Welcome to the website for English 4314: Literary Criticism, as taught by Dr. Lawrence Johnson.

Please feel free to explore and familiarize yourself with this site as it contains your schedule of readings, all course policies and essay assignment prompts. Perhaps most importantly, it is also your conduit to the course Blackboard Discussion Board.

This course is intended to serve as a capstone course for students majoring in British and American Literature, affording them an opportunity to integrate their previous coursework through the development of a critical stance that will most effectively deploy the results of that coursework. This course, however, can also be of benefit to those Liberal Arts students seeking to fulfill their Humanities requirements and interested in developing a greater understanding of the roles of “fictions” in today’s society.

The use of “shaped words” has exercised power since its development began five millennia ago. And as its power grew, it became a subject for careful study by both those employing such power and those who saw its potential for abuse unless approached with an analytic appreciation of how the use of such “shaped words” has exercised power, its potential benefits and its potential problems.

Such issues are more important today than at anytime in the past because of our personal and collective dependence upon information acquired not through first-hand experience but rather through the “shaped words” at the heart of our pervasive modern media. The development of tools and approaches for such study should be of special concern to those who would engage in the analysis and teaching of literature. But the development of an equally effective set of skills is vital to for anyone whose personal and professional decisions will inevitably be influenced by such “shaped words.”

All students will be provided with an opportunity to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the multitude of idea-sets about literature that have been articulated by writers and their critics over time and are still in play today. Such an understanding, as part of a general Liberal Arts education, serves to assist students in appreciating how writers see themselves and their work, how they justify the enterprise, and what problems are inherent in such “word shaping.”Such an understanding is intended to assist all students in making valid assessments of the validity of those “word pictures” offered them as part of both their “entertainments” and the larger universe of social, professional and political “story tellings.” For those who intend to engage in further studies of literature, this course also provides an overview of the classic views of literature and its worth as a subject of study, allowing students to begin developing for

themselves a durable sense of purpose for their proposed investment in the further study of literature as a personal and professional enterprise.

Course Outcomes

At the end of this course, successful students should be able to

Distinguish among the views of “literature” articulated by the writers examined in this course, identifying the internal coherence of each together with the cultural assumptions upon which each depends.

Identify the conflicts among such views of “literature” and the persistence of such tensions in contemporary views of what constitutes the valid use of fiction among those who write such fictions and their audiences.

Employ the core principles articulated by these writers about literature in the analysis of contemporary fictions.

Demonstrate a heightened ability to see and appreciate the coherence of ideas about fiction which are different from and even opposed to those held by the individual reader

Initiate the development of a personal “Statement of principle” based upon these readings that is intended to inform the student’s future approach to literature as a person, an analytic reader, and a professional.

Course Methodology

This course will approach its subject matter first through the general methodology employed in the history of ideas. Central to this approach is a recognition that cultures simultaneously preserve and transform core ideas, and that the understanding of these processes of transformation can serve to illuminate the uniqueness and the value of each work arising within this process, and through that, the corresponding uniqueness of those ideas as they continue to manifest themselves in contemporary culture.

While the texts and authors considered in this survey may claim to have a “true vision” which supplants or repudiates all others, the validity of such claims will NOT be at issue. Rather, each text/author will be credited with having an internally coherent vision that is shared with others—then and now. Our challenge will be to identify the philosophical, cultural, and social premisses which give each vision such power and persistence.

While it is recognized that no one can fully recapture the intent of another from their writings, the act of speculating about such intent is intrinsically worthwhile, as it is an act that we perform(or should be performing) daily in our responses to all “speech acts” or “mediated information” upon which we depend so extensively in contemporary society. Such speculation about the “intent” of the skilled (and clearly powerful) authors included in this survey models possible approaches that can be employed in responding to more mundane (but perhaps more critical) “voices” in our daily life.

Finally, this course stands in the middle of the tradition of humanistic studies as defined by Renaissance apologists and embedded even in the much more “pragmatic” tradition of public higher education in the United States: the content of this course is intended for “the use and benefit of zealous” learners in both their public and private lives, enhancing their abilities of critical analysis and making them better decision makers in both their private and public lives.

Expectations of Students

Learning is something that results from the efforts of a student: your learning—and my assessment of it—will be proportional to the investment of effort you make in addressing the content of the readings, first in (1) confronting the texts themselves and then (2) collaborating with others engaged in similar efforts (including, but not limited to, your instructor’s efforts) , and finally (3) essaying (attempting) to organize and articulate your evolving ideas resulting from those readings and that collaboration.

