English 180:
Introduction to Literature
Fall Semester 2014
Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall
phone: 472-1806
office: 12:30-2:00 TR
and by appointment
James Gillray, Humphrey's Shop
Tentative Schedule
--- Page numbers refer to Literature: A Portable Anthology, Third Edition. Eds. Gardner, Lawn, Ridl and Schakel.
Aug 26 T Introduction: What is “literature”? Who decides?
Why do we tell stories? What sort of stories do we tell?
What sorts of stories do we prefer, and why?
Aug 28 R Defining “literature”: some problems in search of solutions
“The Wooden Bowl” [handout]
Eggers, “The Certain Young People” [handout]
Gildner, “Sleepy Time Gal” [handout]
Sep 2 T Simple stories / Simple stories?
Atwood, “Happy Endings” (326)
O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” (344)
Sep 4 R “Everyday life” in fiction: is it really so mundane?
Kinkaid, “Girl” (380)
Olson, “I Stand Here Ironing” (223)
Tan, “Two Kinds” (382)
Sep 5 F Last day to drop this course without it appearing on your permanent record. After today a “W” will appear on your record if you drop the course.
Sep 9 T “Growing up” in fiction; where do we readers situate ourselves?
Updike, “A&P” (294)
Ellison, “Battle Royal” (230)
Alexie, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” (402)
Sep 11 R A couple of old classics:
Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” (3)
Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado” (14)
Sep 16 T A couple of new(er) classics:
Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1122)
Jin, “Saboteur” (393)
Sep 18 R Walking around in fiction
Welty, “A Worn Path” (216)
Bambara, “The Lesson” (330)
Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” (376)
Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street” (391)
Sep 23 T Looking inside of our experiences
Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (76)
Lahiri, “Interpreter of Maladies” (407)
Sep 25 R no class today – International Conference on Romanticism
Sep 30 T Short Story paper due in class today
And now for something completely different:
O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (276)
Oct 2 R Novels are long and novellas are shorter, but what else are they, and why aren’t they just very long short stories?
Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Oct 7 T Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Oct 9 R Midterm examination on fiction
Oct 14 T Reading and thinking about poetry.
How do we know what is a poem? DO we?
How do poems work? What do poems do?
Moore, “Poetry” (546); Shakespeare, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (454); Williams, “This Is Just to Say” (544); Zimmer, “The Poets’ Strike” (617)
Oct 16 R Figurative language:
Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (453); Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (455); Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” (517); Frost, “Birches” (537); Francis, “The Base Stealer” (558); Hughes, “Mother to Son” (559); Pastan, “love poem” (607); Burns, “A Red, Red Rose” (475); Hirshfield, “To Drink” (681)
Oct 17 F Last day to change your registration to or from “Pass / No Pass” status
Oct 21 T no class today — Fall Break
Oct 23 R Images: the “stuff” of poetry
Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (542); Bishop, “The Fish” (566); Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (476); Keats, “When I Have Fears” (490); Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (540); Heaney, “Mid-Term Break” (627); Oliver, “First Snow” (620); Kooser, “Student” ( 629); Troupe, “A Poem for ‘Magic’” (643); Ruefle, “Barbarians” (670); Lee, “Eating Alone” (692)
Oct 28 T Language in poetry
Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (601); cummings, “in Just-“ (556), “next to god of course america i” (557); Brooks, “We Real Cool” (578); Keats, “To Autumn” (493); Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” (565); Ransom, “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” (554)
Oct 30 R Some poems about art and life
Herrick, “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” (459); Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (484); Sexton, “Cinderella” (597); Broumas, “Cinderella” (659); Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts” (564), Brooks, “The Bean Eaters” (456); Welch, “Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat” (631); Garcia, “Why I Left the Church” (635); Hogan, “Crow Law” (650); Soto, “Moving Away” (671); Baca, “Family Ties” (672); Lee, “Visions and Interpretations” (693)
Nov 4 T Some poems on the theme(s) of war and nation:
Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est” (428); Tennyson, “Ulysses” (581); Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” (577); Young Bear, “From the Spotted Night” (661); Nye, The Small Vases from Hebron” (668).
Nov 6 R Some longer poems to work with
Shelley, “To a Skylark” (487), Browning, “My Last Duchess” (503); Boland, “The Pomegranate” (645); Song, “Heaven” (688)
Nov 11 T And others
Yeats, “The Second Coming” (591); Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (546); Barnes, “Return to La Plata, Missouri” (613)
Nov 13 R And finally
Stafford, “Traveling through the Dark” (574); Stern, “The Dog” (586); Kumin, “The Sound of Night” (585); Thomas, “Fern Hill” (575)
Nov 14 F Last day to withdraw from this course and still have a “W” appear on your permanent record instead of a conventional letter grade.
Nov 18 T Poetry paper due in class today
Reading and thinking about Drama
What is drama? Is drama the same as theatre?
What does drama do? How does it work?
Nov 20 R Glaspell, Trifles (627)
Nov 25 T Ibsen, A Doll House (850)
Nov 27 R no class today — Thanksgiving holiday
Dec 2 T Ibsen, A Doll House
Dec 4 R Modern and experimental theatre
Ives, Sure Thing
Nottage, POOF
Dec 9 T Concluding matters this week, evaluations, and tearful partings
— aka Dead Week
Dec 11 R
__________
Final Examination: 10:00 to noon , Monday 15 December