ENGL 200WIntroduction to Critical Reading

3 credits · English · Penn State

Responses to a variety of literary texts written in English that evoke different approaches. ENGL 200W Introduction to Critical Reading (3)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. When we read a work of literature, how do we determine what it means? Why do readers and critics come up with different interpretations of the same work? How do we decide if a literary work is valuable or not? This course addresses these and other questions by introducing students to the variety of literary questions on which critics and scholars base their interpretations of literature. Each theory poses different questions about a literary text's meanings and focuses our attention on different aspects of a text's language and background. We will examine the theory and practice the application of the following schools of criticism: formalism, psychoanalytic criticism, new historicism, Marxism, and feminism. We will apply different methods to particular literary texts, and students will practice different types of approaches in in-class writing assignments as well as in four papers (4-5 pages each). At the end of the semester, each student will put together a portfolio containing careful revisions of three of those papers as well as an introductory commentary of 1-2 pages.