1. Confronting the texts

It is expected that each student will have “read” the assigned text(s) prior to the class session. There is no expectation that the text will be mastered in that reading; rather, it is assumed that there will be much that appears unclear, incoherent, or incomprehensible. What is expected is that each student will have a general familiarity with the text and, more importantly, will have identified that which is unclear, incoherent, or incomprehensible. Subsequently, after discussions in class and on the conferences, all students are expected to revisit the text under consideration and integrate what has been learned from others involved in the discussion into their own understanding. All such understandings—even those of the instructor—are “works in progress” and it is the “work” where the learning takes place.

2. Collaborating with others

The core of a college education (inherent in the derivation of the word “college”) is collaboration, the primary means of learning at this level and, subsequently, throughout life in one’s public and private lives. Having done the reading as described above, each student is expected to engage in such collaboration through class participation and through the extension of that dialogue by means of the web-based Blackboard conferences that are an integral part of this course.

In-class participation will take two primary forms: first and foremost, students are expected to raise questions from the outset about what they have just read (1)to clarify things for themselves before the text is examined in more detail, (2) to raise issues that may have been bothering other students but which they could not articulate, and (3) to focus the content of the instructor’s presentation on matters of concern to students. From time to time the instructor will assign specific segments of the assigned reading to individual students who will then be asked to comment on what they have understood the text to say, a synopsis of the assigned passage, as the basis for further in-class discussion. In either case, however, what will be of significance is not the quality of the contribution in and of itself, but rather the effort invested in formulating that contribution.

The second form of collaboration expected of students is manifested in their contributions to the discussions which take place outside of class on the web-based Blackboard conferences. These conferences are vital for two reasons: (l) they compensate for the structural weaknesses of “commuter campuses” where face-to-face collegiality is too often precluded; and (2) they provide critical experience in the use of electronic communication media which is becoming increasingly prevalent and problematic outside the university. These conferences are an extension of the classroom collaboration where issues are raised and then addressed by all of us for our mutual benefit much as they would be in the classroom: this medium, however, allows each student to contribute to the collaboration without being physically present and at such time as the student is prepared and able to make a coherent contribution. The minimum expectation is that each student will make three distinct contributions to these computer discussions each week. Numbers alone, however, will not be the true measure of effort: that will be more visible in the benefit a student’s questions and observations offer to the rest of the class.

3. Essaying the articulation of your evolving ideas

Over the course of the semester, there will be three opportunities for each student to articulate his or her evolving understanding of the issues addressed in the readings and discussions through

written assignments that apply that understanding in specific cases (chosen in part by the student). While there are formal criteria for such written efforts (see the tab “Grading Criteria”) that are analogous to those expected of written products outside the University, the true weight of these “essays” will be placed on the investment made by the individual student in assimilating and then applying and articulating the insights he or she has gained from the readings and discussions in a specific case. Thus the premium is placed not on your ability to “regurgitate” what you heard (or thought you heard) but on your efforts to take what you have heard and use it in a context beyond the course. Each of these assignments will be progressively weighted, allowing students to learn from their prior efforts as their understanding grows over the course of the semester.

The bottom line

Students who do the reading, participate in class and on the conferences, and submit their essays will pass this course. Grades above a “C” will be awarded on the basis of my assessment of each student’s effort and investment over the semester and thus the growth in his/her learning evidenced by that effort. This standard is one that I have used for forty years outside the University in my evaluation of those young professionals working for me, one which has proven to best promote their personal development. I will be happy to discuss this approach in greater detail at your request.

Readings:

Students are expected to have done an initial reading of the assigned texts by the date of the lectures covering the reading.  All readings are available on-line; students may procure their own editions of specific texts if desired. This course stresses the consideration of an entire text.

Attendance:

Students are expected to attend all class sections. Students who accrue more than three unexcused absences will be awarded an F at the end of the course. An excused absence may be granted at the instructor’s discretion if the student presents, in a timely fashion, a cogent case for such an excused absence.

Withdrawals:

Students are expected to execute their own withdrawal from the course. Students who fail to continue attending the course will be given an F at the end of the course.

Blackboard Discussion Participation: 

Each student is expected to sign onto the conferences at least four times a week and to make at least three substantive contributions to these computer-based discussions supporting this course. Student participation will be measured weekly from data collected after 11 p.m. on Sunday. Students failing to meet this minimum may have up to 15 points subtracted for the point score awarded for their essay submissions for the period. Exceptional contributions to discussion group work may be recognized by an upward adjustment of the essay grade for that period.

