Dr. Alex E. Blazer	Course Site	Syllabus
First Day Questionnaire	Article Summary 1	Article Summary 2
Exam 1	Exam 2

Assignments

Critical Theory

English 491-75: Interpretive Theory: The New Criticism to the Present

Fall 2005, MW 5:30-6:45PM, Bingham Humanities Bldg 223

First Day Questionnaire

I would greatly appreciate it if you would complete the following questionnaire in Blackboard > Assignments > Questionnaire by Tuesday, August 23. This survey is completely optional. I simply want to get a sense of the class's exposure to critical theory, and this questionnaire will give you practice with Blackboard if you need it.

 

1. What is your name?

2. If it is not apparent from the roster, how do you pronounce your name?

3. Do you prefer to be called something other than the name which appears on the roster?

4. What is and/or what are your favorite work(s) of literature (poem, play, film, television show, novel, or short story)?

5. Do you have any prior experience with critical theory?

6. How do you feel about critical theory and/or taking a class in critical theory?

Article Summary 1: Theory

You will summarize and then present to the class two essays, one theoretical (Summary 1: Theory) and one interpretive (Summary 2: Criticism). Once in the semester, you will summarize a particular theorist's essay, or group of essays, and post your summary to our course discussion board: Blackboard > Assignments > Article Summaries. Typically this due date will be the Wednesday before the class discusses the work. If there is more than one essay by the author, see the accompanying note to determine which essay you may summarize. The summary should

• be formatted in Word or Rich-Text Format (not WordPerfect, Works, or OpenOffice) according to the MLA styled template,
• be 2-3 double-spaced pages long,
• summarize the article's argument,
• define key terms,
• and include questions for class discussion.

You will also be responsible for an informal, 3 minute presentation which introduces the essay by defining key points and terms, without simply reading your written summary, and broaches issues for class discussion. Approximately one week after submission, your graded response will be returned to you in Blackboard > My Grades > Summary 1: Theory.

 

Note: As I wrote on the syllabus course schedule, we may have to slow down for certain theorists and theories. We will not be able to discuss each and every article in class. Thus, some articles may only be summarized on Blackboard's Article Summaries discussion board and presented to the class by the person assigned to the article. Therefore, it is extremely important for each person to turn in the summaries on time and attend class for the presentation component. Summaries will be penalized one letter grade for each day, not class period, that they are turned in late. Failing to present the article to the class without providing a valid absence excuse will result in a one letter grade penalty.

 

NOTE: Your written article summary will be due to Blackboard on the Wednesday before we discuss an essay in class and you do your informal presentation.

 

Week	Due Date	Article	Student
Week 1	W, 8-24	New Criticism Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" and "The Formalist Critics" [summarize one or both]	Katie Brown
		Ransom, "Criticism, Inc."	Daniel Davis
		Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy" [summarize one or both]
Week 2	W, 8-31	none	none
Week 3	W, 9-7	Poststructuralism Foucault, "What Is an Author?"	Maryanna Watts
		Foucault, from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison	Michelle Smock
		Butler, from Gender Trouble	Melissa Offutt
Week 4	W, 9-14	de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric" [summarize only "Semiology and Rhetoric"]
		Derrida, from Of Grammatology	Di'yana Howard
		Derrida, from Dissemination	Anthony Cekay
Week 5	W, 9-21	Baudrillard, from "The Precession of Simulacra"
		Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"	Bryan Young
		Marxism Trotsky, from Literature and Revolution	Vanessa Coleman
			Ryan Fenwick
Week 6	W, 9-28	Lukács, "Realism in the Balance"	Brendan Higginbotham
		Horkheimer and Adorno, from Dialectic of Enlightenment	Danielle Baines
Week 7	W, 10-5	Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"	Cassie Miller
Week 8	W, 10-12	Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" [summarize only "Ideology and ISAs"]	Jesse Houk
		Jameson, from "The Political Unconscious"	Rhys Cundiff
		Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"	Betsy Wade
Week 9	W, 10-19	Psychoanalysis Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams	Stephanie Armstrong
		Freud, "The Unconscious"	Kevin Webb
		Bloom, Introduction, The Anxiety of Influence	none
Week 10	W, 10-26	Lacan, "The Mirror Stage"	Angela McKenzie
		Lacan, from "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious"	Matt Mattingly
		Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language	Fran Schueler
Week 11	W, 11-2	Deleuze and Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [summarize only A Thousand Plateaus]	Heather Martin
		Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"	Robin Durham
Week 12	W, 11-9	Reader-Response Criticism Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader"	Raymond Ott
			Norman Wilcox
		Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading"	Kristen Blythe
Week 13	W, 11-16	Sartre, from What Is Literature?	Ben Unwin
Week 14	W, 11-23	Fish, "Interpreting the Valorium"	none
		Jauss, from "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory"	none
Week 15	none	none	none
Finals	none	none	none

Article Summary 2: Criticism

Once in the semester, you will summarize an interpretive essay on The Awakening, The Great Gatsby, The Turn of the Screw, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Hamlet, which exemplifies one of four theoretical methodologies, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, or reader-response criticism, and post your summary to our course discussion board: Blackboard > Assignments > Article Summaries. Typically this due date will be the Wednesday before the class discusses the work. The summary should

• be formatted in Word or Rich-Text Format (not WordPerfect, Works, or OpenOffice) according to the MLA styled template,
• be 2-3 double-spaced pages long,
• summarize the article's overall interpretation of the work of literature,
• define the article's interpretive method in terms of questions posed of the text and evidence used,
• and evaluate what the article does and does not illuminate about the text.

You will also be responsible for an informal, 3 minute presentation which introduces the essay by defining its thesis and method as well as evaluating its interpretive usefulness, without simply reading your written summary. Students who are summarizing the same article should coordinate with one another so their informal presentations do not overlap. Approximately one week after submission, your graded summary will be returned to you in Blackboard > My Grades > Summary 2: Criticism.

 

Note: As I wrote on the syllabus course schedule, we may have to slow down for certain theorists and theories. We will not be able to discuss each and every article in class. Thus, some articles may only be summarized on Blackboard's Article Summary discussion board and presented to the class by the person assigned to the article. Therefore, it is extremely important for each person to turn in the summaries on time and attend class for the presentation component. Summaries will be penalized one letter grade for each day, not class period, that they are turned in late. Failing to present the article to the class without providing a valid absence excuse will result in a one letter grade penalty.

 

NOTE: Your written article summary will be due to Blackboard on the Wednesday before we discuss an essay in class and you do your informal presentation.

 

Week	Due Date	Article	Student
Week 1	none	none	none
Week 2	W, 8-31	Poststructuralism Tyson on Fitzgerald, "A Deconstructive Reading of TGG"	none
Week 3	W, 9-7	Yaeger on Chopin, "'A Language Which Nobody Understood'"	Daniel Davis
Week 4	W, 9-14	Felman on James, "A Child Is Killed in TTotS"	Danielle Baines
		Herr on Joyce, "Deconstructing Dedalus"	Jesse Houk
Week 5	W, 9-21	Garber on Shakespeare, "H: Giving Up the Ghost"	Angela McKenzie
		Marxism Tyson on Fitgerald, "A Marxist Reading of TGG"	Di'Yana Howard
			Maryanna Watts
Week 6	W, 9-28	Rowe on Chopin, "The Economics of the Body in KC's TA"	Kristen Blythe
		Robbins on James, "The Unfinished History of TToS"	Heather Martin
Week 7	W, 10-5	Naremore on Joyce, "Consciousness and Society in APotA"	Vanessa Coleman
			Raymond Ott
Week 8	W, 10-12	Bristol on Shakespeare, "Carnival and the Carnivalesque in H"	Michele Smock
			Ben Unwin
Week 9	W, 10-19	Psychoanalysis Tyson on Fitzgerald, "A Psychoanalytic Reading of TGG "	Fran Schueler
		McGowan on Chopin, "TA of Desire"	Katie Brown
			Robin Durham
Week 10	W, 10-26	Renner on James, "Sexual Hysteria, . . . and the 'Ghosts' in TTotS"	Betsy Wade
		Brivic on Joyce, "The Disjunctive Structure of J's P"	Todd Wilcox
Week 11	W, 11-2	Adelman on Shakespeare, "H and the Confrontation with the Maternal Body"	Anthony Cekay
			Cassie Miller
Week 12	W, 11-9	Reader-Response Criticism Tyson on Fitzgerald, "A Reader-Response Reading of TGG"	Brendan Higginbotham
			Bryan Young
		Treichler on Chopin, "The Construction of Ambiguity in TA"	Melissa Offutt
Week 13	W, 11-16	Booth on James, "Are We Blessed or Cursed by Our Life with TTotS?"	Matt Mattingly
Week 14	W, 11-23	Holland on Joyce, "AP as Rebellion"	Ryan Fenwick
			Kevin Webb
		Booth on Shakespeare, "On the Value of H"	Stephanie Armstrong
			Rhys Cundiff
Week 15	none	none	none
Finals	none	none	none

Exam 1

The first exam will be composed of two 5-7 page essays. In the first essay, you will define and debate the key terms of what constitutes meaning for New Criticism and poststructuralism. In the second essay, you will apply New Critical and poststructuralist methodologies to either a short story or a few poems.

• Essay 1
  • Write an essay that compares and contrasts 1) how a generic New Critic and generic poststructuralist critic (not a generic deconstructive critic) approach art and literature in terms of meaning and 2) how a specific New Critic and a specific poststructuralist critic approach art and literature in terms of meaning. What is meaningful and what constitutes meaning inside or outside of a text? Use and define key terms that have significance and meaning for the general theory and key terms particular to a specific theorist. For example, if you are discussing what is interpretively significant to the generic New Criticic you could use such terms as biographical criticism, formalist criticism, close reading, and "the text itself"; if discussing Cleanth Brooks in particular, then heresy of paraphrase, organic unity, irony, paradox, and ambiguity are key.
• Essay 2
  • Choose either the Angela Carter's "Flesh and the Mirror" or T. S. Eliot's quartets (you may discuss one or both of the poems if you wish) available in Blackboard > Course Documents > Course Packet and then write an essay that compares and contrasts 1) how a generic New Critic and a generic poststructuralist critic (not a generic deconstructive critic) would approach the text as well as 2) how a specific New Critic and a specific poststructuralist (both of your choosing, but not repeating a writer used in the first essay and, if you choose Eliot's poetry, not using Eliot as the particular theorist) would interpret the work with their particular versions of the general method. Unlike a traditional literature essay exam which would only require you to elucidate the meaning of the work of literature, your answer in this exam should explicitly exemplify the methods that guide interpretation of meaning. In other words, your essay should illustrate the differing interpretive theories that underlie the practice of criticism.
• Due: Wednesday, October 12
• Length: Each essay should be 5-7 pages long, for a total of 10-14 pages.
  • Per syllabus policy, your exam will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if its two combined essays do not end at least halfway down on the tenth page while implementing proper MLA font, line spacing, and margins. If it does not end at least halfway down on the ninth page, it will be penalized two-thirds of a letter grade.
• Style: Per syllabus policy, conform your take-home exam to MLA style, or one-third of a letter grade will be penalized for improprieties in each of the following categories: 1) heading, running header, and margins, 2) font and line-spacing, and 3) in-text quoting, block quoting, and citing sources.
  • Here are MLA style templates for Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works, OpenOffice, and Rich-Text Format.
• Format: I'll accept take-home exams in hard copy or electronic format.
  • Paper
    • Turn in at the beginning of class.
    • Note: I do not accept hard copies of assignments submitted after class. If you turn in your assignment after class, you must do so via Blackboard. I will use the time and date stamp to determine if late penalties are warranted.
  • Electronic
    • Use WordPerfect, Word, Works, OpenOffice, or Rich-Text Format. I do not read assignments submitted in Acrobat, html, Notepad, Publisher, Writepad, or other formats; consequently, your assignment will be considered late until you turn it in in the appropriate format.
  • Turn in via Blackboard. (Click here for instructions.)
    • Note: If you have problems with Blackboard, you may email your assignment to me as an attachment.
• Grade: You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists.
  • Your graded assignment will be returned approximately one week after you submit it.
    • If you turned it in on paper, it will be returned to you in class.
    • If you turned it in electronically, you can retrieve it in Blackboard. (Click here for instructions.)

Exam 2

The second exam will be composed of two 6-8 page essays. In the first essay, you will define and debate the key terms of what constitutes meaning (in the world and in literature) for two of the following three interpretive theories: Marxism, psychoanalysis, and reader-response criticism. In the second essay, you will apply those same two theories from the first essay, using a different set of particular theorists, to a work of literature of your choice, a novel, short story, poem or set of poems, play, film, or television program

• Essay 1
  • Write an essay that compares and contrasts two of the following three interpretive theories: Marxism, psychoanalysis, and reader-response theorism. Compare and contrast 1) how two generic critics representing the two different methods approach art and literature in terms of meaning and 2) how two specific theorists representing the two different methods approach art and literature in terms of meaning. What is meaningful and what constitutes meaning inside or outside of a text? Use and define key terms that have significance and meaning for the general theory and key terms particular to a specific theorist. For example, if you choose to compare and contrast Marxism and psychoanalysis, your essay would discuss 1) a generic Marxist, 2) a generic psychoanalyst, a specific Marxist, and 4) a specific psychoanalyst.
• Essay 2
  • Write an essay that interprets a work of literature of your choosing (a novel, short story, poem or set of poems, play, film, or television show) by 1) reading that work through the lens of two particular theorists of the two theories you used in Essay 1 methods (though not the same theorists you used in Essay 1) and 2) evaluating which theorist/method is more effective, successful, and applicable to the work of literature and why. For example, if you choose to compare Marxism and psychoanalysis, your essay would discuss 1) how you read the work through the lens of a specific Marxist's theory, 2) how you read the work through the lens of a specific psychoanalyst's theory, and 3) compare, contrast, and evaluate the two readings. Unlike a traditional literature essay exam which would only require you to elucidate the meaning of the work of literature, your answer in this exam should explicitly exemplify the methods that guide interpretation of meaning. In other words, your essay should illustrate the differing interpretive theories that underlie the practice of criticism. Note: You should inform me of your selected work of literature no later than Monday, November 28.
• Due: Wednesday, December 7
• Late Penalty: Exams will be penalized one letter grade for each day they are turned in late. However, if I cannot read your exam by Friday, December 9, for whatever reason, you will fail the exam and the course.
• Length: Each essay should be 6-8 pages long, for a total of 12-16 pages.
  • Per syllabus policy, your exam will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if its two combined essays do not end at least halfway down on the twelfth page while implementing proper MLA font, line spacing, and margins. If it does not end at least halfway down on the eleventh page, it will be penalized two-thirds of a letter grade.
• Style: Per syllabus policy, conform your take-home exam to MLA style, or one-third of a letter grade will be penalized for improprieties in each of the following categories: 1) heading, running header, and margins, 2) font and line-spacing, and 3) in-text quoting, block quoting, and citing sources.
  • Here are MLA style templates for Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works, OpenOffice, and Rich-Text Format.
  • I will be happy to happy to double-check your MLA style for you if and only if you show me a working draft of your exam by Monday, December 5.
• Format: I'll accept take-home exams in hard copy or electronic format.
  • Paper
    • Turn in by 5:00PM to my mailbox in Bingham Humanities Bldg 315 or by 8:00PM to me in my office in Bingham Humanities Bldg 335A (I'll be in my office from 4:30-8:00PM).
    • Note: I will not accept hard copies of assignments submitted after 8:00PM. If you turn in your assignment after this time, you must do so via Blackboard. I will use the time and date stamp to determine if late penalties are warranted.
  • Electronic
    • Use WordPerfect, Word, Works, OpenOffice, or Rich-Text Format. I do not read assignments submitted in Acrobat, html, Notepad, Publisher, Writepad, or other formats; consequently, your assignment will be considered late until you turn it in in the appropriate format. Turn in via Blackboard. (Click here for instructions.)
      • Note: If you have problems with Blackboard, you may email your assignment to me as an attachment.
• Grade: You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies covered in Essay 1, 2) the four theorists, two from Essay 1 and two from Essay 2, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists.
  • You can access your course grade via Ulink or the Registrar after Saturday, December 10.
  • If you would like your exam to be returned to you with comments, you must specifically ask for it to be returned to you with comments.
    • If you turned it in on paper, see me at the beginning of Spring semester.
    • If you turned it in electronically, you can retrieve it in Blackboard after Saturday, December 10. (Click here for instructions.)

Student	Text	Theorists
Stephanie Armstrong	Carroll, Through the Looking Glass	Freud and Iser
Danielle Baines	Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God	Horkheimer & Adorno and Kristeva
Kristen Blythe	Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun	Brivic and Jameson
Katie Brown	Selby, Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn	Althusser and Lacan
Anthony Cekay	Hughes, Crow	Gramsci and Iser
Vanessa Coleman	Tykwer, The Princess and the Warrior	Althusser and Freud
Rhys Cundiff	Kafka, The Trial	Lukács and Sartre
Robin Durham	Palahniuk, Choke	Bloom and Trotsky
Ryan Fenwick	Hejinian, My Life	Kristeva and Poulet
Brendan Higginbotham	Peckinpah, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia	Iser and Lacan
Jesse Houk	The Critic	Althusser and Sartre
Heather Martin	Wright, "Long Black Song"	Althusser and Freud
Matt Mattingly	DeLillo, White Noise	Deleuze & Guattari and Jameson
Angela McKenzie	Singleton, Baby Boy	Fish and Freud
Cassie Miller	Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day	Bloom and Iser
Melissa Offutt	Ridley, The Passion of Darkly Noon	Freud and Holland
Raymond Ott	Butler, Kindred	Althusser and Iser
Fran Schueler	Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"	Fish and Freud
Michelle Smock	Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"	Jauss and Lacan
Ben Unwin	Jonze, Adaptation	Freud and Horkheimer & Adorno
Betsy Wade	Coen, The Big Lebowski	Freud and Jameson
Maryanna Watts	Brooks, As Good as It Gets	Althusser and Freud
Kevin Webb	Six Feet Under	Freud and Horkheimer & Adorno
Todd Wilcox	Miller, The Crucible	Althusser and Freud
Bryan Young	Wilder, Double Indemnity	Mulvey and Poulet