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40464
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Online
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S
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1:00PM
-3:50PM
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R
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n.a.
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Mahaffey, V
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- Part of Term:
- 1
- Date Range:
- 08/24/20-12/09/20
- Section Info:
- Nature & Value of the Literary - This course is structured around two main questions: 1) what is literature (and what is the value of literary study), and 2) what is happening to literary criticism in the information age? We will begin with the assumption that literature is true, although not factually true. How then can we best describe its truth: is it true to experience, or the meaning of experience? Is it true to value? What is the relation between literature and scripture? We will begin by reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1947 What is Literature? Mark Turner’s The Literary Mind: Origins of Thought and Language (written from a neuroscientific perspective) will be next on our list. Other texts we will examine include Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination, Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, and Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines. We will conclude this section of the course by asking what other cultural demarcations might actually be approached as if they were stories: race and gender. If assumptions about race and gender are socially constructed, widely accepted stories, what (and whose) purposes did they serve? And if they are stories rather than facts, the dominant narratives about race and gender are capable of being revised as social experience changes or needs to change. The second half of the course asks whether the academic study of literature is being reconfigured by the ready accessibility of information on the internet. Has the audience for those seeking to understand or appreciate literature broadened, and can this help to explain the increasing value being placed on the “public” humanities? The main audience for literary criticism used to be other professors and students; has this changed? And if the audience is indeed changing, what implications might this have for the way literary criticism is conceived? We will look at some different methods of conveying the complexity and value of literature, including more popular ones. Texts include Tim Federle, Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist, Steven J. Venturino, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, and Michael Groden, The Necessary Fiction: Life with James Joyce’s Ulysses, with a nod to older books in the same vein such as Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot and Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change your Life. We will also look at YouTube segments that “market” literature, such as Sam Slote ‘s Ted talk, “Why should you Read James Joyce’s Ulysses?”
- Restriction(s):
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Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
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