English R1A

Other Readings and Media

"Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Carolyn Forche (editor), Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness"

Description

"There are some gems of cultural critque in the English language. We will consider just a few and see what we can find out about how they accomplish both beauty and critique. We'll read Jamaica Kincaid's smoldering A Small Place for a look at colonialization and Virginia Woolf's reasonable and angry A Room of One's Own, on the place of women. How does Charles Dickens manage to be both funny and cutting as he looks at a Victorian education in his Hard Times? Can political poetry be art? Can striving for beauty ever undermine a writer's political purpose? We'll probably have to devise a definition for ""beauty."" There's lots to talk about and write about here.



You will, through frequent writing exercises and short essays, challenge or support the authors. In the process, you will isolate some of your own concerns and develop your own arguments. Class time will include discussion of each others' work."