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."