Submitting Essays:

Required essays will be submitted for evaluation in two forms:

1.  A typed, doubled-spaced copy will be presented at the start of class on the due date.

2. Prior to the start of the class on the date the paper is due, an electronic copy of the essay will be submitted electronically to ljohnson@utep.edu in  a Microsoft Word format (.docx or .doc).

Academic Honesty:

University standards for academy honesty will be strictly enforced according to University policies.

Special Considerations:

The instructor will accommodate special student needs upon the presentation by the student of the appropriate documentation from the University’s DSS Office.

Examinations

The Study questions o In this course, the assigned essay questions serve the purpose of traditional examinations

o The tasks to be accomplished in each of the essays are specified elsewhere on this web-site

o Answers will be prepared outside of class and submitted on the due date in both hard copy and an electronic version (prepared in Word format) to ljohnson@utep.edu

o While no minimum/maximum length for each essay question is prescribed, the complexity of the essay tasks suggest that thorough responses will range from 1200-1500 words when well-written.

Grading Criteria

Fully answering the question (25% )

Accurate and effective use of the texts (25%)

Structured, supported, coherent demonstration of claims made (25%)

Observance of the common writing conventions (25%)

Answering the Question

Address the issues specified, not the issues you want to address

Address those issues in all the works expressly or implicitly relevant to the question

Address all the components of the question

Finding substantial differences, not similarities, is central to the process when analyzing the distinctive idea-sets to be found in the readings.

Textual Evidence

Each assertion must be supported by evidence from the text

Quotes are not necessary; accurate paraphrasing is essential

Emphasis is on idea-sets of the peoples who wrote the texts, not your idea-sets unless they are specifically requested

Demonstration

“Structured” — No data dumps, but rather a series of specific assertions

“Supported” — each assertion is followed by the evidence from the text

“Coherent”

o The evidence clearly supports the claim

o The evidence is systematically presented

o The argument does not shift in mid-stream

Conventions of Writing

Correct spelling of common words and key concepts

Functional punctuation

Reasonable sentence structures

August 23 Course Introduction

August 25-27 Chaucer: House of Fame  http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/HOUSE.HTM

August 30-September 3 Sidney: Defense of Poetry  http://www.bartleby.com/27/1.html

September 8-10 Pope: Essay on Criticism  http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/essay.html

September 13-17 David Hume: On the Standard of Taste  http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/hume%20on%20taste.htm

September 20-24   Wordsworth: Preface to the Lyrical Ballads  http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html

September 27-October 1 Thomas Love Peacock: The Four Ages of Poetry http://www.thomaslovepeacock.net/FourAges.html

October 4-8 Shelley: Defense of Poetry http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/displayprose.cfm?prosenum=6

October 11-15 John Stuart Mill: Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/jsmill/diss-disc/poetry/poetry.html

October 18-22 Emerson: The Poet http://rwe.org/works/Essays-2nd_Series_1_Poet.htm

October 25-29 Arnold: The Function of Criticism https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/displayprosefbe3.html?prosenum=4

November 1-5 Henry James: The Art of Fiction http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html

November 8-12 Eliot: Tradition and the Individual Talent  http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html

November 15-17 Cleanth Brooks: My Credo: Formalist Criticism  http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333214

November 22-24 Wimsatt and Beardsley: The Intentional Fallacy  http://faculty.smu.edu/nschwart/seminar/Fallacy.htm

November 29-December 1   Catch up and conclusions

OverviewIt should come as no surprise to anyone that there are competing visions of what constitutes the study of British and American literature reflected in the professional literature and in society at large. These visions range from an insistence on the primacy of eternal truths to be shared with students in such studies through any number of social agendas—breaking patriarchal hegemonies, promoting social justice, empowering individual readers through deconstruction—to this vision of such studies articulated by preeminent scholar and popular commentator Stanley Fish in two pieces published in the New York Times:

I am saying that the value of the humanities cannot be validated by some measure external to the obsessions that lead some (like me) to devote their working lives to them – measures like increased economic productivity, or the fashioning of an informed citizenry, or the sharpening of moral perceptions, or the lessening of prejudice and discrimination. If these or some other instrumental benchmarks – instrumental in the sense that they are tied to a secondary effect rather than to an internal economy – are what the humanities must meet, they will always fall short. But the refusal of the humanities to acknowledge or bow to an end they do not contemplate is, I argue, their salvation and their value. As Stacia says in words more precise than mine, “The subject of these studies are not to be used as tools to achieve something else . . . they are the achievement.”

