Reading Literature

This course is designed to develop techniques for reading and writing effectively and sensitively about literary works. We will read works across temporal, generic, and national boundaries, exploring the different critical methods of interpretation available to us. The course’s organizing theme is the representation of identity (transgressive, mysterious, transforming, etc.) in literary works, and readings will be structured to allow us simultaneously to develop—and interweave--both the thematic and critical axes of our reading practices. Both aspects of the course will culminate in a reading of Henry James's complex ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, in the context of several different--and sometimes contradictory--critical approaches. From this vantage point at the end of the course we will be able to survey the different historical, cultural, and linguistic methods of interpreting literature. Texts may also include: The Shorter Norton Anthology of Poetry, David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. 3 hrs. lect./disc