Literary interpretation: literature and urban experience
Bachelor's degree
In Maynard (USA)
Description
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Type
Bachelor's degree
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Location
Maynard (USA)
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Start date
Different dates available
Alienation, overcrowding, sensory overload, homelessness, criminality, violence, loneliness, sprawl, blight. How have the realities of city living influenced literature's formal and thematic techniques? How useful is it to think of literature as its own kind of "map" of urban space? Are cities too grand, heterogeneous, and shifting to be captured by writers? In this seminar we will seek answers to these questions in key city literature, and in theoretical works that endeavor to understand the culture of cities.
Facilities
Location
Start date
Start date
Reviews
Subjects
- Interpretation
Course programme
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Two courses in Literature
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land and Other Writings. New York, NY: The Modern Library, 2002. ISBN: 9780375759345. [Download from Project Gutenberg]
Woolf, Virgina. Mrs. Dalloway. New York, NY: Penguin USA, 1996. ISBN: 9780140622218. [Preview in Google Books]
Carson, Ciaran. Belfast Confetti. Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780916390402.
Wilson, Robert McLiam. Ripley Bogle. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2000. ISBN: 9780345430946. [Preview in Google Books]
Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. New York, NY: Longman, 1989. ISBN: 9780582642645.
Come to class having read the assigned material carefully, and prepared to listen to your classmates and engage in conversation and respectful debate with them. You will not be expected to have a brilliant insight at every moment, but do expect to voice your thoughts and interpretations, however new or unformed. We will welcome them.
Attendance is mandatory. If you are going to be absent you must alert me in advance. Each student will be allowed two absences, after which he or she will lose 1% (of the course total 100%) for each incident. Being late is a form of absence, and I will decide what number of late arrivals adds up to one day of absence.
Plagiarism will be heavily penalized. The Literature Faculty policy states: "students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work." Visit Writing and Humanistic Studies.
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Literary interpretation: literature and urban experience