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Course Description

This course offers students ways to become more engaged and hopefully more curious readers for life. By learning the language of the short stories and novels we read, we learn the language of literary description. There will be a strong emphasis on class discussion and writing. Readings may include works by Chekhov, O'Conner, Joyce, Tolstoy, Welty, and Mann.

Course Goals

"Reading Fiction" has several aims over the arc of the semester: primarily, to increase ways for you to become engaged and more curious readers for life; to increase your confidence in coming to greater consciousness as writers thinking about literary texts; and to provide you with the language for literary description, just as you already have the language for other kinds of description. With as much presence of mind as possible, we will read essays, short stories and novels, the forms and structures of which you will intuit readily.

Course Readings

Bishop, Elizabeth. "The Moose." In Poems, Prose, and Letters. Edited by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. New York, NY: Library of America, 2008. ISBN: 9781598530179.

Welty, Eudora. "Finding A Voice." In One Writer's Beginnings. New York, NY: Warner Books, 1985, pp. 71-105. ISBN: 9780446329835.

Schwartz, Delmore. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories. New York, NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1978, pp. 1-10. ISBN: 9780811206808.

Required Texts

Joyce, James. "Araby." In The Dubliners. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996, pp. 29-35. ISBN: 9780140247749.

O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. New York, NY: Harcourt, 1992. ISBN: 9780151365043.

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice and Other Stories. New York, NY: Bantam Classics, 1988. ISBN: 9780553213331.

Tolstoy, Leo. Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1964. ISBN: 9780140441390.

Baldwin, James. Giovanni's Room. Peaslake, Surrey GU5 9SW: Delta, 2000, chapters 1-3. ISBN: 9780385334587.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Foster City, CA: Cliff Notes, 2001. ISBN: 9780764587269.

Recommended Texts

Strunk, William, and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex, England: Longman, 2008. ISBN: 9780205632640.

Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780312052546.

Course Requirements

Both written and oral communication will be required. Students are expected to write a minimum of 20 pages of revised writing in spread over four essays and frequent reading responses. One oral presentation as well as active class participation is also required. There will be no examinations.

Class Participation (including oral presentation): 20%

Class and conference attendance as well as active participation in both are required.

Oral Presentation

Every student is required to present a talk in class (7 minutes) on a passage of your choosing from an assigned text on its assigned date. The talk should help stimulate a discussion through arguments and questions.

Written Work: 80%

There will be four papers including one required revision during the semester. Late essays will result in 1/3 letter grade reduction for every day (not class) they are overdue. The paper assignments will follow that of the oral presentation; each will be grounded in your primary response and evolving analysis of that work through a specific passage that leads you to larger considerations of the work as a whole.

Course Grades

MIT Literature Statement on Plagiarism

Plagiarism—use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement—is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available at the Writing and Communication Center and the MIT Web site on Plagiarism.

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