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21L.701

Literary Methods

3-0-9 units. HASS-H · Undergraduate

Introduces practice and theory of literary criticism. Seminar focuses on topics such as the history of critical methods and techniques, and the continuity of certain subjects in literary history. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Previously taught topics include Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare, Theory and Use of Figurative Language, and Text, Context, Subtext, Pretext . Approved for credit in the Women's and Gender Studies when content meets requirements for subjects in that program. May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor if content differs. Limited to 12.

Spring 2009 · Literary Interpretation: Literature and Urban Experience

Alienation, overcrowding, sensory overload, homelessness, criminality, violence, loneliness, sprawl, blight. How have the realities of city living influenced literature's formal and thematic techniques? How useful is it to think of literature as its own kind of "map" of urban space? Are cities too grand, heterogeneous, and shifting to be captured by writers? In this seminar we will seek answers to these questions in key city literature, and in theoretical works that endeavor to understand the culture of cities.

Readings

Fall 2006 · Literary Interpretation: Beyond the Limits of the Lyric

Topics

  • Introductions
  • Walt Whitman; T. S. Eliot; William Carlos Williams; Ezra Pound; Hilda Doolittle
  • Wilfred Owen; W. B. Yeats; Siegfried Sassoon; W. H. Auden; Randall Jarrell
  • Robert Lowell, Life Studies
  • Robert Lowell, Life Studies (cont.)
  • Sylvia Plath, Ariel
  • Pablo Neruda, The Heights of Macchu Picchu
  • Hilda Doolittle, Trilogy
  • Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III
  • Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems Poems : First Third (Poems in Poland in Early Exile in France)
  • Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems Poems : Second Third (Poems in Exile in France and Early in America)
  • Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems : Final Third (Poems in America/Old Age)

Readings

  • Ellman, Richard, ed. Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988. ISBN: 0393956369.
    Listed reading
  • Lowell, Robert. Life Studies . New York, NY: Noonday Press, 1972. ISBN: 0374506280.
    Listed reading
  • Bishop, Elizabeth. Geography III . New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976. ISBN: 0374514402.
    Listed reading
  • Plath, Sylvia. Ariel . New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1999. ISBN: 0060931728.
    Listed reading
  • Doolittle, Hilda (HD). Trilogy . New York, NY: New Directions, 1998. ISBN: 0811213994.
    Listed reading
  • Neruda, Pablo. The Heights of Macchu Picchu . New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966. ISBN: 0374506485.
    Listed reading
  • Milosz, Czeslaw. New and Collected Poems . New York, NY: Ecco, 2003. ISBN: 0060514485.
    Listed reading
  • Film: Aranovich, Semyon. The Anna Achmatova File . 1989 ↗
    Listed reading
  • Whitman, Walt. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “To a Locomotive in Winter.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Eliot, T. S. “ Hamlet and His Problems .” In The Sacred Wood. London, UK: Methune, 1920. ↗
    Listed reading
  • -–. “Gerontion.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Williams, William Carlos. “Spring and All,” “Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “At the Ball Game,” “This is Just to Say,” “The Yachts,” and “The Dance.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Pound, Ezra. “Portrait d’une Femme,” “The Return,” “The River Merchant’s Wife,” “A Pact,” “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” and “Mauberley.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • HD. “Sea Rose,” “Garden,” “Oread,” and “Helen.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Owen, Wilfred. “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” “Dulce et Decorum Est,” “Strange Meeting,” “Futility,” “Greater Love,” “Mental Cases,” “Disabled,” and “Exposure.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Yeats, W. B. “Adam’s Curse,” “No Second Troy,” “Easter, 1916,” and “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Sassoon, Siegfried. “To His Dead Body,” “‘Blighters’,” “Everyone Sang,” and “Repression of War Experience.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Auden, W. H. “Musee des Beaux Arts,” “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” “September 1, 1939,” and “Lullaby.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Jarrell, Randall. “90 North,” “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” and “Eighth Air Force.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • WEEK #: 5 · Topics: Robert Lowell, Life Studies · Required readings: Lowell, Robert. “91 Revere Street,” “Memories of West Street and Lepke,” and “Skunk Hour.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Reading assignment
  • Berryman, John. Dream Songs . New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982, pp. 14, 15, 75-76, 194, 312. ISBN: 0374516707.
    Listed reading
  • Jarrell, Randall. “Girl in a Library,” and “Next Day.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Snodgrass, W. D. “Heart’s Needle.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl,” and “A Supermarket in California.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Lowell, Robert. Life Studies New York, NY: Noonday Press, 1972. [especially “Grandparents” and “Last Days.”
    Listed reading
  • Begin Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1999. [Opening poems, “Daddy.”]
    Listed reading
  • WEEK #: 7 · Topics: Sylvia Plath, Ariel · Required readings: Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1999. Especially: “Bee” poems, “Rabbit Catcher.”
    Reading assignment
  • Hughes, Ted. “Thought Fox,” and “Rabbit Catcher.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Sexton, Anne. “The Truth the Dead Know,” “Starry Night,” “All My Pretty Ones,” and “Wanting to Die.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • WEEK #: 8 · Topics: Pablo Neruda, The Heights of Macchu Picchu · Required readings: Neruda, Pablo. The Heights of Macchu Picchu. · ANCILLARY readings: Whitman, Walt. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Reading assignment
  • WEEK #: 9 · Topics: Hilda Doolittle, Trilogy · Required readings: Doolittle, Hilda. Trilogy . New York, NY: New Directions, 1998. Especially: Book I and final scenes of Book III (“Magi”).
    Reading assignment
  • WEEK #: 10 · Topics: Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III · Required readings: Bishop, Elizabeth. Geography III. · ANCILLARY readings: Larkin, Philip. “Toads,” “Church Going,” “Forget What Did,” and “High Windows.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Reading assignment
  • WEEK #: 11 · Topics: Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems : First Third (Poems in Poland in Early Exile in France) · Required readings: Especially: “Campo De Fiori,” “The World,” “Voices of Poor People,” “Dedication,” “Song of Porcelain,” “Child of Europe,” and “Mittlebergheim.” In New and Collected Poems . New York, NY: Ecco, 2003.
    Reading assignment
  • WEEK #: 12 · Topics: Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems : Second Third (Poems in Exile in France and Early in America) · Required readings: Especially: “King Popiel,” “Magpiety,” “Throughout Our Lands,” “With Trumpets and Zithers,” and “Ars Poetica?” In New and Collected Poems . New York, NY: Ecco, 2003. · ANCILLARY readings: Jeffers, Robinson. “Shine, Perishing Republic,” “Hurt Hawk,” “Rock and Hawk,” “Ave Caesar,” and “Carmel Point.” In Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1988.
    Reading assignment
  • WEEK #: 13 · Topics: Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems : Final Third (Poems in America/Old Age) · Required readings: Especially: “Higher Arguments in Favor of Discipline….,” “I Sleep a Lot,” “Poetic State,” “Ferom the Rising of the Sun,” and “Rading the Japanese Poet Issa.” In New and Collected Poems . New York, NY: Ecco, 2003. · ANCILLARY readings: Szymborska, Wislawa. Poems from “The End and the Beginning.” In Poems New and Collected. New York, NY: Harcourt, 1999 [Especially “Heaven”.]
    Reading assignment
Fall 2005 · Literary Interpretation: Literature and Photography: The Image

