ENGL 114
Literary Speakers Fall 2020
Division I Writing Skills

The general purpose of this course is to develop students’ skills as interpreters of poetry and short fiction. Its particular focus is on how–and with what effects–poets create the voices of their poems, and fiction writers create their narrators. We’ll consider the ways in which literary speakers inform and entice, persuade and sometimes deceive, their audiences. Readings will include texts from various historical periods, with particular emphasis on the twentieth century (including works by James Joyce, Henry James, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Frost, Toni Cade Bambara, Raymond Carver, and Seamus Heaney).