Class Calendar and Schedule of Assignments
Week Date Class Topics Reading Assignment Due Writing Assignment Due
1 1/22 First Class
Welcome!
The Listserv Assignment
2 1/27 The Who and How of Reading Alberto Manguel
A History of Reading
1-53
Review the Quotation and Citation Guidelines for Listserv Posts and Formal Writing Assignments
Reading Post A1
2 1/29 Reading as Memory, as Learning, as Dialogue, as Metaphor
Types of Context
Alberto Manguel
A History of Reading
54-93, 162-85
Reading Post B1
3 2/3 Reading: Questions of Genre and Power Alberto Manguel
A History of Reading
108-47, 186-235, 278-89
Reading Post C1
3 2/5 The Romantic Ode
Form and Technique
Negative Capability
John Keats
“Ode on Melancholy”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
A letter to George and Thomas Keats, [21 December, 1817]
Reading Post D1
Synthesis Post B1 due Saturday, 2/8
4 2/10 The Romantic Ode (continued)
A Contemporary Variation
John Keats
“Ode to a Nightingale”
Eaven Boland
“Ode to Suburbia”
Reading Post A2
4 2/12 The Dramatic Monologue
Form and Point of View

Robert Browning
“Porphyria’s Lover”
“My Last Duchess”
“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”

Reading Post B2
Preparatory Work for Poetic Form Essay Option #1 due Thursday, 2/13 by midnight
Synthesis Post D1 due Saturday, 2/15
5 2/17

The Dramatic Monologue (continued)
Form and the Philosophical Poem

Robert Browning
“Fra Lippo Lippi”
“Abt. Vogler”

Reading Post C2
5 2/19 The Dramatic Monologue
Variations
T. S. Eliot
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Robert Hayden
“Night, Death, Mississippi”
Wallace Stevens
“The Idea of Order at Key West”
Reading Post D2
Preparatory Work for Poetic Form Essay Option #2 due Thursday, 2/20 by midnight
Synthesis Post A1 due Saturday, 2/22
6 2/24

Shakespeare and His Context
Shakespeare as the Master of Language
Shakespeare and Character

William Shakespeare
King Lear
I.1-I.3
Ancillary materials in your edition of King Lear:
“Reading Shakespeare’s Language,” “Shakespeare’s Life,” “Shakespeare’s Theatre,” “The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays,” and “An Introduction to This Text”
A brief explanation of humours

Reading Post B3
6 2/26

Aristotelean Principles of Tragedy
The Uses of Comedy in Tragedy

William Shakespeare
King Lear
I.4-III.2
Aristotle
Excerpts from Poetics

Reading Post A3
Poetic Form Essay Option #1 due Friday 2/28 by midnight
Synthesis Post C1 due Saturday, 2/29
7 3/2 The Double Plot
William Shakespeare
King Lear
III.3-IV.5
Reading Post D3
7 3/4 Shakespearean Negation William Shakespeare
King Lear
IV.6-V.3
Reading Post C3
Poetic Form Essay Option #2 due Friday 3/6 by midnight
Synthesis Post B2 due Saturday, 3/21
3/9-3/18 Extended Spring Break/Viral Outbreak
8 3/23 Film Adaptation

Special Supplement
Elements of Film
A brief explanation of four of the main elements of film production, and how they affect the viewer’s experience
Movie Assignment: Ran (1985)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, and Masato Ide, adapted from King Lear by William Shakespeare
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Daisuke Ryu, Akira Tenao, Jinpachi Nezu, and Mieko Harada
On Reserve at Fenwick Library (PN1997 .R36 1998)
Also available streaming through Vudu and iTunes for $3.99

Reading (Viewing) Post A4
8 3/25 Translation Alberto Manguel
A History of Reading
260-77
Dante Alighieri
Inferno
Canto V
Seven Translations
Carlyle, Ciardi, Singleton, Sisson, Mandelbaum, Musa, Pinsky
Reading Post B4
Synthesis Post D2 due Saturday, 3/28
9 3/30 Postmodern Fiction
Structure and Narrative
Oulipo
Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities
1-5 (ending on page 82)
Reading Post C4
9 4/1

Postmodernism and Humanism

Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities
6-9 (83-165)
Reading Post D4
Synthesis Post A2 due Saturday, 4/4
10 4/6 The Second-Person Voice
Incipits
Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
“Chapter one” through “Leaning from the steep slope”
Reading Post B5
10 4/8 Satire and Pastiche
Erasure
Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
“Chapter four” through “In a network of lines that enlace”
Reading Post A5
Synthesis Post C2 due Saturday, 4/11
11 4/13 Readerly vs. Writerly Texts
Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“Chapter seven” through “On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon”
Reading Post D5
11 4/15 Postmodernism and Humanism Redux Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
“Chapter nine” through “Chapter twelve”
Reading Post C5
Synthesis Post B3 due Saturday, 4/18
12 4/20 Calvino’s Literary Values Italo Calvino
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
Preface (page 1)
“Lightness”
“Quickness”
Reading Post A6
12 4/22 Calvino’s Literary Values, continued
The Hypernovel

Italo Calvino
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
“Exactitude”
“Visibility”
“Multiplicity”

Reading Post C6
Synthesis Post D3 due Saturday, 4/25
13 4/27 Critical Perspectives
Roland Barthes
“The Death of the Author”
Reading Post B6
13 4/29 Peer Response Instructions
Using Research Productively
Final Research Project Instructions
Intertextuality Essay Draft
14 5/4 Peer Response Day Your Peers’ Essays
Peer Response
14 5/6 Critical Perspectives

Teresa de Lauretis
“Calvino and the Amazons”
Lucia Re
“Calvino and the Value of Literature”
Laurence Breiner
Italic Calvino: The Place of the Emperor in Invisible Cities
Madeleine Sorapure
Being in the Midst: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Reading Post D6

Intertextuality Essay Final Version due Saturday, 5/9 by midnight
15 5/11 Research Project Workshop
Course Evaluations
Critical Reading Exercise
Synthesis Post A3 and C3 due Thursday, 5/14, by midnight
 
Final Research Project due Saturday, 16 May, by midnight
 
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