English 376: Colloquium in Literature
12:40-1:55 TR, Spring 2007
R. M. Liuzza
Department of English
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Phone: (865) 974-6970
Office: 510 McClung
Email: rliuzza@utk.edu
This page: http://web.utk.edu/~rliuzza/376/index.php
This course is meant to provide an introduction to the discipline of literary studies. This complex topic can be approached through simple questions: What is ‘literature’? How do we recognize it? Why do writers write, and readers read? What does a reader do when he or she reads a work of ‘literature’? How do words written on a page or spoken in the air outline images, express ideas, stir emotions, inspire belief, convey facts and create fictions? Is a work of ‘literature’ different from any other act of communication – does it play by the same rules? Are there, in fact, ‘rules’ for writing and reading literature? And, perhaps most importantly, how and why do people write about writing? What does it mean to ‘criticize’ a literary work?
To try to answer these questions we will work out a shared vocabulary of terms for literary description and analysis, look at several different kinds of literary writing, and consider some of the different interpretive frameworks and assumptions about meaning that readers have brought to texts.
This section of English 376 will focus on the particular problems that confront us when we read works from earlier period of history: how can we bridge the cultural gaps that separate those times from our own? What assumptions can we make, or must we avoid, when we read a text that is several centuries old? Are the tools that we use (consciously or unconsciously) to understand modern texts appropriate to these early works? What are we looking at, and more importantly what are we looking for, when we look back into literary history? What do we owe the dead authors and readers of these works?
Required Texts
- R. Liuzza, ed., Beowulf (Broadview Press, 2000)
- Eileen A. Joy and Mary K. Ramsey, eds., The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook (West Virginia University Press, 2006) (listed as PB in the syllabus)
- Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan, eds., A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, 2nd ed. (University of Toronto Press, 2004) — no readings are assigned from this book, but it is a very useful introduction to contemporary literary theory.
- Other readings are posted to the syllabus below or on reserve in the library (L)
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