ENGL 112
Introduction to Literary Criticism Fall 2024
Division I Writing Skills

What determines meaning? How we interpret is inevitably inflected by our own priorities and preoccupations, by the contexts in which we read, by literary and other conventions, and by the historical and personal circumstances of a work’s composition, as well as deriving from the particular words of a text and from the mutable life of language itself. So how to go about the task of reading literature well? This course will focus on key introductory methods and critical approaches, and is intended to develop your skills in reading, writing about, discussing and interpreting literary texts. Our initial readings–mainly short fiction and poetry, along with selected introductory work in critical theory–will invite increased self-consciousness about literary form, the functions of criticism, and the process of reading and interpretation. In the last weeks of the course, we will address longer texts, including at least one play, one novel and one film.