plot summary, on the one hand, and religious interpretation, on the other, the different politics ascribed to a single text, gender both within Milton’s poem and in the works of his readers, and more. Writing requirements will include 2-3 short essays, responses, and probably a reading journal. Regular attendance in person is also a requirement. So is having your own copies of the texts and bringing them to class. If affordability and accessibility are a problem for anyone, I will work with you to get rid of the problem.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills