Annotation
This course aims to familiarise students with various close-reading techniques, applied to selected samples of Anglo-American prose and drama. For the most part, these are short texts written by contemporary authors. The course seeks to nurture RWCT techniques (Reading and writing for critical thinking) and other close-reading strategies. The decisive criterion for assigning certain texts is not just their content and overall artistic merit, but also the linguistic aspects of the literary work in question.
Teaching units: 1. Introduction: Analogies a contrasts
Benjamin Zephaniah: Miss World
William Shakespeare: Sonnet 130
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (excerpt from the novel) 2. Narrative structure
Roald Dahl: “Edward the Conqueror”
Focus: narrative structure and plausibility 3. Cautionary tale
Somerset Maugham: “The Verger”
Charles Johnson: Oxherding Tale (excerpt from the novel)
Focus: a cautionary tale 4. Narrative functions
Julian Barnes: The Visitors (A History of the World in 10½ Chapters)
Focus: full and limited omniscience 5-6. Narrative authority
Kurt Vonnegut: “Who Am I This Time”
Andre Dubus: “The Fat Girl” 7-8. Elipsis
Bernard Malamud: “The Magic Barrel”
Thelma Forshaw: “The Mateship Syndrome” 9. Cataphora and foreshadowing
John Steinbeck: “The Murder” 10. Symbolism and epiphany
Kate Chopin: “The Story of an Hour”
C. B. Divakaruni: “Clothes” 11. Hyperbole and allegory
Charles Dickens: “A Christmas Carol”
Mark Twain: “The Story of the Bad Boy Who Didn’t Come to Grief” 12. Jumbled chronology
Alice Munro: “Child’s Play”
Focus: cathartic memoir, jumbled chronology, Modern Gothic