This course prepares students to read, discuss, analyze, interpret, and
evaluate literary texts, and to write about them with clarity and critical
judgment. Together we will read and
discuss poems, stories and plays both as a whole class and in smaller discussion
groups. I encourage active participation
and will consider it as part of the grade for this course. If you are the kind of student who despairs
at such words because you find speaking in front of a class unbearable, please
relax. I understand that not everyone
feels comfortable speaking out. We will
work in small groups about half the time, so you may participate in a smaller
setting. I hope eventually everyone will
be willing to join the larger conversation, but you need not feel
pressured. I do urge you to attend regularly and do the reading.
Text: The Norton Introduction to Literature, ed. by Booth, Hunter and
Mays. Shorter Ninth Edition.
1. Papers or In-Class Papers -- there will
be three papers or in-class papers, each worth 1/5th of the
grade. I will not accept any late work. No Exceptions.
Papers are due in class on the due date.
Students who do not meet the deadline must do the in-class writing. This should take care of most problems. Students are free to choose either the
out-of-class paper or the in-class writing, but may not do both.
2. Due Dates or In-Class Dates: #1: Thursday, 9/27; #2: Thursday, 11/1; #3:
Thursday, 11/29
2. Final Exam -- the final exam will be held on Tuesday, December 18th, 7:30 – 10:00 a.m. in Riverview 201. The final will count for 1/5th of the final grade. The final will include five passage analysis questions and an essay dealing with Antigone, “Sonny’s Blues,” and the student choice poems we discussed in class. Please set your alarm – failure to attend the final exam will result in a 0 for 1/5th of the grade.
3. Quizzes -- There will be
7 short reading quizzes. I will drop the lowest quiz grade. The grades for these will be totaled,
converted to a letter grade, and will count for 1/5th of the final
grade. You must attend class to take the quiz; students who take the quiz and
leave early will receive a 0 for that quiz.
There are no makeup quizzes.
Please do not ask!
4. Class Participation – There
will be no grade as such for participation.
Regular attendance is both assumed and required. Failure to attend and participate regularly
(more than four absences, which is two full weeks) will lead to a reduced
grade. Students who leave early will be counted absent. Students who stop attending should drop ASAP,
or they will receive an FN. This is now
SCSU policy.
There is a good deal of research that demonstrates a positive correlation between attendance and performance. Here are two recent examples of such research:
http://www.esr.ie/Vol34_3Kirby.pdf http://www.jstor.org/view/00029092/ap040147/04a00020/0
5. I will calculate your grade by averaging the letter grade for the three papers, the final, and the top 6 quiz grades.
Getting along with Klepetar:
(This is quite easy, really – ask my wife). Not much bothers me, but I do ask you to pay attention to a few basic issues of common courtesy:
I ask that you arrive on time and remain for the entire class, unless you notify me in advance with a good reason. Arriving late and/or leaving early is rude and distracting. Students who come late or leave early will be counted as absent unless arrangements are made in advance. Students who regularly come late or leave early will be asked to leave the course.
Please check to make sure your cell phones are switched off – I have been known to dance to cell phone music, and none of us wants that!
Please do not read newspapers; play or listen to
music on laptops or other electronic media; write letters; do work for other
courses; or sleep during the
seventy-five minutes you are in this class.
If you are unable to stay awake
for whatever reason, stay home and get the rest you need. Reading and discussing literature requires
concentration and focus, and it rewards careful attention. Please
do not leave class and return – this is rude and disruptive to me and to the other students in class.
Week 1
Class 1: Thursday 9/6 – Introduction and Syllabus. Student Introductions. Observation and Interpretation -- Handout: “Song,” “Western Wind,” “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car,” “On The Collar of a Dog,” “Lines From a Christmas Card,” “Fire and Ice,” “Candy is Dandy,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “On the Antiquity of Fleas,” “Heat,” “Going to Extremes,” “An Old Quiet Pond.”
Week 2
Class 2: Tuesday, 9/11 – Observation and Interpretation continued.
Group Work 1: Haiku – pp. 886 – 891. We will discuss one or two as a class and then break into groups. Each group will get a haiku to work on, discuss and present to the class. Haiku invites opening the poem up to speculation, possibility and suggestion. As part of the presentation, each group will also write a haiku in the 5 – 7- 5 syllable form. The only rule about content is that it must have something to do with Saint Cloud State – the place, or college life, or a student hangout – anything that connect in some way to where we all are.
Class
3: Thursday, 9/13 – Interpreting poems: “The Twenty-third Psalm (711);
“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Frost, 989); “Ill Wind” (handout).
Week 3
Class 4: Tuesday, 9/ 18 – Assign Paper #1/In-Class #1 – Choose either. Writing About Literature (1685 – 1710); Group Work 2: Discussion, Interpretation and Presentation: “The Lamb” (Blake, 880); “The Tyger” (Blake, 978), “Point Shirley (Plath, 666); “We Real Cool” (Brooks, 655); “Barbie Doll” (Piercy, 619); “Daystar” (Dove, 662).
