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ENGLISH 1350, INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE

Fall 2006

8:00-8:50 MWF, Irby 304

 

Dr. Mike Schaefer                                                                                                     Office phone: 450-5119

Office: Irby 408                                                                                                          Home phone: 329-0538

e-mail: schaefer@uca.edu

course website: http://faculty.uca.edu/~schaefer

 

Office Hours: 9:00-10:00, 11:00-12:00 MWF; 8:15-9:15, 11:00-12:00 TTh; and by appointment

 

TEXTS:

Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia

Writing About Literature, Brief Eleventh Edition, Edgar V. Roberts

NOTE: These texts are required for the course.  Students who routinely fail to bring the appropriate book to class will be dropped from the course with a WF.

 

READING SCHEDULE:

 

8/25                         Introduction to course

 

8/28                         Roberts pp. 1-16

8/31                         Kennedy pp. 11-22; Roberts chapter 5

9/1                           previous readings continued

 

9/6                           Roberts pp. 17-52

9/8                           previous readings continued

 

9/11                         Kennedy pp. 23-38, 44-45; Roberts chapter 4

9/13                         previous readings continued

9/15                         previous readings continued

 

9/18                         Kennedy pp. 46-49, 68-82; Roberts chapter 3

9/20                         previous readings continued

9/22                         previous readings continued

 

9/25                         Kennedy pp. 84-87, 249-54; Roberts chapter 6

9/27                         previous readings continued

9/29                         previous readings continued

 

10/2                         Kennedy pp. 92-102, 162-64; Roberts chapter 7

10/4                         previous readings continued

10/6                         previous readings continued

 

10/9                         Kennedy pp 186-99; Roberts chapter 8

10/11                       previous readings continued

10/13                       previous readings continued

 

10/16                       work on first essay—no new reading assignment

10/18                       work on first essay—no new reading assignment

 

10/23                       Kennedy chapter 22

10/25                       previous readings continued

10/27                       previous readings continued                First essay due

 

10/30                       Kennedy pp. 1008-66

11/1                         previous readings continued

11/3                         previous readings continued

 

11/6                         Kennedy chapters 9 & 12

11/8                         previous readings continued

11/10                       previous readings continued

 

11/13                       Kennedy chapters 13 &14

11/15                       previous readings continued

11/17                       previous readings continued

 

11/20                       Kennedy chapter 15                          Second essay due

 

11/27                       Kennedy chapters 17 &18

11/29                       previous readings continued

12/1                         previous readings continued

 

12/4                         Kennedy chapter 29

12/6                         work on third essay—no new reading assignment

 

12/11                       Final exam period, 8-10 am: Third essay due

 

ATTENDANCE:  Attendance--on time--is mandatory.  Absences will lower your class participation grade, as will recurrent late arrival.  If you miss four classes, you'll have one week after the last absence to see me with a believable excuse and a promise to sin no more; if you don't make this deadline, you'll be dropped from the course with a WF grade.  And if you miss a fifth class following our conference about the six absences, you'll likewise be dropped with a WF.  Important note: “Attendance” in this class is defined as being present mentally as well as physically.  If you spend the greater part of a class period sleeping, chatting with those around you, doing homework for another class, or in any other way failing to engage with the class discussion, you’ll be marked absent for that period.  All materials not essential to your participation in the class must remain in your backpack during class; this includes cell phones and other communication devices, books and notebooks for other classes, newspapers, etc.

 

ESSAYS:  There are no in-class exams in this course; instead, you’re required to turn in three essays, begun in class and finished outside of class, on the dates specified in the reading schedule above.  I’ll hand out detailed assignment sheets for each essay later in the term, but, generally speaking, these assignments will ask you to discuss your own reading of one of the stories, plays, or poems we’ve covered in class, or to compare two works in terms of the authors’ handling of some of the elements of fiction, drama, or poetry.  You’ll have the option to rewrite one of the first two essays for a higher grade if you’re dissatisfied with the outcome of the first version.

 

JOURNALS: Each student must keep a journal of his or her thoughts on the assigned readings, with one entry devoted to each reading before we discuss it in class. Ordinarily, I’ll pose a question for you to respond to in each entry, with that response consisting of at least three paragraphs, but beyond that requirement you're also free to write as much as you wish about whatever intrigues you, inspires you, confuses you, or upsets you about the work in question, and about this work's relationship to other works you've read and its relevance to human life in general and your own life in particular.  There are two goals to this assignment, both of which you're probably already aware of.  First, the act of writing stimulates thinking: even if at the outset you feel you have nothing at all to say about a given work, you'll find that putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard will bring ideas forth; if you do have some ideas to start with you'll find that writing them down will cause you to extend and refine them.  Second, as is obvious from what's just been said, these entries will prove a rich source of class discussion and essay topics.

You'll turn in your entries for the reading assigned that week at the start of class on Monday, with a few exceptions that I’ll note in class.  I won’t accept a journal entry after the due date, but you are allowed to miss one journal with no penalty.  I'll grade you for each submission: if your entry shows an honest, thoughtful effort to come to grips with the work, you'll get somewhere from 8 to 10; if it shows a solid but not all that insightful effort, you'll get somewhere from 4 to 7; if you don't do the entry, or if you blow it off with superficial comments, you'll get somewhere from 0 to 3.  At the end of the semester, I’ll figure your final journal grade by taking the ratio of the total points you’ve earned to the total points possible.  If we do twelve journals, for instance, then the total possible score will be 120; if you earn 100, then your percentage is 84, which means a B for your final journal grade.  (My grading scale is 91-100=A, 80-90=B, 70-79=C, 60-69=D, below 60=F.)

