25 January 2007
Topic: Course Overview
Welcome to EL 312, "Literary Criticism."
The course website is located at http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DennisJerz/EL312. I will update the online syllabus periodically, so the printout I gave you is only for your convenience on the first day of classes. The official version of the syllabus is the online version (though I will notify you in advance of any significant changes).
Topics for today:
- Review syllabus.
What is literary criticism?
How does it differ from plot summary and close readings?
Discuss analysis vs. and synthesis/evaluation (see "Writing that Demonstrates Thinking Ability").
While the class meets on Thursday, note that preparatory assignments are due by midnight on Monday and
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What is Literary Criticism?
When I took a course called "Critical Theory Since Plato," I wrote in my notebook what the instructor said on the first day. Literary criticism is not something that you know, it is something that you do.
But how does one "do criticism"?
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Overview of Critical Issues
This is far from an exhaustive list of issues that are important to literary criticism. But it will serve to organize the material that we study.
- Canonicity and Aesthetics
Intent of the Author
Formalism
Reader-Response
Mimesis/Realism
Intertextuality
Psychological
Poststructural
Historical-Cultural
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Key Concept: RRRR (Read, React, Respond, Reflect)
A four-step process that helps you prepare for a productive class discussion using the SHU weblog system.
We will start out slowly at first, only completing a part of the RRRR process, so that the whole class has the chance to adjust to it. Once we start the full process, for each item or group of items marked as "Text" on the course outline, Read the assignment, react by posting an "Agenda Item" (see FAQ entry) on Monday, respond to 2-4 items posted by your peers (sometime before class) and reflect on the readings via your Critical Exercise (a 2-3 page essay, due Wednesday). You are encouraged, but not required, to post your Critical Exercises online.
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Key Concept: Agenda Items (RRRR Sequence)
This course asks you to read a small number of literary works, and a large number of critical essays. We will keep returning to the same set literary works time and time again, always with a new critical focus. Keeping up with the readings is crucial. Studies have shown that regular weekly quizzes are very effective for keeping students on track, but I hate spending class time on quizzes, and I hate marking them. I'm sure you don't enjoy taking them, either. For that reason, we will use agenda items.
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Key Concept: Rhetoric
Rhetoric the use of language to persuade. One of the three most important of the "liberal arts" (those skills that free citizens were expected to have). Classical rhetoric recognizes three main ways to persuade. When persuading, we can rouse the readers' emotions (pathos), appeal to their sense of justice (ethos), or rely upon logic (logos).
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Peer Blogging
Recent activity on the blogs of all students in this course. This page will update regularly, though it won't always show the most recent entries. To force an update, post a comment anywhere on this website or the NMJ portal.50 Recent Peer Entries Continue reading...
EL 312 Roster
Tiffany Brattina
Gina Burgese
Denamarie Ercolani
Diana Geleskie
Kevin Hinton
Karissa Kilgore
Vanessa Kolberg
Valerie Masciarelli
Kevin McGinnis
David Moio
Sue Myers
Jason Pugh
Lorin Schumacher
Mitchell Steele
Erin Waite
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Assigned Text: Keats, ''Ode on a Grecian Urn''
In Keesey, Appendix A. We will read this in class.
You may wish to start reading Appendix B, ''Benito Cereno'' and Postmortem for a Postmodernist.
If you have not read The Tempest before, you should read it before we start discussing it.
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