BA , Major English, Paper: I,  Reading, Writing, and Thinking

Year: First

 

 Tribhuvan University

Humanities and Social Sciences

Four- Years' BA

Major English

Paper: I

Level: BA Major English

Year: First

Course Title: Reading, Writing, and Thinking

Course Code: ENG 421

Course Description

This course concentrates on the major elements of literature and provides practical guidelines on reading closely and writing analytically. While the first two units give an exclusive coverage of the genres with a demonstration of the skills needed for a successful reading of and writing about literature with critical thinking, the last two units incorporate some of the well-known topics with wide-ranging tools to help entry level students respond critically to literature at the college level.

Course Contents

Unit 1: Study of Literature and Its Close Reading Contact hours.: 40

 Thinking about Literature

1. Discussed Text: “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” (Emily Dickinson)

2. Discussed Text: “The Sacred” (Stephen Dunn)

3. Activity Text: “When my love swears that she is made of truth” (William Shakespeare)

 Why Study Literature?

4. Discussed Text: “Praise Song for the Day” (Elizabeth Alexander)

5. Discussed Text: “Peanuts” (Charles Schulz)

 Approaching Literature

6. Discussed Text: “Out, Out—” (Robert Frost)

7. Activity Text: “Snow” (Julia Alvarez)

 Close Reading

8. Discussed Text: from My Antonia (Willa Cather)

9. Activity Text: “To an Athlete Dying Young” (A. E. Housman)

 Elements of Style

10. Activity Text: Re-reading “To an Athlete Dying Young” (A. E. Housman)

11. Discussed Text: from “Old Mr. Marblehall” (Eudora Welty)

12. Activity Text: from The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

 Special Considerations for Reading Poetry Closely

13. Discussed Text: from “The Red Wheelbarrow” (William Carlos Williams)

14. Activity Text: “Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art—“(John Keats)

15. Discussed Text: “Delight in Disorder” (Robert Herrick)

16. Activity Text: “My Father’s Song” (Simon Ortiz)

 Talking with the Text

17. Activity Text: “Promises are like pie-crust, made to be broken” (Christina Georgina Rossetti)

18. Discussed Text: “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes” (William Shakespeare)

 Graphic Designer

19. Discussed Text: from The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

 From Analysis to Essay: Writing a Close Analysis Essay

20. Discussed Text: from “Slam, Dunk, & Hook” (Yusef Komunyakaa)

21. Activity Text: “Fast Break” (Edward Hirsch)

22. Activity Text: “Travelling through the Dark” (William Stafford)

23. Activity Text: “Woodchucks” (Maxine Kumin)

Unit 2: Elements of Fiction & Drama Contact hours.: 40

 Elements of Fiction

24. Discussed Text: “One of These Days” (Gabriel García Márquez)

25. Discussed Text: from Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

26. Activity Text: from Hard Times (Charles Dickens)

27. Discussed Text: from “The Masque of the Red Death” (Edgar Allan Poe)

28. Discussed Text: from The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

29. Discussed Text: from “Call it Sleep”(Henry Roth)

30. Discussed Text: from 1984(George Orwell)

31. Activity Text: from Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)

32. Discussed Text: from The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Dinaw Mengestu)

33. Discussed Text: from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

34. Discussed Text: from “Miss Brill”(Katherine Mansfield)

35. Discussed Text: from “The Lottery”(Shirley Jackson)

36. Discussed Text: from Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)

37. Activity Text: “Seeing Eye”(Brad Watson)

38. Discussed Text: from A Crime in the Neighborhood (Suzanne Berne)

39. Discussed Text: from Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

40. Activity Text: from Brooklyn (Colm Tóibín)

41. Discussed Text: “The First Day”(Edward P. Jones)

42. Activity Text: “Girl”(Jamaica Kincaid)

 Special Considerations for Analyzing Drama

43. Discussed Text: from Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

44. Discussed Text: from Othello, the Moor of Venice (William Shakespeare)

45. Discussed Text: from A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen)

46. Activity Text: from A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry)

47. Discussed Text: from The Gin Game (D. L. Coburn)

48. Activity Text: Andre’s Mother (Terrence McNally)

 From Analysis to Essay: Writing an Interpretive Essay

49. Discussed Text: Trifles(Susan Glaspell)

 

Unit 3 General Topics in Literature: Family, Culture and Love Contact hours.: 40

 Home & Family

50. Activity Text: “The Dead”(James Joyce)

51. Activity Text: “I Stand Here Ironing” (Tillie Olsen)

52. Activity Text: “A Prayer for My Daughter” (William Butler Yeats)

53. Activity Text: “My Papa’s Waltz” (Theodore Roethke)

54. Activity Text: “Those Winter Sundays” (Robert Hayden)

 Home & Family—Student Writing: Comparison and Contrast

 The Writer’s Craft —Close Reading (Connotation)

 Identity & Culture

55. Activity Text: Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

56. Activity Text: “Interpreter of Maladies”(Jhumpa Lahiri)

57. Activity Text: “We Real Cool” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

58. Activity Text: “The White Man’s Burden” (Rudyard Kipling)

59. Activity Text: “The Black Man’s Burden” (H. T. Johnson)

 Home & Family—Student Writing: Close Reading Fiction

 The Writer’s Craft —Close Reading (Specialized, Archaic, and Unfamiliar Diction)

 Love & Relationships

 

60. Activity Text: The Importance of Being Ernest (Oscar Wilde)

61. Activity Text: “To His Coy Mistress” (Andrew Marvell)

62. Activity Text: “Coy Mistress” (Anne Finch)

63. Activity Text: “Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse than Craiglist?” (Anita Jain)

64. Activity Text: “Boyfriend” (Randall Munroe)

 Love & Relationships—Student Writing: Analyzing Irony in Drama

 The Writer’s Craft —Close Reading (Irony)

Unit 4: Binary Topics in Literature Contact hours: 40

 Conformity & Rebellion

65. Activity Text: Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

66. Activity Text: “The Book of the Dead”(Edwidge Danticat)

67. Activity Text: “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (E. E. Cummings)

68. Activity Text: “An Epitaph” (Matthew Prior)

69. Activity Text: “The Unknown Citizen” (W. H. Auden)

 Conformity & Rebellion—Student Writing: Close Reading Drama

 The Writer’s Craft —Close Reading (Tone)

 Tradition & Progress

70. Activity Text: Daisy Miller (Henry James)

71. Activity Text: “Everyday Use” (Alice Walker)

72. Activity Text: “Dover Beach” (Matthew Arnold)

73. Activity Text: “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (Langston Hughes)

74. Activity Text: from Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral (Jessie Redmon Fauset)

 Conformity & Rebellion—Student Writing: Working with Sources

 The Writer’s Craft —Close Reading (Syntax)

 War & Peace

75. Activity Text: Antigone (Sophocles)

76. Activity Text: “The Shawl” (Cynthia Ozick)

77. Activity Text: “The Management of Grief” (Bharati Mukherjee)

78. Activity Text: “Dulce et Decorum Est” (Wilfred Owen)

79. Activity Text: “Soldier’s Home” (Ernest Hemingway)

 War & Peace—Student Writing: Analyzing Theme in Drama

 The Writer’s Craft —Close Reading (Imagery)

Evaluation Scheme

Internal: 30% (Portfolio Mandatory 15%) External: 70%

Prescribed Book

Jago, Carl, et al. Literature and Composition: Reading, Writing, Thinking. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.