Professor Fish’s arguments drew over 950 responses from his readers, responses which offer us a cross section of opinions about such studies drawn from the population at large.His arguments—and the responses they evoked—will provide a contemporary context for our consideration of the seminal texts being considered in this course. And finally, each of you has had a unique set of experiences with “shaped words” not only as a student but as an individual operating within a society that, more than ever before, permeated by “fictions.”The essays in this course are intended to offer each student the opportunity to develop—within the framework of the readings, the responses offered to Fish’s essays, and his or her own experiences—a more thoughtful and thus more durable approach to “fictions” in today’s society, one that will give each student more insight into what value is to be found for that individual in the analytic consideration of fictions as a central operation throughout life.

Essay 1

Due: October 11Weight: 20%

You are first asked to selection a substantive work of fiction (a novel, a movie or play, or a sequence of poems by a single author) that you believe to be of significant value to others, one that you would recommend to others as well worth reading because of that value. In developing this essay, you should be prepared to make specific reference to the work you have selected in support of the analysis required.First, you are asked to identify your own reasons for selecting that particular work as something of worth or interest.You are then asked to assess your selected work as it would be evaluated by each of the authors we have read so far—Chaucer, Sidney, Pope, Hume, Wordsworth and Peacock—highlighting their different views of fictions, their function, their value and the standards which each sees either giving value to a work of fiction or detracting from it. Which are applicable to the work you have chosen and useful for your purposes; which are not?Finally, you should scan the arguments offered by Fish’s readers and after finding at least two which are antithetical to your position, articulate a response to those writers.

Essay  2

Due: November 8Weight: 30%

You are now asked to identify another substantive work of fiction that you also would believe to be of  significant value and that you would recommend to others because of that value.  Then you are asked to find at least two extended commentaries on that work: these commentaries can be found either in academic journals or in national publications that provide in-depth reviews of contemporary fiction.   In either case, however, the commentators’ focus should be on the worth—or lack of it—in the work you have selected.Then, working with the issues raised  at least five of the writers we’ve read to date, identify (l) the dependence of each commentator, if any, on these authors for the standards they employ in their assessment of your selection and (2)  insofar as they are not dependent upon such standards, what standards do they use and how are those standards at odds with those that our four readings have advocatedFinally,  having completed that analysis, articulate your ultimate evaluation of the work of fiction you have chosen, identifying those ideas from our authors which support your evaluation and those which you reject (and the reasons for your rejection of them), as well as the support you can find from among those who responded to Fish’s essays.

Essay 3

Due: 12 noon December 9Weight: 50%

This final essay focuses on a question that is deceptively simple: how would you apply the materials of this course in the future?This is, one the one hand, an intensely personal question: each student’s answer can—and will—vary greatly from everyone else’s. But it is of equal importance to both those who will be continuing the formal study of literature—in college and beyond—and those who will be the audience for the powerful

(but potentially pernicious) fictions that are, more than ever before, the source of our “understanding” of the world outside our immediate experience and thus require a critical response from you.For those of you who will be continuing your formal study of literature, this is an opportunity to develop a rationale for the investment you will be making in that study: what do you hope to gain from it and why? And if you intend to pursue the study of literature as a teaching field, what vision(s) of literature make it worth the aggravation and effort such a career will entail. What would you be looking for in the literature you study professionally and in the fictions which engage you personally?For those of you who may not take any more coursework in literature, what benefits will you gain from investing your time in the careful consideration of those “fictions” which fight for your time and attention?  What will those fictions offer you?  What problems will they pose for you and how can you address those challenges so that your decision making—as a person, a citizen, and a professional—will be enhanced and not subverted by such fictions?  In either case, students should formulate this personal statement of intent with reference to (1) at least five core ideas articulated by the authors whom we have read that are, in their view, compelling and (2) at least five that are, in their view, problematic. Further support for both (l) and (2) should be elicited from those responding to Fish’s essays.   The essay that results is intended for your future benefit as it is an opportunity to clarify and refine what you will be undertaking in the  future, what benefits you will expect, and what opposition you are likely to encounter in such an undertaking.  I will not presume to judge the “rightness” or the “wrongness” of the vision you set out; I will only judge the effort you have invested in developing this essay, the understanding you demonstrate of others’ arguments, and the thoroughness of your efforts.