--to design and apply mnemonic devices. The first several classes will expose students to a variety of mnemonic devices in which they will be given a "hands-on" opportunity to master "The Caper Star" through a homework assignment on a single poem and then as a group exercise on three poems. Students will be instructed in how to develop and apply "memory grids" so as to generate and forge links between and among various works of literature that will allow them to write engaging essays and to speak confidently to the class.  

--to work effectively toward a corporate goal. Instructor-facilitated caper groups will train students to learn how to work courteously and diligently with people of different backgrounds who have different strengths and weaknesses from you. Group assignments may also be required outside of class (such as, for example, preparing a scene from a play to present to the class). Students will be assessed both on the outcome of the exercise and also on the signs of have engendered a genial and sufficiently rigorous "group dynamic."

--to speak intelligently and clearly. Each student is responsible for preparing and delivering a ten-minute oration grounded in a passage which the student will select and recite with elan (memorization is permitted but not required) about 12-24 lines from assigned section of a play by Shakespeare as listed on the syllabus. Recourse to the Caper Star obviates the need for written notes. The focal passage will be recited in the context of your presenting a cogent and well-reasoned interpretation of the lines with respect to the larger issues in the play. Your goal is to help your peers become better, more critical, more attentive, interpreters of the passage and of the play as a whole so that you will be able to lead a five-minute follow-up discussion about the seminal issues you have brought to the class's attention. You are also expected to be an expert on the whole assignment, capable of fielding any questions posed to you by your peers or the teacher. This will help develop your talents as an extemporaneous speaker. Additionally, students will be assessed on their participation in class both as decorous speakers and also as active listeners.

--to read critically and interpret literary works in English. To gauge your comprehension of the assigned works of literature students will be assigned a series of papers that provide experience with different types of writing and require different ways of thinking about the texts:

--to communicate effectively in writing. This is assessed with respect to the grades on work handed in using the following criteria.

Why study literary criticism? If you think of literature as an artistic or realistic depiction of reality (Aestheticism and Realism, respectively), then literary criticism (engaging responsibly with “texts”) and literary theory (which is a bit more involved) is the study of how we interpret literary representations of reality (most notably and conventionally, in terms of mimesis and ekphrasis). Whether we're talking about fiction or poetry, drama or performance art, literary criticism is the study of the representation of the various worlds thus being depicted, and of the different kinds of stories that are told, narratives mobilized, and discourses applied to "bring to presence" such experiences. The purpose and stakes of literary criticism have broadened extensively over the last century with the flourishing of feminism, Marxism and cultural materialism, psychoanalysis, queer and gender studies, postcolonialism and transnationalism, and (more abstractly and self-referentially) deconstruction, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. While the purpose of literary criticism once was confined principally to the study of textual transmission (how a work came to be in the state we have before us), of authorial intent (and this includes holy scripture), of historicism (the interpretation of history through literature), and of style (including 20th century movements such as New Criticism, Formalism, and Structuralism), nowadays it embraces all manner of social, economic, ecological, cultural, and intersectional interpretations of literature--and the application of that analysis also proves to be very useful for the study of "lived experience" itself.

This course is designed to enable students to find ways of demonstrating the extent to which they are informed reflectively about all of the approaches mentioned above, and to exhibit through the various assignments a serious and sustained use of representative samplings of those approaches so as to offer incisive and critical interpretations of select literary works, to do so responsibly, in standard English prose, and in accordance with the Style Sheet and assignment guidelines distributed the first day of class. Moreover, each student independently will focus on one particular contemporary modality of critical analysis (sign up sheet posted Gailor 135) so as to be able to design and execute a lesson plan for conveying the salient points to the class (not to exceed twenty minutes, usually ten minutes of descriptive analysis and then ten minutes of critical application and group discussion). To complete this particular exercise students will begin with a selection taken from the anthology and then “ring out” to situate its place in the larger work from which it has been excerpted, and then, furthermore, to present a critically informed report on its place within the sweep of literary criticism in the Western cultural tradition.

A write-up of this independent presentation, inclusive of additional critical reflection on the relative success of one’s project overall, will complete this assignment. Although you are expected to have become an expert in your chosen area of inquiry, it is acceptable in the write-up to mention questions you still have that you were unable to address in your presentation, as well as to mention what you might correct, and what you might have done differently "were there world enough and time.") 

Above all, through the work handed in as listed on the syllabus, students are expected to be able to make a clear case for the salutary uses—as well as potential limitations or inadequacies—of the critical approaches covered by the assigned readings. Students will draw on works of literature with which they already are familiar to perform the critical operations expected in this course. The teacher will suggest some short texts that might work toward this end if the student does not feel sufficiently well-read yet to identify works that lend themselves to the critical approach under investigation.

What, for example, might a student in this class have to say about the following by virtue of situating this quotation with respect to some other passage from a critical source and applied to a work of literature: “Literature is the contestation of philology (of which it is nevertheless the twin figure): it leads language back from grammar to the naked power of speech, and there it encounters the untamed, imperious being of words" (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1970), p. 300).