Fall 2016

UCLR 100: Interpreting Literature

Fall 2016

Dr. Mena Mitrano

Schedule :  Wed. 2:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Office: 114

Office Hours:  by appointment

Office phone:  ext. 372                                

Email: mmitrano@luc.edu

 

Interpreting Literature

Course description and aim

The theme for our UCLR 100 core course in Interpreting Literature is T. S. Eliot.

The aim of the course will be to learn as much as possible about the basic features of literature and the questions attending literary practice through one of the most charismatic American-European innovators--T. S. Eliot.

            This is a foundational course of literary studies. We will read closely and analyze carefully a variety of texts: prose, poetry, and drama. You will learn to master key literary and critical term, and approach the practice of encountering a text meaningfully.

 

Class format and  requirements

Class will meet once a week. My lectures will alternate with discussion.

Regular attendance is a must, as is doing the readings assigned for each class. Active participation is also a must.

You will be responsible to do the assigned readings for each class thoughtfully and with care.

There will be a mid-term exam and in-class tests to verify the level of your work on class preparation (the assigned readings), a final research paper, oral presentations, and  final symposium.

Grading:  commitment (active participation): 30 %; mid-term and in-class tests:  30%;   research paper: 40%.

 

Learning Outcomes:  By the end of the course students are expected to

• Master a basic set of  themes, concerns, conflicts, and desires central to modern American imagination which, however, extend their influence also beyond national boundaries and to world literature;
• Master close reading;
• Become familiar with and master key literary and critical terms useful to the analysis and interpretation  of a literary text;
• Learn to discuss literature in meaningful ways, as a process of individual discovery and in relation to other forms of creativity;
• Perform an effective interpretation of a literary text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Textbooks

• Nina Baym et al., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th edition, vol. D  (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), ISBN: 978-0393934793
• The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition. Apprentice Years, 1905–1918,  Vol. 1. edited by Jewel Spears Brooker and Ronald Schuchard (The Johns Hopkins University Press and Faber & Faber Ltd., 2014). Online access at http://muse.jhu.edu.flagship.luc.edu/books/9781421412948

 

• The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition. The Perfect Critic, 1919–1926,  Vol. 2, edited by Anthony Cuda and Ronald Schuchard (The Johns Hopkins University Press and Faber & Faber Ltd., 2014). Online access at: http://muse.jhu.edu.flagship.luc.edu/books/9781421412948

 

• The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition. Literature, Politics, Belief, 1927–1929,  Vol. 3, edited by Frances Dickey, Jennifer Formichelli, and Ronald Schuchard (The Johns Hopkins University Press and Faber & Faber Ltd., 2015). Online access at: http://muse.jhu.edu.flagship.luc.edu/books/9781421412948

• Critical materials uploaded by the professor on Sakai

• Critical materials uploaded by the professor on reserve in our library

 

Schedule and Content (Part I)

Week 1           Jan. 20                       Introduction

Introductory lecture

 

Week 2           Jan 27                       

Assigned readings:

Michel Foucault, "What is An Author" (Sakai)

T S Eliot:        Dante (1920), Complete Prose of TSE, Vol. 2

                         Dante (1929), Complete Prose of TSE, Vol. 3,

                        "Preface to Dante" (1929), Complete Prose of TSE, Vol. 3

                        "Dante and the Trecento," in Complete Prose of TSE , Vol. 2.

 

Week 3           Papal audience -- no class

At-home reading:  

Walter Benjamin,  "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction"                                                                                                                       (Sakai)

Walter Benjamin, "The Author as Producer" (on Reserve)

Week 4           Feb 10           

Assigned readings:      

TS Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"  The Norton Anthology of American Literature (368)

TS Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Complete Prose of TSE , Vol. 2.

 

Walter Benjamin,  "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction" (Sakai)

Walter Benjamin, "The Author as Producer" (on Reserve)

 

Week 5           Feb 17           

Assigned readings:

TS Eliot:         "The Borderline of Prose," Complete Prose of TSE , Vol. 1

                        "A Note on Ezra Pound," Complete Prose of TSE , Vol. 1

                        "Hamlet," Complete Prose of TSE , Vol. 2

 

Week 6           Feb 24                                     

MIDTERM

Assigned readings:

T. S. Eliot, "Preludes" and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," "Morning at the Window,"  "Aunt Helen" and "Cousin Nancy", in Prufrock and Other Observations pp. 12-17.

 

Week 7           

Fall Semester Break

 

Week 8           

Movie              Midnight in Paris and discussion: Modernism Now

 

Week 9           

DUE:               One-paragraph research paper proposal. It should contain: a) the idea you are going                       to pursue and develop in your final research paper; b) the two critical sources you are                   going             to use (the two sources can be chosen from the ones on reserve)

Assigned readings: 

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land  (Norton Anthology)

 

Week 10         

Assigned Readings:

T. S. Eliot's modernist contemporaries: H.D. and Ezra Pound

Selected readings from H. D. and Pound in The Norton Anthology

 

Week 11         

T. S. Eliot, "Hamlet and his Problems" and  "Metaphysical Poets" (Complete Prose Vol. II)

 

Week 12 

Students present the core of their research papers in progress

 

Week 13         

Final research paper due

 

Week 14 

Final Student Symposium