Instytut Anglistyki
Uniwersytet Warszawski
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Introduction to Literature
Topics and texts
1.literary convention – What is Literature?
2.poetry – poetic diction, speaking I
3.fiction before 1900 – ‘Text: Characterization’ by S. Rimmon-Kenan; from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
4.fiction after 1900 - ‘Text: Focalization’ by S. Rimmon-Kenan; James Joyce’s Eveline
5.very recent fiction -‘Story, Events’ by S. Rimmon-Kenan; Angela Carter’s The Werewolf and Snow Child
6.midterm test
7.translation studies – fiction in translation exercises
8.literary criticism – Roland Barthes’s The Death of the Author and from Mythologies
9.genre criticism – Patrick Parrinder’s Science Fiction; Philip K. Dick’s Pre-persons and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
10. film studies – Steve Neale’s ‘You’ve Got To Be Fucking Kidding!’Knowledge, Belief and Judgement in Science Fictionand The Thing (movie) by John Carpenter
11. final test – evaluation
What is Literature?
Read the following extracts and decide which of them belong to the realm of literature and which do not.
You are expected to defend your decision.
1. Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Y\N
2. Roses are red 3. Heavenly hurt it gives us -
Violets are blue We can find no scar,
Sugar is sweet But internal difference,
And so are you Where the Meanings are.
Y\N Y\N
4. ‘Yesterday on the A7 an automobile travelling at sixty miles per hour crashed into a plane tree. Its four occupants were killed’.
Daily Mirror
Y\N
5. Yesterday on the A7
An automobile
Travelling at sixty miles per hour crushed
Into a plane tree
Its four occupants were
Killed.
Jonathan Culler
Y\N
6. I write just to say that I have eaten the plums you’ve left on the kitchen table.
They were delicious: so sweet. And so Cool.
Y\N
7. Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness.
We gamble. Some do it at the gambling table, some do not.
You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.
Y\N