Intro to Literary Study (2005)


Due Dates

This is the list of major due dates and readings. (I may also assign informal response papers or give pop quizzes that won't be reflected on this page.)

01/26/05: Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor (selections)

    Sections 1-3, 5.

01/26/05: Ex 1-1: Personal Essay

    In about 3 pages (roughly 750 words), convey your relationship to literature and the English language.

01/28/05: O`Connor, ''A Good Man is Hard to Find''

    Download from "xroads.virginia.edu".

    On your blog, include a link to the permalink for this page, and a trackback should appear here. (That will make it easier for your peers to find your blog entry and comment on it.)

01/28/05: Foster, How to Read Literature... (selections)

    Sections 6-9, 11, 14.

01/28/05: Askin (article on O'Connor)

01/31/05: London, ''To Build a Fire''

01/31/05: Foster, How to Read... (selections)

    Sections 10, 19, 20.

01/31/05: Academic Article on London

    Williamson, Eric Miles. "Jack London's Enduring Appeal." Virginia Quarterly Review 75:4 (1999). 6p. Academic Search Elite EBSCOHost. Seton Hill U. Reeves Lib. 28 Jan 2005. .

    Update: If you did read this article by mistake, don't worry about it. The link below actually goes to a different article -- that's the one I want you to read.

    Pease, Donald E. "Psychoanalyzing the Narrative Logics of Naturalism: The Call of the Wild." Journal of Modern Literature 25:3 (2002). 26p. Academic Search Elite EBSCOHost. Seton Hill U. Reeves Lib. 28 Jan 2005. .

    Link supplied by EBSCOHost: http://reeveslib.setonhill.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=11240608&loginpage=login.asp

    Discussion prompt: How does this article differ from the one on Flannery O'Connor?

02/02/05: Ex 1-2: Comparative Analysis

    Read three articles (to be chosen by your instructor), and assess their relative merits as sources for a literary research paper. (2-3 pages, with a properly-formatted MLA works cited list.)

    Article 1 Finnegan, Lora. "London in Oakland - attractions of Jack London's hometown in Oakland, California." Sunset
    Article 2 Askin, Denise T. "Anagogical Vision and Comedic Form in Flannery O'Connor: The Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable." Renascence
    Article 3 Barash Nanelle R. and David P. Barash, "Biology, Culutre, and Persistent Literary Dystopias." Chronicle of Higher Education

02/02/05: Various Creative Writing Tips

    02/04/05: Forster, ''The Machine Stops''

    02/04/05: Academic Article on Forster (Postponed)

      Since I had to spend some time with the Spy Kids this week, finding this article slipped through the cracks. But the short story is still on the agenda.

    02/07/05: Ex 1-3: Original Short Story

      Write a short story, on any theme (3-4 pages).

    02/07/05: Poetry Selections

      Farrell & Koch Sleeping on the Wing (Selections, TBA)

    02/09/05: Foster, How to Read... (selections)

      Section 4, Interlude (p. 82).

    02/09/05: Various Poems 1

      (A selection of poems for handful of authors, TBA.)

    02/11/05: Coleridge, ''On Donne's Poetry''

      With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
      Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
      Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
      Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.

      Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

    02/14/05: Coleridge, ''The Raven''

      (This is not Edgar Allan Poe's poem of the same name.)

    02/14/05: Donne, Holy Sonnets, ''Death, be not proud''

      Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
      Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
      For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
      Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
      From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
      Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
      And soonest our best men with thee do go,
      Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
      Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
      And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
      And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
      And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
      One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
      And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

      John Donne
      http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem658.html

    02/14/05: Academic Articles on Poetry

      Update: I passed out printouts in class Monday.

    02/14/05: Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI: ''Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds''

      Let me not to the marriage of true minds
      Admit impediments. Love is not love
      Which alters when it alteration finds,
      Or bends with the remover to remove.
      O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
      That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
      It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
      Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
      Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
      Within his bending sickle's compass come;
      Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
      But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
      If this be error and upon me prov'd,
      I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

    02/14/05: Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

      Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
      Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
      Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
      And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
      Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
      And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
      And every fair from fair sometime declines,
      By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
      But thy eternal summer shall not fade
      Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
      Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
      When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
      So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
      So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

    02/16/05: Ex 1-4: Sonnet Analysis and Abuse

      Analyze a sonnet by an established literary figure. Write a parody that fulfills certain requirements that I will specify. Write a brief reflection. (3 pages.)

      Update: Parody sonnet must involve specific references to Seton Hill University culture (speciric current or recent events); must contain a surprise or sudden twist on the appropriate lines; and must follow the same rhyme structure as the original which you parody (that is, if the original rhymes "true", "love," "above," and "you" (abba), then yours must follow the same rhyme scheme, although you could rhyme "give," "breath," "death," and "live" (still abba).

