Course Description
English 102 introduces students to the major forms of literature—short story, poetry, drama, and the novel. Students will be given an opportunity to explore works from a variety of genres to gain a better understanding of their key elements and critically analyze them within the conventions of their genre and form. Ultimately, students will use several common theoretical frameworks to interpret interesting literary works with the goal of gaining a better appreciation of them and literature as a whole.
Students will gain a general understanding of the following schools of literary criticism:
- Formalism
- New Historicism
- Reader-Response Criticism
Students will learn how to construct the following academic forms:
- Literary Analysis Essay
- Literary Research Essay
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Identify the key differences between the primary forms of literature: poetry, fiction, essay, and drama
- Analyze works of literature using technical literary terms and common forms of criticism
- Evaluate a work of literature within contemporary academic and social discourse
- Synthesize primary and secondary source material to make a complex academic argument