Time Schedule:
Timothy J Welsh
ENGL 200
Seattle Campus
Techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature. Examines some of the best works in English and American literature and considers such features of literary meaning as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense. Emphasis on literature as a source of pleasure and knowledge about human experience.
Class description
The intention of this course is to offer techniques and practice reading and enjoying literature. Specifically, we will explore approaches to literature that emphasize what is said in the text itself rather than what it "symbolizes" or its "deeper meaning." To help us, we will read a selection of texts that, just like we will, grapple with the task of interpretation and the stakes of reading as they bear on our experience of reality.
Texts will likely include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, H.D., T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, James Agee, Mark Danielewski, and Paul Auster.
Requirements will include 2, 5-7 page papers, occasional short writing tasks, and active participation in class and in online discussion groups. This class fulfills both VLPA and W credits.
Texts
Paul Auster. City of Glass. [10: 0140097317]
Mark Danielewski. House of Leaves. [10: 0375703764]
Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter. [10:0743487567]
James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. [10: 0618127496]
Course Pack with essays, excerpts, poetry, etc.
Student learning goals
Analyze a text by sticking closely to the work at hand and moving intelligently from the specifics to the general.
Address works of literature as their own best sources for critique.
Assess the role of interpretation in our engagement with a piece of literature and in our lived experience of the real world.
General method of instruction
online and offline group discussion, lecture.
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
online discussion groups short, in-class writing one-page analysis papers 2 5-7 page research papers
