Time Schedule:
Charles P Laporte
ENGL 494
Seattle Campus
Survey of current issues confronting literary critics today, based on revolving themes and topics. Focuses on debates and developments affecting English language and literatures, including questions about: the relationship of culture and history; the effect of emergent technologies on literary study; the rise of interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities.
Class description
For AUTUMN 2007: What We Talk About When We Talk About Genre. This course is designed as an advanced introduction to modern genre theory. In conjunction with a relatively small number of literary texts, we will consider the usefulness of such twentieth-century genre theorists as Benedetto Croce, Vladimir Propp, Mikhail Bakhtin, Northrop Frye, Fredric Jameson, Mary Eagleton, and Pierre Bourdieu. Our literary texts will derive from several genres, and proceed more or less chronologically from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, that is, from Shakespeare’s drama The Tempest (c. 1611) to Christopher Guest’s “mocumentary” cult film This is Spinal Tap (1986).Students will be expected to write two short papers, and to participate in a group presentation on a literary genre that will not be otherwise covered in class: encyclopedia entries, epic poetry, graphic novels, fan fiction, etc. Other literary readings will likely include the following authors: Alexander Pope, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, Hannah Crafts, E. M. Forster, and Evelyn Waugh.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
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Class assignments and grading
