English 100

Other Readings and Media

Aristotle: Poetics; Bakhtin, M: The Dialogic Imagination; Barthes, R: S/Z; Chesnutt, C: The House Behind the Cedars; Propp, V: The Morphology of the Folktale; Sophocles: Sophocles I: Three Tragedies; course reader

Description

"This is an introduction to some classics in the theory of narrative. We will look also at a number of, mainly, short narratives and analyze them closely, slowly. Theorists as early as Aristotle always used an exemplary narrative for their analyses, and so we shall have to read the narratives of the theorists along with the theories. We shall strive to listen to stories, to see how plots are composed, organized.



There will be a number of exercises, many of them ungraded but required. And I project that there will be required about five papers that will be graded. "