English 179

Other Readings and Media

"A photocopied reader of articles, poems and short stories.

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Description

It is a commonplace that the medium of literature is language. This course will develop a substantive understanding of this relationship through a survey of literary forms defined by special linguistic structures, and an exploration of how these structures are systematically like and unlike those of non-literary language. These forms will include meter; rhyme and alliteration; syntactic parallelism and other syntactic structures special to poetry; formulas of oral composition; special narrative uses of pronouns, tenses and subjective features of language to express point of view and render 'represented speech and thought'; and figurative language such as metaphor, metonymy and irony. The emphasis will be on literature in English, but comparisons with literature in other languages will also be drawn. No knowledge of linguistics will be presupposed, but linguistic concepts will be introduced, explained and used.