Introdution to Interpretation

Instructor: Dr. Hollis Robbins

206C   TTh 1-2:30                                                                     

GA: Gina Peck ginakpeck@hotmail.com

I.  Course Objectives:

This course will help you to develop reading and writing skills, to expand your understanding of aesthetic and rhetorical principles, and to introduce you to the art of interpretation.  You will learn how to read and interpret poetry, short fiction, novels, drama, and film.   You will be introduced to traditional interpretive approaches and theories and learn to be active (as opposed to the passive) readers.  You will develop a critical vocabulary to help to articulate your own points of view, and locate your own positions within current theoretical debates.  This course will help you to improve your paper-writing skills for all future classes at Peabody.

II.  Course Requirements:

Attendance

Weekly writing exercises (1-2 pages)

Two analytical papers (4-6 pages, 6-8 pages)

Final exam

You will be required to read and be prepared to discuss all of the assignments.  The schedule below indicates the date by which particular works should be read and the amount of reading to be done each day to stay current with class discussion.  Bring the text to class each week.

You will be required to write a midterm paper and a longer final analytical paper.  I do not accept late papers unless there is a compelling reason for missing the deadline. 

Attendance for this class is critical.  Much of what you will learn in this course will be the result of class exercises and discussion.  Discussion and debate are crucial to the learning process.  You are expected not only to attend but also to participate.  Three absences (excused or not) will begin to push your final grade downward.  

Grade: Your grade will be calculated as follows:

Class Participation:  includes attendance, paper-reading, possible quizzes, contributions to class discussion, individual and group conferences:  20%

Weekly papers:  10 papers; top 7 will count for a grade:  35%.

Two papers:   Midterm paper on single-text analysis and interpretation (25%), final paper on text/author, text/text, or text/context analysis (20%)   

Writing Policy:           

All papers should be double-spaced, numbered, with your name on every page.  Neatness and excellence in punctuation, spelling, and grammar should always be a goal.   You will frequently be asked to read your weekly papers aloud to the class on Friday and you should be prepared to discuss your work, defend your work, and accept both criticism and praise from your fellow students.

All written work should be your own.  This means that either: A) you are telling me what you think, or B) you are telling me what you think about what someone else thinks—which means you will tell me where you found this person’s opinion, when and where he/she expressed it, and how it is related to your own opinion.  You may embrace someone else’s opinion, but you cannot pass it off as your own.  This is called plagiarism and it is wrong.

A note about my grading on papers and essays:

A grade of A means you have produced a paper exemplary in almost every way. You have presented your thesis coherently, you have organized your thoughts effectively, and you have supported your interpretations meticulously.  An A paper is also one that is excellent in style and voice or tone.  And in an A paper, attention to form (spelling, punctuation, grammar, documentation) is as rigorous as it is to the content.  Your work on the paper is superior.

A grade of B means you have gone beyond the minimum requirements of the assignment and have successfully balanced description with analysis. You express yourself more clearly, meaningfully, and imaginatively than in a C paper.  Your work on the paper is good.

A grade of C means you have successfully completed the minimum requirements of an assignment.  Your paper has no major problems of any kind, but there is still much for you to do to better your grade.  Your work on the paper is fair.

A grade of D means your work is seriously deficient in some way.

A grade of F means your work has failed to meet the minimum requirements.

III.  Required Texts:

Shakespeare, William.  Twelfth Night. 

Nabokov, Vladamir.  Lolita (1955)

Reader

Recommended Works/Websites:

Lanham, Richard A.  A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms.  Berkeley:  UC Press.  1991.

http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/

IV.  Schedule and Reading

Week 1     Intro & terms

T Jan 18      Intro to Concepts: Text, Domain of Analysis, Thesis, Evidence (Reader)

Assignment: short paper on one or two figures of speech, due 1/20

Th Jan 20     “Art of Poetry” (Reader).  Genres, poetic forms, stanzas, rhyme schemes

First Weekly Paper Reading

Week 2      Philosophy of Rhetoric and Terms

T  Jan 25      Reading poetry: Yeats’ “Second Coming”

Th  Jan 27     Weekly paper reading “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop”

Week 3     Working with a Single Text:  The Sonnet

T  Feb 1     Reading a sonnet: William Wordsworth, “Nuns Fret Not” (Reader) Siegfried Sassoon “Glory of Women” (Reader) (Reader)

Th  Feb 3   Weekly paper: Sonnet by Frost, Brooks, or MacDiarmid 

Week 4     More Single Text:  Poetic Narrative

T  Feb 8    W.H. Auden “Musee des Beaux Arts”  (Reader)

Th  Feb 10   Weekly paper: Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” 

Week 5       Single Text:  The Play

T  Feb 15    Reading a play: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Th  Feb 17    Class discussion:  Structural elements in Twelfth Night Assignment: 4-6 page Midterm paper on Twelfth Night due March 3

Extended reading of one 25-line passage in Twelfth Night

Week 6     No Classes – Auditions –finish “Twelfth Night” and begin paper

Week 7    Wrap-up Shakespeare and begin  two-text interpretation

T  Mar 1        Weekly paper: End of Twelfth Night  

Th  Mar 3     “Danse Africaine,” “Lenox Avenue, Midnight”

Midterm paper due in class

Week 8      Single Text:  The Novel

T  Mar 8     Reading Vladamir Nabokov: Lolita  

Th  Mar 10      Reading:  Lolita     

Week 9       Single Text: The Novel

T  Mar 15       Reading: Lolita

Th  Mar 17     Weekly Paper:  Lolita

Week 10        No Class: Spring Break!

Week 11        Working with One Text and Two Texts

T  Mar 24       Wilfred Owen “Dulce et Decorum Est”

Th Mar 26      Weekly paper:  Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”

Week 12       Working with Two Texts

T  Apr 5       Discuss “Snow Man” and “Come In”

Th  Apr 7     Weekly paper:  “Go Tell It”  “Eighth Air Force”

See “The Big Lebowski” (1998) (Showings TBA)

Discuss 2nd Paper (Due May 12)                                               

Week 13      Text and Context

M  Apr 12     Discuss “The Big Lebowski” 

W  Apr 14      Weekly paper:  “Big Lebowski”

Week 14        Text and Context

T  Apr 19      Auden, “September 1, 1939”

Th  Apr 21      Weekly paper:  Any poem we’ve read so far in context

Week 15        Relationship between Text and Author

T  Apr 26      Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

Th Apr 28      Weekly Paper: “A Good Man” and O’Connor

Week 16            Text and Tradition

T.  May 3   Phillis Wheatley “On Being Brought from Africa to America”   Paul Dunbar “The Poet”

Th May 5       Final exam in class 

2nd Paper Due May 12