      The deadline for Eye Contact (the literary magaizine) is Friday. If you want your poem to be eligible for inclusion, don't post it on your weblog (or publish it anywhere else). The Eye Contact theme is "Consequences."

      Mark up a copy of the original poem to show the rhyme scheme.

    02/16/05: Hácová, ''Love, Life and Death in Coleridge's Poem 'The Raven'''

    02/18/05: Foster, How to Read... (selections)

      Interlude (p. 185), sections 21 & 22.

    02/18/05: The Tempest (Acts I & II)

      02/21/05: A Clever Blank-verse Entry on Your Blog

        Ten lines, at least, of bloggy blank verse, please.

      02/21/05: The Tempest (III, IV & V)

        02/23/05: Beauregard, ''New Light on Shakespeare's Catholicism: Prospero's Epilogue in The Tempest''

          Beauregard, David N. ''New Light on Shakespeare's Catholicism: Prospero's Epilogue in The Tempest.'' Renascence 49.3 (1997) 16p. Academic Search Elite. Reeves Library, Seton Hill Unviersity. http://reeveslib.setonhill.edu 21 Feb 2005.

        02/25/05: Ex 1-5: Tempest Presubmission

          Submit a presubmission report for Ex 1-6 (a researched critical essay on The Tempest). (2-3 pages.)

        02/25/05: Cantor, ''Shakespeare -- 'For All Time'?''

          Deconstruction taught critics to look not only for what is expressed in a text but for what is hidden or suppressed as well. The New Historicism makes a political issue of such acts of suppression, always looking for the way minority positions have been silenced in literature. But to comprehend this approach fully, we must look more carefully at its intellectual heritage.

          To understand the New Historicism, we must then begin from the fact that it is a species of historicism, a doctrine developed in the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the thinking of Hegel. Historicism is the view that all thought is historically determined--not just historically conditioned, as no rational person would deny, but historically determined, a much more specific and hence questionable claim. For historicists, all human beings are creatures of their historical moment, bound by the horizons of their age. Anyone living in the Middle Ages must necessarily think in a distinctively medieval manner.

          Cantor, Paul. "Shakespeare -- 'For all Time'?" Public Interest 110 (1993) 15p. Reeves Library, Seton Hill University reeveslib.setonhill.edu 21 Feb 2004.

        02/28/05: Dabydeen, ''On Samaroo's Tempus Est...''

          For a brief introduction to postcolonial readings of The Tempest, first look at this informal (non-academic) essay written for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival: "The Tempest" (by Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix).

          Dabydeen, David. "On Samaroo's Tempus Est: The Earliest Colonial Rewriting of Shakespeare's The Tempest." EnterText 1:1 (2000). 17p. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/faculty/arts/EnterText/Dabydeen.pdf 21 Feb 2004.

        02/28/05: Fuchs, ''Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest''

          Fuchs, Barbara. “Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest.” Shakespeare Quarterly 48.1, Spring 1997: 45-62

        03/02/05: Lenninger, "The Miranda Trap: Sexism and Racism in Shakespeare's Tempest"

          (Handed out in class Feb 28)

          Thus in The Tempest, written some fifty years after England's open participation in the slave trade, the island's native is made the embodiment of lust, disobedience, and irremediable evil, while his enslaver is presented as a God-figure. It makes an enormous difference in the expectations raised, whether one speaks of the moral obligatons of Prospero-the-slave-owner toward Caliban-his-slave, or speaks of the moral obligations of Prospero-the-God-figure toward Caliban-the-lustful-Vice-figure.... This kind of symbolism is damaging because it deflects our attention away from the fact that real counterparts to Caliban, Prospero, and Miranda exit -- that real slaves, real slave owners, and real daughters existed in 1613 for Shakespeare's countemporaries and have continued to exist since then. (290-92)

          Leininger, Lorie Jerrell. "The Miranda Trap: Sexism and Racism in Shakespeare's Tempest." The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Eds. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1983. 285-94.

        03/02/05: Bloom, Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human (selection)

          (Handed out in class Feb 28)

          Caliban, a poignant but cowardly (and murderous) half-human creature (his father a sea devil, whether fish or amphibian) has become an African-Carribean heroic Freedom Fighter. This is not even a weak misreading; anyone who arrives at that view is simply not interested in reading the play at all. Marxists, multiculturalists, feminists, nouveau historicists -- the usual suspects -- know their causes but not Shakespeare's plays. (662)

        03/04/05: Blogging Portfolio I

          03/04/05: Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves 1

            (pages xi-34)

          03/14/05: Ex 1-6: Tempest Critical Essay

            (Delayed from 04 Mar.)

