<p>Term: Autumn 2010 Time and venue: Thursday 8-9:30, Room 322.</p><p>Title of course: Introduction to English Literary Studies</p><p>Type : Lectures Code: BAN 1310 Hours per week: 2 Credit value: 3</p><p>Instructors: Kállay G. Katalin ([email protected]), Kiricsi Ágnes and Péti Miklós</p><p>Office hours: Wednesday 12 – 1:30</p><p>Prerequisites: seminar course BAN 1311 </p><p>Course status: compulsory for all students of English (and a prerequisite for all further literature courses)</p><p>Goals: This course introduces students to the basic resources, terminology, questions and theories of English literary scholarship, while also providing an opportunity for first-year students to get acquainted with staff members and their specialisations.</p><p>Course Schedule : </p><p>Lecture Topic</p><p>1 (09.16.) What is Literature? (Kállay) </p><p>2 (09.23.) Questions of Genre (Péti)</p><p>3 (09.30.) Rhetorical Devices (Kiricsi)</p><p>4 (10.07.) Poetry and Versification 1: Basic Concepts (Kiricsi) </p><p>5 (10.14.) Poetry and Versification 2: Textual Analyses (Kállay) </p><p>6 (10.21.) Narratives 1: Short Fiction: E. Hemingway: “Indian Camp” (Judit Nagy)</p><p>7 (11.04.) Narratives 2: A novel: F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (Kállay)</p><p>8 (11.11.) Drama 1: Origins (Péti) </p><p>9 (11.18.) Drama 2: Modern Drama: Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (Kállay) </p><p>10 (11.25.) Literature and The Bible (TBA)</p><p>11 (12.02.) Literary Theory 1: from the beginnings to the 18th century (Péti)</p><p>12 (12.09.) Literary Theory 2: Practical Criticism (Kállay)</p><p>13 (12.16.) Conclusion (Kállay) Methods of instruction: Lectures and individual study. </p><p>Required and recommended reading: Required reading: William Wordsworth: “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud” John Keats: “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” Edgar Allan Poe: “Annabel Lee” Emily Dickinson: 712. [Because I could not stop for Death] Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How Do I Love Thee?” William Butler Yeats: “Among Schoolchildren”, “Sailing to Byzantium” W. H. Auden: “The Shield of Achilles” William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”, “This Is Just to Say” E.E. Cummings: [1/a] Robert Frost: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Wallace Stevens: “Phosphor Reading by His Own Light” Owen Sheers: “Leavings”, “May Ball”</p><p>Ernest Hemingway: “Indian Camp” F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire Genesis 1-4 and the “Song of Solomon” from the King James Bible (= Authorized Version, 1611) Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Young Goodman Brown” “Theory in Practice: A Working Model” Chapter 2.2 , in: Rob Pope: The English Studies Book (Routledge, 2002), pp. 76-82. The definition of 125 literary terms from The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms: see: glossary Lecture handouts Departmental guidelines on the writing of literary and other essays (copies available in the Department Library)</p><p>Assessment: written end-term examination (short terminological questions and a short essay) Introduction to English Literary Studies: LECTURE 1.</p><p>WHAT IS LITERATURE?</p><p>No “correct” definition.</p><p>We all have an intuitive sense of the word – but our experiences, readings and studies constantly change our image.</p><p>If the definition is rigid – something will be missing: the joy of finding it out, the beauty of the discovery! </p><p>Webster’s Dictionary: origin: latin littera ‘letter’</p><p>1. the profession of an author; production of writings, especially of imaginative prose, verse, etc.</p><p>2. a) all writings in prose or verse, especially those of an imaginative or critical character, without regard to their excellence: often distinguished from scientific writing, news reporting, etc.</p><p> b) all the writings of a particular time, country, region, as: “American literature”</p><p> c) all of such writings considered as having permanent value, excellence of form, great emotional effect, etc.</p><p> d) all the writings dealing with a particular subject</p><p>Definition: cannot contain the experience. When we want to define something objectively: it is distanced, seems far away, not in the ‘here and now’ of our moments.</p><p>But literature can be experienced all around us! We live among narratives (our life-story, the story of our day, a story that happened to a person we know) poetry (when we appreciate the beauty of something: sunshine, a smile, a fraction of light) drama (constantly in tensions of our conversations)</p><p>One of the most important characteristics of the literary experience: surprise, an unexpected discovery that brings a moment to life, and by this, it possibly changes our perspective, our view of the world.</p><p>Not always pleasant! A shock can also be a surprise! (Examples from everyday life)</p><p>Maybe it is not the “what?” but the “how?” that we are looking for when trying to define literature: more precise, more exciting question: HOW DOES LITERATURE HAPPEN?</p><p>Literature always happens in the ever-present ‘here and now’ of a distinguished and unique moment; it is always a particular, personal experience, connected to a certain concrete situation, which cannot be generalized. It can still be shared with other people – so through the particular, it might become universal.</p><p>Question to think about: Why do we read literature, how does it relate to our lives?</p><p>- 2 - Do we read --- in order to escape from immediate reality, our own problems?</p><p>--- or in order to be able to face immediate reality, our own problems?</p><p>Literature (and in this sense art in general) can be thought of as a means of escape from life into some other imaginary world – something like a drug that helps us to forget about our miseries for a short time (poison)</p><p>But: it can also be seen as a remedy to cure us, restore our way of seeing the world, our spiritual health</p><p>Greek word: PHARMAKON means both! (Plato, Derrida)</p><p>Example:</p><p>The Red Wheelbarrow</p><p>So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens </p><p>(William Carlos Williams)</p><p>And so much depends upon how we see it! The image can suggest something important and beautiful or something ugly, insignificant. American rural life (idyll or despair?) Colors: red, blue, white. Chicken: alive – poem: alive? </p><p>Letters and words might be dull, dead, unimportant -- but if they surprise us in some way, disturb us in some way, they might come alive! Matter of life and death (for the words). How about us?</p><p>More texts to look at:</p><p>William Carlos Williams: “This Is Just to Say”</p><p>Ezra Pound: “In a Station of the Metro”</p><p>Hemingway: In Our Time, Chapter III.</p><p>E.E. Cummings: [l/a]</p>