 

GRADES:  Your final grade will come from the following percentages:

Attendance/
Participation:         20%

Journal :                 20%

Essay 1:                 20%

Essay 2:                 20%

Essay 3:                 20%

 

ACADEMIC HONESTY:  Knowingly presenting someone else’s work as your own, whether in an essay, journal, or any other format, constitutes plagiarism.  Plagiarism carries serious penalties, from failure on a particular assignment to failure for the course.  If you ever have any questions on this subject, please feel free to ask me about them, without fear of embarrassment.

 

UNIVERSITY POLICIES: If you have questions about the university’s academic policies, guidelines regarding sexual harassment, or any other matters, please consult the relevant sections of the UCA Student Handbook.  UCA adheres to the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  If you need an accommodation under this act due to a disability, contact the UCA Office of Disability Services at 450-3135.

 

 

Material for Discussion of Course Objectives

 

X. J. Kennedy—fiction is "a kind of art, usually written, which offers pleasure and illumination."

 

Pablo Picasso—“We know that art is not truth.  Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

 

From Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt:

There is a story about the way the pipe first came to us.  A very long time ago, they say, two scouts were out looking for bison; and when they came to the top of a high hill and looked north, they saw something coming a long way off, and when it came close they cried out, "It is a woman!," and it was.  Then one of the scouts, being foolish, had bad thoughts and spoke them; but the other said: "That is a sacred woman; throw all bad thoughts away."  When she came still closer, they saw that she wore a fine white buckskin dress, that her hair was very long and that she was young and very beautiful.  And she knew their thoughts and said in a voice that was like singing: "You do not know me, but if you want to do as you think, you may come."  And the foolish one went; but just as he stood before her, there was a white cloud that came and covered them.  And the beautiful young woman came out of the cloud, and when it blew away the foolish man was a skeleton covered with worms.

Then the woman spoke to the one who was not foolish: "You shall go home and tell your people that I am coming and that a big tepee shall be built for me in the center of the nation."  And the man, who was very much afraid, went quickly and told the people, who did at once as they were told; and there around the big tepee they waited for the sacred woman.  And after a while she came, very beautiful and singing, and as she went into the tepee this is what she sang:

"With visible breath I am walking.  A voice I am sending as I walk.  In a sacred manner I am walking.  With visible tracks I am walking.  In a sacred manner I walk."

And as she sang, there came from her mouth a white cloud that was good to smell.  Then she gave something to the chief, and it was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, and with twelve eagle feathers hanging from the stem to mean the sky and the twelve moons, and these were tied with a grass that never breaks.  "Behold!" she said.  "With this you shall multiply and be a good nation.  Nothing but good shall come from it.  Only the hands of the good shall take care of it and the bad shall not even see it."  Then she sang again and went out of the tepee; and as the people watched her going, suddenly it was a white bison galloping away and snorting, and soon it was gone.

This they tell, and whether it happened so or not I do not know; but if you think about it, you can see that it is true.

 

Robert Frost—poetry provides "a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but . . . a momentary stay against confusion." 

Henry Adams—literature seeks to "run order through chaos."

 

Chinua Achebe—“Literature,whether handed down by word of mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality . . . enabling us to encounter, in the safe, manageable dimensions of make-believe the very same threats to integrity that may assail the psyche in real life; and at the same time providing through the self-discovery which it imparts a veritable weapon for coping with these threats whether they are found within our problematic and incoherent selves or in the world around us."

 

Mark Edmundson—Literature “is the major cultural source of vital options for those who find that their lives fall short of their highest hopes. . . .  The purpose of a liberal arts education is to give people an enhanced opportunity to decide how they should live their lives.”

 

Iris Murdoch—“Education doesn’t make you happy, nor does freedom.  We don’t become happy just because we’re free, if we are, or because we’ve been educated, if we have, but because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy.  It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind.”

 

Fables, parables, myths

Robert Altman—literature should first of all entertain people but should also "give them pause to think, give them reason to feel important, to be important, [because they're being asked] to put their own ideas together with existing ideas." 


Anton Chekhov—literature presents problems, not solutions

 

William Trevor—“It is important . . . that there is somebody who is going to do the work you have set out for him . . ..  Because that’s what you do—you leave a big chunk of work to be done.  It’s like a lot of jigsaw pieces, and the reader has got some of them and you’ve got some of them.”

 

Naomi Bliven—In a good story "Everything seems to mean something.  Everything seems to mean more than what you're told it means.  Eliciting this sensation is the job of literary art—to catch life in its snares and, by the pattern and form of the snares, to accumulate meaning."

 

Keith Richards: "To me the most interesting thing about any song is not so much 'What does it mean?'  The only important thing is what it means to you.  What I want to do is lay songs open to suggestion.  As long as it touches somebody. . . .  Some people's meanings are totally different but music is a beautiful thing. . . .  If you write a song, the important thing is what it means to other people.  If you're tied down to one vision--[such as] what one director thinks on the video--you're narrowing the possibilities of what that song can do." 

 

Barbara Kingsolver—Literature “creates empathy, and empathy is the antidote to meanness of spirit.  Nonfiction can tell you about the plight of working people, of single mothers, but in a novel you become the character; touch what she touches, struggle with her self-doubt.  Then, when you go back to your own life, something inside you has maybe shifted a little."