Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

This course treats analysis as a creative act. It assumes that analysis makes it possible to enjoy literature in unexpected ways and that worthwhile analysis stems from creative excitement and enjoyment.

It is divided equally between poetry and prose. In both parts we study short works: short poems and, in the prose section, short stories and essays. The relative shortness of the readings enables us to consider a wide variety of authors and styles while exploring each work in depth. And the works we study do reward detailed attention. Authors include standard figures such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Eudora Welty, and Scott Fitzgerald; experimental writers such as E. E. Cummings, Tom Wolfe, and Sesshu Foster; and writers from traditionally marginalized groups: people of color, people of unconventional sexuality, and people of physical disability, a group that includes such writers as James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich, Judy Grahn, Audre Lorde, and Nancy Mairs.

In addition to traditional topics such as diction and form, the poetry section explores the relation between poetry and music, including rap and popular song. The prose section adds concepts especially suited to the study prose and includes both fiction and nonfiction. Both parts involve short exercises in creative writing as a way of  understanding the relation between analysis and creativity. We also look at what’s happening with poetry and prose right now, including electronic literature as presented on the web. The overall goal is to acquire new ways of understanding creativity, including your own.

The instructor: Professor Ed Rivers writes on modern literature and has won five awards for teaching, including the University’s highest, the President’s Teaching Scholar award.

Texts:  A custom-designed course pack costing about $20.00 in the UMC plus short texts available online at no cost.

Requirements (subject to change):  Two short tests, a mid-term, various in-class exercises, and a final paper. 

Taught by Ed Rivers.

This course is designed for students in the English major and aims to cultivate in students the practice of reading and writing about literary texts. We will cover the basic concepts and vocabularies of literary criticism, and familiarize ourselves with the central genres of literature—poetry, drama, and the novel—and the specific methods involved in analyzing them. We will ask not just what the meaning of a literary work is, but how meaning is conveyed, and why it is conveyed in such a way. In other words, we will look at the formal elements of a text and the way they interact with, reinforce, or subvert a text’s thematic content. Texts we will likely use include Eaven Boland and Mark Strand's The Making of a Poem; William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus; Brian Friel's Translations, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Nella Larsen's Passing.

Taught by Janice Ho.

In ENGL 2102, Literary Analysis, we will read, discuss, and write about a variety of literary genres and forms:  poetry, drama, and fiction.  In all our reading and work together, we will focus on the crucial ability to analyze closely a piece of literature:  how does a good writer use character, setting, and action to create meaning?  How does her or his choice of language work?  What makes a literary work endure for centuries? We will study poetry in many of its forms (song, sonnet, ballad, dramatic monologue, free verse, lyric) as well as many of its themes (youth, age, love, death, war, nature).  We will also read drama by Shakespeare, short stories (D. H. Lawrence, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Ursula LeGuin),  and a Dickens novel.

Taught by John Stevenson.

This course provides students with a broad familiarity with literary genres and literary terms, and it trains students in the practices of literary criticism and research.  Students will learn to analyze prose and poetry with appropriate strategies, including close reading.  The primary application for these newly acquired skills will be classroom discussion and written assignments, both informal and formal, and students will leave the course prepared to join the ranks of English majors.

Taught by Penny Kelsey.

Off

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Requisites: Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

Off

By Tiffany Beechy

Develops the skills of seeing, hearing, noticing, and describing that are the foundation of literary study. We all have feelings about what we like and don’t like, but can you articulate precisely what it is aboutthatbook,thatsong,thatfilm, that makes it amazing and sets it apart from everything else? Doing so imparts the ability to understand and evaluate complexity in a broad range of fields, making the study of English excellent preparation for any further study and any future life. The course also provides introductory knowledge of the grammar and history of English, the mechanics of academic writing, the scansion of poetic meter, and the traditional periods and genres of literature in English.

Off

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Off

This section of literary analysis will inquire into “who tells the story”—what happens when who narrates what—to work through the central goals of the course: to refine close reading and critical analysis skills via formal, cultural, historical, and comparative analyses as well as scholarly research. And to read some great authors: Henry James, Mary Shelley, Toni Morrison, and more.

Off

This course teaches how to analyze poetry and prose. It assumes some experience with literary analysis but not advanced knowledge. It is divided about equally between poetry and prose. The poetry half explores, among other things, the relation between poetry and music, including rap and popular song. The prose half includes both fiction and nonfiction. Both halves include exercises in creative writing. The goal is to acquire both analytical skill and new ways of understanding creativity, including your own.

Texts: A custom-designed course pack costing about $15.00 in the UMC plus various no-cost texts online.

Requirements (subject to change): Two short tests, a mid-term, some short papers and exercises, and a final paper. For further information contact the instructor: ed.rivers@colorado.edu.

Off

This is a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Off

This course provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

Off

This course develops the skills of seeing, hearing, noticing, and describing that are the foundation of literary study. We all have feelings about what we like and don’t like, but can you articulate precisely what it is about that book, that song, that film, that makes it amazing and sets it apart from everything else? Doing so imparts the ability to understand and evaluate complexity in a broad range of fields, making the study of English excellent preparation for any further study and any future life. The course also provides introductory knowledge of the grammar and history of English, the mechanics of academic writing, the scansion of poetic meter, and the traditional periods and genres of literature in English.

Off

This course teaches how to analyze poetry and prose. It assumes some experience with literary analysis but not advanced knowledge. It is divided about equally between poetry and prose, with poetry in the first half. The section on poetry explores, among other things, the relations between poetry and music, including rap and popular song. The section on prose includes both fiction and creative nonfiction. The overall goal is to acquire not only objective knowledge and analytical skill but also new ways of understanding creativity, including your own.

Probable texts (subject to change):  A custom-designed course pack costing about $10.00 in the UMC and various other texts available online.

Probable requirements (subject to change):  a mid-term exam, two shorter tests, a number of short papers and exercises, and a final paper. For further information contact the instructor: ed.rivers@colorado.edu.

Off