Class 5: Thursday, 9/20 – Plot – pp. 66 – 70; “What happened?” – Ballad: “Mattie Groves;” Folktale: The Frog Princess (oral narrative); The How and Why: “Happy Endings” (Atwood, handout); “The Story of an Hour” (Chopin, 449); “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (Marquez, 451).
Week 4
Class
6: Tuesday, 9/25 – The Thing in the
Class 7: Thursday, 9/27 – Paper #1 due/ In Class Writing #1 – you may either turn in your paper or sit for the in-class writing.
Week 5
Class 8: Tuesday, 10/2 – “A Rose For Emily” (467); Quiz #2.
Class 9: Thursday, 10/4 – Group Work 3: Approaches to Fiction: Lawrence R. Rodgers (474); George Dillon (481); Judith Fetterley (489); Gene M. Moore (495); Willow D. Crystal (503).
Week 6
Class 10: Tuesday, 10/9 – -- Working With Meter – Handout; External Form, 777 - 780 the Sonnet, 780 – 789; “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” 791.
Class 11: Thursday 10/11 – NO Class – Professor at conference
Week 7
Class 12: Tuesday 10/16 — NO Class – Professor at conference.
Class 13: Thursday 10/18 – Assign Paper #2/In Class #2; Group work 4: Working with sonnets.
Week 8
Class 14 – Tuesday, 10/23 – Initiation Stories, “Gorilla, My Love,” (Bambara, 418); “Boys and Girls,” (Munroe, 422); “Quiz #3 on sonnets, “Gorilla, My Love” and “Boys and Girls.”
Class 15 – Thursday 10/25 Detection: Short plays, in-class scenes and discussion -- Susan Glaspell, Trifles (Glaspell, 1046), The Real Inspector Hound (Stoppard, 1068).
Week 9
Class 16: Tuesday, 10/30 -- Araby,” (Joyce, 432); “The Lost World,” (Chabon, 437). Quiz #4 on plays and stories (“Araby” and “The Lost World.”).
Class
17:Thursday 11/1 – Paper #2 due/n-Class
#2 – if you turned in paper #2 you need not come to class
Week 10
Class 18: Tuesday 11/6 – Poems On Love – “A Red, Red Rose,” (Burns, 707); “The Sick Rose,” (Blake, 723); “To His Coy Mistress,” (Marvell, 671); “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” (Marlowe, 884); “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” (Raleigh, 892); “Stop all the clocks,” (Auden, 609); “Wild Nights, Wild Nights,” (Dickinson, 716). Class 19:
Thursday 11/8 – Assign Paper and In-Class #3; A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Week 11
Class
20: Tuesday 11/13 ; Group Work 5 -- Midsummer Night’s Dream; Quiz
#5.
Class
21: Thursday 11/15 – “Saturday’s Child,” (Cullen, 917); “The Weary Blues,” The
Negro Speaks of Rivers;” “I, Too,” (Hughes, 919 – 921); “Sonnet to a Negro in
James Baldwin “Sonny’s Blues,” 88.
Poetry: Student Choice Assignment: You may submit a poem for the student choice poetry classes on 12/6 – 11. You may select a poem (that is, a single poem, one and only one!) we have not studied either from the text or elsewhere (in which case you should supply me with a copy). Students who submit a poem may earn 10 extra credit points. This is a good way to replace a missed or failed quiz. Please note that you must be prepared to begin the discussion of the poem if we use it in class. However, you will earn the ten points if you submit a poem whether we use it or not. In order to give me time to photocopy the poems, you must email me your choice or submit it to me in writing up through Monday, 11/26.
Week 12
Class 22: Tuesday 11/20 – Quiz #6; Group Work 6 - “Sonny’s Blues”.
Thursday 11/22 -- Thanksgiving Break
Week 13
Class
23: Tuesday, 11/27 –Antigone ( Sophocles, 1423) – Reading Day.
Class 24: Thursday, 11/29 – Paper/ #3 due/in Class #3 – if you turned in paper #3 you need not come to class
Week 14
Class 25: Tuesday, 12/4 -- Quiz #7 Group Work 7 - Antigone in-class trial project
Poems for 12/6 – 12/11: In the absence of your suggestions, we’ll begin with Robert Frost’s famous “The Road Not Taken,” 988 as a way of talking about carefully reading the actual text; other poems we will look at will include Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays,” 633; Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz,” 691; Robert Herrick, “Upon Julia’s Clothes,” 806; Robert Frost, “Design,” 810; Emily Dickinson, “My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun,” 811;” 915; Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” 980; John Donne, “Death, Be Not Proud,” 982; and “The Sun Rising,” 983; Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses,” 1011; William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1023 and “Sailing to Byzantium,” 1025.
Class 26: Thursday 12/6 Poetry – Student Choice (from book or photocopy turned in or emailed by Monday, 11/26 – I will distribute to class).
Week 15
Tuesday, 12/11 – Group Work 8: Analysis of Student choice poems.
Final Exam – Tuesday, December 18, 7:30 –
10:00 a.m. in Riverview 201