Seminar in Reading and Interpretation (300-0-21)

Topic

Reading Reading

Instructors

Jeffrey Masten

Meeting Info

University Hall 118: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

We will read a range of texts that are themselves focused on acts of reading, in order to think about the methods of reading and interpretation central to studying literature and language. Our texts include classic pieces of literature about literature: Henry James's novella about a narrator obsessed with an author's hidden papers; Oscar Wilde's tale of a man similarly driven to prove the identity of the tantalizing figure behind Shakespeare's Sonnets (which we will also read); Virginia Woolf's genre-bending story/memoir/polemical essay about her search for earlier women's writing; among other texts. Throughout, we will zero in on what's involved in the crucial act of interpreting language and literature. Where are the boundaries between reading a text, drawing meaning "out of" a text, and "reading into" a text? Where does meaning come from or reside? What is the relation of authors to meaning? What is "close reading" and what are the alternatives? What work can reading and interpretation do for us? Our literary and critical texts in the course will also help us ask other related questions: what's a feminist or a queer reading? What aspects of culture can be read besides (or beside) literature? Through active seminar discussion, the course will prepare students for the conceptual and theoretical questions that are central to studying literature — and reading and writing in the larger world.

Teaching Method

Seminar discussion.

Evaluation Method

Essays.

Class Materials (Required)

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers, ISBN: 9780141439907; William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. Stephen Booth, ISBN: 9780300085068; Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H., (Hesperus Press edition), ISBN: 9781843910312; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, ISBN: 9780156030410; others TBA.

Books available at: Norris Bookstore.

Class Notes

English 300 fulfills a foundational requirement in the English Literature major and minor. The course may not be repeated for major or minor credit.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area