This course introduces the practice and theory of literary criticism. The seminar focuses on topics such as the history of critical methods and techniques, and the continuity of certain subjects in literary history. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication is a major component of the course. Other components include theory and use of figurative language and reading poetry.

Readings

Fall 2003 · Literary Interpretation: Interpreting Poetry

Topics

  • Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets.
  • Campion, Johnson, Herrick, Herbert, Carew, Waller and Larkin (continued)
  • Marvell (continued)
  • Milton (continued)
  • Wordsworth and Coleridge (continued)
  • Keats, John. In Drear-Nighted December . ———. What the Thrush Said . ———. When I Have Fears . ———. La Belle Dame sans Merci . ———. Ode to a Nightingale . ———. Ode on Melancholy . ———. Ode on a Grecian Urn . ———. To Autumn . ———. Bright Star.
  • Keats (continued)
  • Yeats, William Butler. The Coat . ———. The Choice . ———. Politics . ———. Adam’s Curse . ———. Wild Swans at Coole . ———. Easter 1916 . ———. The Second Coming . ———. A Prayer for my Daughter . ———. Sailing to Byzantium . ———. Leda and the Swan .
  • Yeats (continued)
  • Stevens (continued)
  • Eliot, T. S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock . ———. The Waste Land .
  • Frost, Robert. The Oven Bird . ———. Birches . ———. Stopping by Woods . ———. Acquainted with the Night . ———. Neither Far Out nor In Deep . ———. Design . ———. The Silken Tent . ———. Come In . ———. Never Again Would Birds . ———. The Most of It . ———. Directive .
  • Auden (continued)
  • Larkin, Philip. Church Going . ———. An Arundel Tomb . ———. The Whitsun Weddings . ———. Talking in Bed . ———. Aubade . ———. I Remember . ———. High Windows .
  • None

Readings

Spring 2001 · Literary Interpretation: Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare

