ENGLISH 20: Literary Forms

 

Welcome to ENGLISH 20!

Dear students, hello and welcome to English 20! Professor Whittington's section of English 20 meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30-2:45, with an additional hour on Thursday 3-4pm. It is possible that we will add an additional discussion hour on Friday 10:30-11:30am.

The course is capped at 27 students. In order to enroll in the course, please submit an enrollment petition in my.harvard by 11:59pm ET on Tuesday, April 9. Professor Whittington will approve or deny pending enrollment petitions by 5:00pm ET on Wednesday, April 10.  Because this course satisfies a concentration requirement for the English Department, in most cases, students will be prioritized based on concentration and year. After accommodating concentrators, prospective English concentrators and secondary field students will be prioritized, followed by interested students in other concentrations.

If you do not have any official affiliation with the English concentration in my.harvard, please include a “comment” with your enrollment petition explaining your interest in the class. Should admitted students choose not to enroll, Professor Whittington will consider remaining applicants, and be in touch via email with the offer to enroll before the registration deadline on April 17, and again during Add/Drop in August.

When you enroll, you will also be asked to select a discussion section time. The current available time is Thursday 3-4pm, so please select that option in my.harvard. It is possible that we will be able to add another section time after enrollment period ends and before April 26th, when all students must be assigned to section times.

We also ask that, when you submit your petition, you also indicate whether you are available to enroll in Professor Pexa's English 20, which meets Mondays and Wednesdays 12:00-1:15pm.

Please  feel free to be in touch with Professor Whittington with any questions about English 20!

Leah Whittington | lwhittington@fas.harvard.edu | Barker Center 275

Spring 2024 office hours: Mon 3-4pm, Thurs 4-5pm, Fri 3-5pm or by appt.

 

Course Description

This foundational course for English concentrators examines literary form and genre. We will explore some of the many “kinds” of literature as they have changed over time, along with the styles, shapes, and forms that writers create, critics describe, and readers learn to recognize. The body of the course centers on examination of great literary types such as epic, tragedy, and lyric, which since the era of Plato and Aristotle have been considered to be literature’s foundational building blocks. But we will also investigate how in moments of historical change literary forms get reworked and transformed to create hybrid styles and new genres, from satire and autobiography to pastoral, tragicomedy, romance, and fantasy. In this course, you will learn how to identify, analyze, and wield literary forms, considering how they are historically contigent and always available for repurposing and reinvention. You will grow as students and critics of literature by learning how think about literary genres and how to write using them. Assignments will integrate creative writing with critical attention, involving both imagination and analysis—sometimes at the same time.

 

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be familiar with the major forms of literature used by writers since antiquity, and you will be equipped to recognize and analyze them. You will understand when and why literary forms change over time, and how writers in different historical periods activate form to create meaning in their texts—for example, what decisions writers make when they choose to write poems or novels, plays or essays. You will be prepared to think about style as a feature of literary texts, and cultivate the habits of attention (to rhythm, meter, rhyme, cadence, sentence structure, figure) that enable you to appreciate literary discourse. You will discover some of the different ways that writers and critics have thought about literary form, and the roles that the analysis of form plays in literary criticism. Above all, you will become a more knowledgeable reader and more thoughtful writer, empowered to use examples from the history of literature in English to develop your own literary thinking and writing.

 

Core Texts

While each version of English 20 differs slightly according to the instructor, all sections of the course have five common texts from a range of time periods and genres, which each student is required to read and engage with. These books include:

• Beowulf (ca. 1000 CE)
• William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale (1690-1611)
• Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)
• E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
• Elizabeth Bishop, Poems, Prose and Letters or Complete Poems (1946-1965)

 

Pre-requisites and Enrollment

English 20 is one of the required Common Courses for English concentrators and secondaries and is a limited enrollment course which will prioritize sophomores and first-years. Juniors and seniors who want to take it as an elective will be considered for any remaining spots. Enrollment priority exceptions may be made for people changing concentrations or presenting other notable reasons. The course is capped at 27 students, to facilitate discussion, which is an integral part of both the lecture and the section components of this iteration of English 20.

 

Course Format

English 20 meets three times per week, and attendance is required at all meetings of the course. Two course meetings (on Tues/Thurs) will be a combination of lecture and discussion with Professor Whittington; the third meeting (on Thurs or Fri) will be a further hour of discussion, close reading, exercises in analysis and criticism, and skills-building, led by the TF. You are expected to come prepared to lectures and sections by having completed the readings and writing assignments.

 

Expectations and Assignments

We expect you to do the readings listed on the syllabus before class begins on that day, and be prepared to discuss, listen, and reflect on the course materials. In addition to readings, there will be short written exercises, as well as longer creative and analytical assignments, adding up to approximately 20 pages of writing over the course of the semester.