This class is an introduction of basic toolkits for appreciating literary works. In this first required class in the program, the students will learn how to analyze the style of literary language, dissect the narrative construction of a story, and reflect upon the use of symbolic language and thematic reverberances in fiction. We will also move through different genres: short stories, poems, and plays. As you will find out, this is no easy task. For one thing, you are asked to perceive language differently: not simply as a transparent medium through which one is able to communicate with other people, but as a delicately refractive—though resolutely conventional—layer that appeals to our intellectual capacity and poetic imagination. This is, to wit, the task of reading. We are going to see how English grammar, something we all learned in high school as a set of unbreakable rules, becomes quite malleable in the hands of these great writers. Passing through that malleability would enable us to think about the porous relationship between ordinary and literary languages. In the meantime, I would bring in various film examples to illustrate how certain concepts are able to migrate to another medium and provide equally powerful tools for narrative analysis.

Each session will proceed as follows: I’ll spend the first 75 minutes lecturing about the materials and ask impromptu questions—which is the time for you to impress me. Then a long break of 20 minutes during which several discussion questions will be provided on the blackboard. You should find some friends of yours and one new member to make up your discussion group of five to six people. The length of the discussion will be about 20 minutes. Then we’ll spend 15 minutes going through some tentative answers as provided by each of you. In the last 20 minutes of the class, I will provide another lecture to wrap things up.