THE PRACTICE OF CRITICISM | Fall 2008
SCHEDULE
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:20 a.m. - 12:35 p.m., Welles 119.
What is the Practice of Criticism?
Aug. 26 - Hardware
Aug. 28 - Software
What is Literature?
Sep. 2 - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Abrams: Criticism
Sep. 4 - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Barbara Hardy, "Towards a Poetics of Fiction" (myCourses login required)
Sep. 9 - Through the Looking-Glass
Sep. 11 - Through the Looking-Glass; Abrams: Deconstruction, Dialogic Criticism
What is Poetry?
Sep. 16 - Rizzuto (myCourses login required), Chasin, Wayman, Reed, MacLeish (manuscript here), Kearns, Howe/Karpinska; Abrams: New Criticism
Sep. 18 - Metaphors We Live By (1-76); poetry by Dickinson (listen as well as read, if you can), Blake, Angelou (see video here as well), Hughes, Waber and Pimble; Abrams: Figurative Language, Symbol
Sep. 23 - Metaphors (77-125); poetry by Tennyson, Keats, Owen, Hopkins (here and here); Abrams: Meter, Rhyme
Sep. 25 - Metaphors (126-155); poetry by Piercy (here and here), Shakespeare (here and here), Auden
Sep. 30 - poetry by Donne, McKay, Frost (here, here, and here), Shelley, Chasin (see video here as well); Abrams: Sonnet, Convention
Oct. 2 - poetry by Keats, Browning, Eliot; Abrams: Dramatic Monologue
What is Drama?
Oct. 7 - The Importance of Being Earnest; Abrams: Comedy, Tragedy
Oct. 9 - No Class
Oct. 14 - Fall Break
Oct. 16 - The Importance of Being Earnest; Abrams: Queer Theory
What is Narrative?
Oct. 21 - Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado". Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"; Louis Mink, "History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension" (myCourses login required); Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition" (myCourses login required)
Oct. 23 - Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", Pullinger and others, Inanimate Alice, Episodes 1-4; Flight Paths: A Networked Novel (just browse); Abrams: Narrative and Narratology
Genetically Modified Literature
Oct. 28 - Mrs. Dalloway
Oct. 30 - Mrs. Dalloway
Nov. 4 - Mrs. Dalloway
Nov. 6 - Mrs. Dalloway
Nov. 11 - The Hours - novel
Nov. 13 - The Hours - novel
Nov. 18 - The Hours - film
Nov. 20 - The Hours - film
Nov. 25 - The Hours - film
Nov. 26-30 - Thanksgiving Break
Dec. 2 - Lessig, Free Culture (download pdf), "Preface"; Free Culture flash presentation; Helprin,"A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't its Copyright?", etc.; "Nineteenth-Century British and American Copyright Law"
Conclusion
Dec. 4 - What have we learned?
Final Exam
Tuesday, December 16, 8:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.