ENG 301

Criticism

Barbara Cole

TTh     11:00 - 12:20

Reg. No. 371202

Or

TTh     12:30 - 1:50

Reg. No. 430986

As a required course for English majors, ENG-301 is designed as a survey course that will provide you with 1) an essential understanding of the history of criticism; as well as, 2) a range of approaches to inform your future literary study.  Beginning with Aristotle and concluding with contemporary theorists such as Barthes, Kristeva, and Said, our focus will be on the major thinkers from each era who have questioned and thereby shaped criticism including Pope, Burke, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge, Arnold, Wilde, Eliot, Ransom, Adorno, and Frye.  Our discussions will explore key questions involving the function and future of criticism.  What purpose, if any, does criticism serve?  Who is its intended audience?  How should we approach criticism for it to be meaningful?  Why do we need criticism in the end and might we do away with it?

 

 The primary text for this class will be Criticism: Major Statements, 4^th edition, edited by Charles Kaplan and William Anderson, Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2000. (ISBN: 0–312–13745–1).

 

 Course requirements include regular attendance; engaged reading; active participation; two shorter papers enacting close readings; and, an extended final paper applying the critical approaches we have analyzed to a literary text of the student’s choosing.

ENG 303

Chaucer

Dr. Amy Nestor

TTh     3:30 - 4:50

Reg. No.  344889                           (E)

Our focus will be the Canterbury Tales, which we will read in the original Middle English.  To ease ourselves into the language and some of the literary conventions of the time, we will begin with some of Chaucer’s earlier, shorter lyrics through which the language, with some instruction and practice, will become familiar and increasingly transparent to us.  From there, we will move directly into the Tales.  As we do so, we will attend primarily to the work itself in its stylistic variety and radicalism; its complex intertwining of political, religious, and social issues; its creation of something akin to modern deep character; and its play with poetic form.  To facilitate our understanding of all these matters, we will look, as well, at Chaucer’s sources, including earlier versions of the tales from which he made his own and some of the writings in poetics, theology, philosophy, and social critique that influenced him.  Probable works--Boccaccio, Dante, Boethius, the French Romance of the Rose and the related Quarrel about Women, the frequently scandalous fabliaux, St. Augustine, and John Wycliffe.  We will also turn, at times, to contemporary criticism of Chaucer--from poetics to feminism to historicism to queer theory--to help us figure his place in both his own world and our own.  Thus, although Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales will be our primary focus, students can expect to receive some grounding in the literary tradition of the late Middle Ages, a grounding that will serve all future literary studies.  Topics that we doubtless find ourselves discussing:  Power--God--Sex--Desire--Character-formation--the Law--Poetics--Humor--Gender--Narrative Theory--Sacrifice--Chivalry--Cruelty--Laughter--Excess--Love. . .and what you will. . .

 

Format:  Lecture and discussion.

 

Requirements:  Very regular attendance, periodic response papers and language quizzes, a short mid-term essay, a longer final essay, and a final exam.