ENG 120-03 - Literary Analysis (Fall and Spring)

4 credits (Fall and Spring)

An introduction to poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, this course explores the complex interplay between the world, the text, and the writer. Reading a wide range of literary genres and authors, we will be guided by big questions: What is literature? What makes a story a story, a poem a poem? What is the role of the writer? We will also attend to the pleasures of the text, the formal and stylistic particulars of specific works and their writers. Readings will include: stories by Herman Melville, Denis Johnson, Grace Paley, Junot Diaz, and Jhumpa Lahiri; a novel by Don DeLillo, which will facilitate an introduction to critical theory; a cross-section of American poetry, including Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Schuyler, Gwendolyn Brooks, Yusef Komunyakaa, C. K. Williams, John Yau, Kay Ryan, and Frederick Seidel; essays by James Baldwin, Arundhati Roy, Joan Didion, and David Foster Wallace. Graded assignments will include regular short writing assignments, a midterm, class presentations, and two papers.

Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Phan