Topics

  • Introduction.
  • A Room of One’s Own. Chap. 1-3.
  • A Room of One’s Own. Chap. 4-6.
  • Antony and Cleopatra .
  • Discussion of the use of other texts in Room , including Antony and Cleopatra and possible reports on some of the following: As You Like It ; Aphra Behn’s poems and The Rover ; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ; Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre ; and poems by Christina Rosetti and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
  • Mrs. Dalloway .
  • _Cymbeline.
  • Report on “Virginia Woolf as Shakespeare’s Sister: Chapters in a Woman Writer’s Autobiography,” by Christine Froula (in Women’s Re-visions of Shakespeare , Marianne Novy, ed.): pp. 123-142.
  • Orlando. Chap. 1-3.
  • Report on Sir Thomas Browne, “Hydrotaphia.”
  • Orlando. Chap. 4-6.
  • Orlando .
  • To the Lighthouse , “The Window.”
  • To the Lighthouse , “Time Passes.” Selected Shakespeare sonnets.
  • The Winter’s Tale and To the Lighthouse .
  • Research day: Work in library.
  • The Waves.
  • _The Waves.
  • Three Guineas.
  • Between the Acts.
  • Between the Acts . Student paper reports.
  • Back to A Room of One’s Own . Student paper reports.

Readings

  • Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra . Edited by Michael Neill. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
    Listed reading
  • Shakespeare, William. Cymbeline . Edited by Roger Warren. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
    Listed reading
  • Shakespeare, William. Othello . Edited by Norman Sanders. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
    Listed reading
  • Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale . Edited by Stephen Orgel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941.
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, 1997 [1925].
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich 1973 [1928].
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989 [1929].
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938.
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse . San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989 [1927].
    Listed reading
  • Woolf, Virginia. The Waves . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978 [1931].
    Listed reading
  • Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice . Edited by Donald Gray. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.
    Listed reading
  • Behn, Aphra. The Rover . London: Methuen Drama, 1993.
    Listed reading
  • Behn, Aphra. Selected poems . Edited by Malcolm Hicks. Manchester: Fyfield, 1993.
    Listed reading
  • Brooke, Rupert. The Collected Poems . London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987.
    Listed reading
  • Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre . Edited by Richard J. Dunn. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.
    Listed reading
  • Callaghan, Dympna. “‘Othello was a White Man’: Properties of Race on Shakespeare’s Stage.” In Alternative Shakespeares . Vol. 2. Edited by Terence Hawkes. London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 192-215.
    Listed reading
  • Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Coleridge’s criticism of Shakespeare . Edited by R.A. Foakes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
    Listed reading
  • Froula, Christine. “Virginia Woolf as Shakespeare’s Sister: Chapters in a Woman Writer’s Autobiography.” In Women’s Re-visions of Shakespeare . Edited by Marianne Novy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990, pp. 123-142.
    Listed reading
  • Hussey, Mark. “Living in a War Zone: An Introduction to Virginia Woolf as a War Novelist.” In Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth . Edited by Mark Hussey.Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991.
    Listed reading
  • Johnson. Samuel. Johnson on Shakespeare: Essays and Notes Selected and Set Forth . London: Oxford University Press, 1968.
    Listed reading
  • Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of l’Écriture féminine.” In The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory . Edited by Elaine Showalter. New York: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 361-377.
    Listed reading
  • Keats, John. Complete Poems and Selected Letters . New York: Modern Library, 2001.
    Listed reading
  • Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
    Listed reading
  • Owen, Wilfred. “Mental Cases,” “Dulce et Decorum est,” and “Strange Meeting.” In The Complete Poems and Fragments . Edited by Jon Stallworthy. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.
    Listed reading
  • Pope, Alexander. Selections . Edited by Pat Rogers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
    Listed reading
  • Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” In Blood, Bread, and Poetry . New York: Norton, 1986, pp. 23-75.
    Listed reading
  • Rich, Adrienne. “The Domestication of Motherhood,” “Mother and Son, Woman and Man,” and “Motherhood and Daughterhood.” In Of Woman Born . New York: Norton, 1976, pp. 110-127, 186-217, 218-255.
    Listed reading
  • Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti . Edited by R. W. Crump. 3 vols. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979-1990.
    Listed reading
  • Sassoon, Siegfried. The War Poems . London: Faber and Faber, 1983.
    Listed reading
  • Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain . New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 3-23, 60-157.
    Listed reading
  • Sedgwick, Eve. Between Men . New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
    Listed reading
  • Shakespeare, William. As You Like It . Edited by Michael Hattaway. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
    Listed reading
  • Smith, Barbara. “Racism and Women’s Studies,” and “Healing the Great Divide.” In The Truth That Never Hurts . New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
    Listed reading
  • Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. Selected Poems . Edited by Aidan Day. New York: Penguin , 1991.
    Listed reading
  • Usui, Masami. “The Female Victims of War in Mrs. Dalloway .” In Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth . Edited by Mark Hussey.Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991.
    Listed reading

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: Two subjects in Literature U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-H Can be repeated for credit.

Sources