Reading Literature: Towards a Poetics of Community

Why read literature? One answer: such reading is not individual but communal. It links readers to each other in aesthetic experience, in ethical and hermeneutic debate, and in appreciation for writers and fellow readers. As we read literary texts from different times, cultures, and genres, we will examine how they anticipate, create, or recreate readerly communities, and how these communities in turn help shape the texts as they are experienced. We will also strive to form our own readerly community—one that is as intellectually generous as possible. We will begin with close analysis of poetry in various forms, from various historical periods. Playwrights and novelists may include such figures as William Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, E.M. Forester, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Richard Wright, Margaret Edson, Wole Soyinka, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, and others. 3 hrs. lect./disc