West Chester University
Lit 165 Syllabus
ENG 020 Syllabus
About the Instructor
Notes for Introduction to Literature
Notes on the Art of Fiction: Early Forms
The Short Story
Graduate Students Define the Art of Fiction
Bartleby the Scrivener - Questions for Analysis
Notes on Melville
Critical Approaches to Literature
A Vocabulary for Short Fiction and Beyond
Study Guide for Fiction Exam
The Craft of Poetry
A Catalogue of Poems
Notes on Langston Hughes
Lines of Continuity
Poetry Take Home Exam
The Birth of Drama
A Doll House
Study Guide for the Final Exam
A Glossary of Literary Terms
Notes for Basic Writing (ENG 020)
The Rhetorical Situation
Essay #1 Assignment Sheet
Workshop Assignment for Essay#1
How to Write Descriptively
Building a Thesis
Overcoming Reader's Block
Analysis and the Culture of Advertising
Essay #2 Assignment Sheet
Writing Effective Introductions
Writing Effective Conclusions
Politics and the English Language
Propaganda: A Sample Analysis
Midterm Exam: Tips for Writing on the Spot
Notes on Rational Argument
Mapping the Parts of an Arugment
Announcements for LIT 165
Assignments for LIT 165
Announcements for ENG 020
Assignments for ENG 020
A Weblog for LIT 165
A Weblog for ENG 020
Join the Conversation
LIT 165 Discussion List
ENG 020 Discussion List
LINES OF CONTINUITY:
Poetry and Other Literary Genres Share ~~
has much in common with fiction.
- Poetry, like
fiction, is imaginative literature, a creative work of the imagination. Its
author has created a world we can enter into that will at some level bring
us back meaningfully to our own world. It's that same imaginative journey.
- Poetry has characters.
The speaker in a poem is a "character." It's not developed in the
same way it might be in a short story, but the voice of the speaker in a poem
is analogous to the narrator of a short story--it's the voice communicating
with us, speaking to us, or, at least, speaking, and we're overhearing it.
Sometimes poems contain characters that the speaker tells us about. Sometimes
poems are even little narratives, little vignettes. They're pretty different
from the kinds of plotted stories fiction offers, but they are stories. (You
can't imagine a short story writer giving us "Stopping by Woods"
or "Dust of Snow," for instance, but they are brief stories, nonetheless.)
- Sometimes poems
are more developed more like short stories ("Rain," for example).
has point of view.
The speaker provides us with a perspective, a vantage point from which to
view thought, ideas, feelings, actions. The speaker is analogous, as we already
said, to a short story's narrator.
- Poems share
many literary elements with fiction (and drama). Including:
THEME (Although Archibald MacLeish tells us a poem "shouldn't
mean but be," most readers look for meaning in poems anyway. We can look
at "Those Winter Sundays" (p. 532) as well as any other poem on
any other list!
AMBIGUITY. Poems are "open to interpretation" to a very high
degree! We can look at "My Papa's Waltz" (p. 701).
IRONY. Poets, along with many other kinds of writers, have that ironic
sense. We can look at a few good examples--"The Unknown Citizen"
(p. 874), "Richard Cory" (p. 640), and "Golf Links" (handout).
SYMBOL. Recall "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Remember
how the speaker visits those snowy woods, which might symbolize that final
resting place, his attraction to death? And how at the end of the poem he
leaves the woods and chooses life? Well, other poems can be read symbolically,
too. Let's look at "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (handout), "Rain"
(handout), and "The Tyger" (handout and on p. 698).
PARADOX. What can it mean that "much madness is divinest sense"?
Check out Emily Dickenson's poem on p. 761 for a good look at paradox.