ENGL 170 - Approaches to Literary Studies

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Each section explores a central issue, such as “the idea of a literary period,” “canons and the study of literature,” “nationalism and literary form,” or “gender and genre” (contact the department office for current descriptions). Assignments focus on the development of skills for research and writing in English, including the use of secondary sources and the critical vocabulary of literary study. The Department.

Topic for 2019/20a: Tools for Reading Narrative. Everyone today has a story to tell. But are all stories worth telling? What makes for a good story? What’s the difference between telling stories and telling lies? In order to come to terms with the “narrative turn” in the arts and sciences we adapt a dueling approach: the first technical and the second imaginary. On the one hand, we pillage useful studies of narrative from the ancients to the moderns. Here our goal is to acquire a durable set of tools and concepts: plot, description, narrator, free indirect style, focalization, storyworlds, etc. On the other hand, to test these lenses, we examine (and perhaps create) fictional texts that both bind and unravel narrative conventions. These might include: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City, Franz Kafka’s “The Burrow,” Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel Ghost World, and short stories by Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Acker, Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Mary Butts, and others. Heesok Chang.

Open to first-year students and sophomores, and to others by permission; does not satisfy the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Three 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS