Literature and Interpretation
V41.0200.007/008
Fall 2005
MW 3:30-4:45 (145F 210)/MW 5-6:15 (MEYR 264)
Jonathan Farina
jvf204@nyu.edu
Office hours: Tuesday 2-3:30 and by appointment
19 University Place, room 422
This course does not assume previous college work in literature; it is required for the major
in English but also open (and useful) to non-majors. Expository writing is a requirement.
Class attendance and participation are required. Come to class with ideas and questions to
discuss: annotate your books and write your thoughts down as you read. Bring the day’s
reading to class every class.
All papers must be completed to receive course credit. If you have specific issues, you may
request extensions for the paper due dates, but you MUST contact me if you plan on
submitting a paper late. I will be lenient IF you contact me a reasonable amount of time
BEFORE the due date. Papers may be rewritten at any time up to the final exam: the new
grade will be the average of the two grades. I urge you to discuss your paper ideas and drafts
with me. Because I want to encourage you to take creative risks and because your first paper
is due soon, I will drop your lowest paper grade when calculating your final average
(provided you put forth earnest effort on each paper).
Your final grade will be based on the papers (75%), class participation (15%), and a final
exam (10%).
No incompletes will be given except for medical or other grave reasons.
Required Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 5th Edition.
Chris Baldick. Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. New ed.
Joseph Gibaldi. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th edition. (The Department
Requires this for English majors).
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Folger Shakespeare.
Anthology of short stories for the course: available at Unique Copy, 252 Greene St. (under
name Maynard) and on Reserve in Bobst.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations. Bedford St. Martins
Assignments:
*Each class, one student will give a 3 to 5 minute presentation in which he/she will choose
one or two words in a poem from the day’s readings and share how the etymology and
different meanings of the word(s) can enrich, complicate, or otherwise change
interpretations of the poem.
*Each class, another student will give a 3 to 5 minute presentation on one of the terms for
the day’s reading: the informal presentation will perhaps include a pointed account of the
word’s history and meanings and, more importantly, a creative and interesting example of
how the term is useful for interpreting one of the day’s poems. Look beyond Baldick’s
handbook of literary terms here: try the Norton glossary, the OED, Literature Online, etc.
Sept 7:
Sept 12:
Sept 14:
Sept 19:
Sept 21:
Poems from The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Group I (see separate sheet).
Poems, Group I.
Poems, Group I. Paper due on a Group I poem (3pp, dbl. spaced, typed).
Poems, Group II.
Poems, Group II.
Sept 26:
Sept 28:
Oct 3:
Oct 5:
Oct 10:
Oct 12:
Oct 17:
Oct 19:
Oct 24:
Oct 26:
Oct 31:
Nov 2:
Nov 7:
Nov 9:
Nov 14:
Nov 16:
Nov 21:
Nov 23:
Poems, Group II. Paper due on a Group II Poem (3 pp.)
Poems, Group III.
Poems, Group III.
Poems, Group III.
Holiday.
Poems, Group IV.
Poems, Group IV.
Poems, Group IV. Paper due on a Group IV poem (3-5 pp.).
Poems, Group V.
Poems, Group V.
Short Narratives and Stories, course anthology. TBA
More Short Narratives and Stories. TBA
Still Short Narratives and Stories. TBA
Last short stories ever. Paper due on one short story from anthology (3-5 pp.).
Great Expectations, pp. 23-136
Great Expectations, pp. 136-244
Great Expectations, pp. 244-343
Great Expectations, pp. 343-440
Nov 28:
Nov 30:
Dec 5:
Dec 7:
Dec 12:
Dec 14:
Great Expectations. Paper due on Great Expectations (5-7 pp.).
Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night
Jon’s birthday; class will pay homage by performing scenes from Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night. Paper due on Twelfth Night (5 pp.).
Last Class, catch-up, review, tremendous life lessons and pathos.
Final Examination (open book) will ask for writing on Twelfth Night only.
Additional assistance for this class is available to you free of charge at the College
Learning Center located on the 1st Floor of Weinstein Hall (right behind Java City). For
information on one-on-one and group peer tutoring, please stop by the CLC or go to their
website: http://www.nyu.edu/cas/clc/index.html
Group I:
Speaker, voice, tone and attitude, perspective, point of view, persona, vehicle, diction
(including tense/verb form), accent, and reader.
Williams, “This Is Just to Say”
Donne, “The Sun Rising”
Frost, “Birches”
Whitman, “Virgil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night”
Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”
Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Sidney, Sonnet 71 of “Astrophil and Stella”
Lowell, “Skunk Hour”
Swift, “A description of a City Shower”
Clare, “Badger”
Wordsworth, “Composed on Westminster Bridge”
Plath, “Lady Lazarus”
Group II:
Image, metaphor, trope, figure of speech, symbol, allusion, personification, prosopoeia,
synecdoche, and metonymy.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
Blake, “The Sick Rose”
Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
Waller, “Song”
Keats, “To Autumn”
Tennyson, “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal”
Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”
Arnold, “To Marguerite”
Frost, “Design”
Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”
Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter”
Dickinson, No. 754
Shelley, “England in 1819”
Group III:
Sound, rhythm, song, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, couplets, versification, meter, beat,
accent, stress, refrain, echo, free verse, caesura, end-stopped line, run-on line
(enjambment), iamb, trochee, spondee, dactyl, anapest, dimeter, trimester, tetrameter,
pentameter, hexameter, blank verse, heroic verse (couplets), stanza, and sonnet.
Nashe, “A Litany in Time of Plague, “Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss”
Jonson, “Song: To Celia (I)”
Hughes, “Harlem”
Hopkins, “Spring and Fall”
Hopkins, “Carrion Comfort”
Donne, Sonnet 10
Shakespeare, “When Daisies Pied”
Blake, “And Did These Feet”
Blake, “London”
Wordsworth, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal”
Tennyson, In Memoriam, No. 7
Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
Thomas, “Fern Hill”
Herbert, “Easter Wings”
Group IV:
Structure, organization, center, climax, movement, ambiguity, irony, argument, speech
act (prayer, seduction, invocation, insult, bargaining, praising, warning, cursing), drama
and inner drama, narration, description, vision/dream, paradox, catalog or list, and
ekphrasis.
Hardy, “The Voice”
Milton, “Methought I saw”
Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight”
Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
Stevens, “The Snow Man”
Rossetti, “The Convent Threshold”
Donne, Sonnet 14
Browning, “My Last Duchess”
Group V:
Form, type, kind, genre, mode, literary relation, tradition, convention, formal features,
parody, burlesque, allegory, translation; some genres: epic, tragedy, comedy, pastoral,
novel, history; some modes: epic, tragic, realistic, satirical, ironic, comic, pastoral.
Jonson, “To Penshurst”
Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Ralegh, “The Nymph’s reply to the Shepherd”
Dryden, “Mac Flecknoe”
Pound, “The Garden”
Sir Patrick Spens
Coleridge, “Dejection: An Ode”
Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes”
Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli”
Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”