ENG 120-05 - Literary Analysis

4 credits (Spring)

In his essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke proposes that works of literature can help guide us through everyday life by providing readers with “strategies for dealing with situations.” In the spirit of Burke’s approach, we will explore the literary strategies and genres writers have adopted, invented, and deployed to confront personal, social, and political conflicts. The course readings are structured intertextually around Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home; that is, we will begin and end with Bechdel’s book, filling out the middle by reading many of the writers and works alluded to in the graphic memoir-including Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Camus’ The Stranger, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and Wilde’s The Important of Being Earnest-and by examining the critical issues and theories these writers invite us to engage.

Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Phan