            Present the finished version of the literary research essay you started in Ex 1-5. (3-4 pages, not including the works cited list.)

          03/14/05: Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves 2

            (35-102)

          03/16/05: Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves 3

            (103-176)

          03/18/05: Mansfield, ''The Garden Party''

            In section 27 of Foster, How to Read.... (Read the rest of the section, too.)

          03/21/05: Ex 2-1: SWE Essay

            Essay on standard written English (SWE). (2-3 pages.) Be witty, interesting, scholarly, personal, factual, or funny. But be correct, too!

          03/21/05: Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves 4

            (176-204)

          03/23/05: Ex 2-2: Original Sonnet

            Write an original sonnet. Provide a half page of structural and thematic analysis. Show the thinking that went into your poem. Explain some of your goals, and the choices you made in order to reach those goals.

          03/30/05: Ex 2-0: Entrepreneurial Activity

            Use your English skills to apply for something that you want -- the job or internship you want this summer, job you want when you graduate, or the job you want ten years after that. Instead of a job, you might want to go to graduate school, volunteer for a charity, or get a grant from a government agency or philanthropic foundation.

          03/30/05: McBride, The Color of Water

            04/01/05: Miller, Death of a Salesman

              04/01/05: The (Rescheduled) Commonly Confused Words Test

                Update, 20 Mar: The site is still down, so we'll delay this assignment until I can find a replacement.

                Update, 21 Mar: I fixed the problem with the link. You already have important assignments due on the 23rd and the 30th, so I've rescheduled this for April 1.

                Take The Commonly Confused Words Test (40 questions).

                Print out and submit the page that shows your results. We'll go over each question in class.

                We're doing this to start a discussion -- you won't be graded on how many you get right. In fact you're welcome to consult any source while you take it (so long as you fess up). You're welcome to blog about this, if you like.

              04/06/05: Ex 2-3: Close Reading

                Explicate a difficult passage or analyze a recurring theme found in a full-length work (novel or play) that we have studied this term. Avoid summary, but demonsrate how your theme or passage relates to the rest of the work. (3 pages.)

              04/06/05: Jerz, Technology in American Drama (selection)

                Handout.

              04/08/05: Clarvoe, PICK UP AX

              04/11/05: Stephenson, The Diamond Age

                Pages 1-197. Cyberpunk Cyborg = cybernetic + organism (modified humans) Near future Urban setting No space aliens Dystopia Just as “The Ant and the Grasshopper” is not “about” insects, cyberpunk is not “about” robots or software it is --- “about” human beings. Neo-Victorians Page 72 Class “Equity Lords” = capitalists Technology · Skull gun (metaphor – what’s in his head?) · Nano mites battling (searching for book) · New island – space and time meaningless · What really matters is ideas (Middle Kingdom)

              04/13/05: Stephenson, The Diamond Age 2

                Read up to page 295.

              04/13/05: Foster, How to Read... (selections)

                Sections 16 & 17.

              04/15/05: Stephenson, The Diamond Age 3

                Finish the book.

              04/15/05: Foster, How to Read... (selections)

                Sections 12, 13, 15, 18.

              04/18/05: Ex 2-4: Term Paper Presubmission

                Supply a thesis paragraph, outline, direct quotations, preliminary conclusion, and works cited list for your upcoming term paper. (2-3 pages.)

              04/18/05: Hayles, ''Is Utopia Obsolete?''

                Hayles, N. Catherine. "Is Utopia Obsolete?" Peace Review 14.2 (2002): 7p. Academic Search Elite EBSCOhost. Seton Hill U. Reeves Lib. 20 Jan 2005. <http://search.epnet.com>.

              04/22/05: Term Paper (First Draft)

                A complete draft of your term paper, including a perfectly-formatted MLA works cited list. Bring four copies to class. (8-10 pages, not counting the works cited list or reflective statement.)

              04/25/05: Ex 2-5: Peer Review (in class)

                Rescheduled from Friday.

                Review three peer term papers in class today, and write a paragraph or two on each. E-mail each review to me separately, with the following subject line: "150 PeerLastName reviewed by YourLastName." (About 200 words per review.)

              05/02/05: Term Paper (Final Draft)

                Final, polished draft of your term paper, revised to incorporate feedback you received on your first draft and your oral presentation. (10-12 pages, not including work cited or reflective statement.)

              05/04/05: Blogging Portfolio II

                05/04/05: Edson, Wit

                  05/06/05: Ex 2-6: Response to Wit

                    Write a thoughtful response to Wit, demonstrating the analytical, grammatical, and creative skills you have developed this term. Outside research is encouraged, but optional. (3 pages.)

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