English 180:
Introduction to Literature

           Fall Semester 2004


Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall
phone: 472-1806
office hours:
     2-4 Thursdays, and by appointment

Email Stephen C. Behrendt

          James Gillray, Humphrey's Shop

Tentative Schedule

Aug 24   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 26   R   Defining "literature": some problems in search of solutions
__________

Aug 31   T   Simple stories / Simple stories?

Gildner, "Sleepy Time Gal"
Atwood, "Happy Endings"
O'Brien, "The Things They Carried" (303)

Sep    2   R   BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY

"Everyday life" in fiction: is it really so mundane?

Kinkaid, "Girl" (289)
Olson, "I Stand Here Ironing" (128)

Sep    3   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    7   T   "Growing up" in fiction; where do we readers situate ourselves?

Updike, "A&P" (74)
Ellison, "Battle Royal" (115)
Rios, "The Secret Lion" (316)

Sep    9   R   A couple of old classics:

Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" (153)
Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (210)

__________

Sep  14   T   A couple of new(er) classics:

Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (187)
Tan, "Two Kinds" (321)

Sep  16   R   BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY

Walking around in fiction

Welty, "A Worn Path" (270)
Achebe, "Dead Man's Path" (279)

__________

Sep  21   T   Looking inside of our experiences

Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (102)
Joyce, "Araby" (181)

Sep  23   R   And now for something completely different:

O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (191)

__________

Sep  28   T   SHORT STORY PAPER DUE IN CLASS TODAY

Novels are long, but what else are they, and why aren't they just very long short stories?

Shelley, Frankenstein

Sep  30   R     Shelley, Frankenstein
__________

Oct    5   T    BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY

Shelley, Frankenstein

Oct    7   R     Shelley, Frankenstein
__________

Oct  12   T     MIDTERM EXAMINATION

Oct  14   R     NO CLASS TODAY — International Conference on Romanticism

Oct  15   F   Last day to change your registration to or from "Pass / Np Pass" status
__________

Oct  19   T     NO CLASS TODAY — Fall Break

Oct  21   R     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" (339) Giovanni, "Poetry" (340); MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (341); Shakespeare, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" (343); Zukofsky, "I walk in the old street" (344); cummings, "l(a" (344)

Figurative language:
Shakespeare, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (357), "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (431); Lorde, "Rooming houses are old women" (434); Piercy, "The Secretary Chant" (438), Donne, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (439), Frost, "Mending Wall" (551); Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," (558), "Park Bench" (559)

__________

Oct  26   T     BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY

Images: the "stuff" of poetry

Williams, "Red Wheelbarrow" (423); Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" (424); Chitwood, "Division" (427); Bishop, "The Fish" (531); Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud" (587); Keats, "When I Have Fears" (565); Heaney, "Mid-Term Break" (557)

Oct  28   R   Language in poetry

Rich, "Living in Sin" (402), "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (463); cummings, "in Just-" (403), "Buffalo Bill's" (539), "anyone lived in a pretty how town" (415); "next to god of course america i" (540); Carroll, "Jabberwocky" (474); Nash, "The Lama" (467); Brooks, "We Real Cool" (536) Auden, "The Unknown Citizen" (389); Burns, "Oh, my love is like a red, red rose" (436)

__________

Nov    2   T   Some poems about art and life

Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" (537); Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn (563); Sexton, "Cinderella" (391) Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts" (523), Brooks, "Sadie and Maud" (456); Djanikian, "Immigrant Picnic" (542)

Nov    4   R   BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY

Some poems on the theme(s) of war and nation

Brooke, "The Soldier" (359); Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est" (428); Levertov, "What Were They Like?" (362), Szymborska, "The End and the Beginning" (362), Tennyson, "Ulysses" (581), Hardy, "The Man He Killed" (376)

__________

Nov    9   T    POETRY PAPER DUE IN CLASS TODAY

Some longer poems to work with

Lowell, "Patterns" (378); Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" (574), Browning, "My Last Duchess" (370)

Nov  11   R   And others

Yeats, "The Second Coming" (591); Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (546); Mirikitani, "Suicide Note" (373)

Nov  12   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  16   T   Reading and thinking about Drama

What is drama? Is drama the same as theatre?
What does drama do? How does it work?
Martin, Beauty (617)
Strindberg, The Stronger (612)

Nov  18   R   Glaspell, Trifles (627)
__________

Nov  23   T   BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY

Ibsen, A Doll House (640)

Nov  25   R — Thanksgiving holiday – no class
__________

Nov  30   T   Ibsen, A Doll House

Dec    2   R   BREAKOUT GROUPS TODAY
                 DRAMAPAPER DUE IN CLASS TODAY

Miller, Death of a Salesman (829)
__________

Dec    7   T   Miller, Death of a Salesman

Dec    9   R   Concluding matters
__________

Final Examination:  1:00 - 3:00 p.m., Friday, 17 December