Literary Analysis

Catalog description

Dots, Dashes, and (Other) Asides: Meaning Otherwise. Works of poetry and prose by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Conrad, Nella Larsen, and Gwendolyn Brooks will be gleaned for the ethical and aesthetic lessons that form and content can offer. Engagement with aspects of formalism, reader response, and historicism will enable us to appreciate the ways in which a particular interpretive framework opens us to possibilities even as it forecloses others. In addition, we will focus very close attention on specific moments in each text when the writer uses dots, dashes, or parentheticals to signal more, or less, than the occasion may require. In doing so, the writer reaches out to us. So, rather than leap over these moments to a foregone conclusion, we will, with Emily Dickinson, view them instead as invitations to "dwell in possibility." Grades to be determined by participation in class discussion, successful completion of three short to mid-length essays, an oral mid-semester exam, and effective group work in various modes. Prequisite: None. ANDREWS