Course description
This course emphasizes the close reading of three genres – fiction, poetry, and plays – and examines their defining features.
Course content
All first-year English literature courses share the following features:
- Students are instructed in the writing of analytical essays on literary subjects.
- Students are taught to recognize and understand a variety of literary devices and textual elements, such as metaphor, symbolism, distinctions between author and narrator/narrating persona, and issues of language and of structure, as appropriate to the genres and texts studied.
- Readings and topics vary among sections of the same course, according to each instructor’s selection; however, all course materials are consistent with the objectives of the course.
In English 1109, students will examine works in three literary genres:
- Fiction (novels and/or short stories)
- Poetry
- Plays
Learning activities
Some or all of the following methods will be used:
- Lecture/discussion
- Group work
- Peer review
- Instructor feedback on students’ work
- Individual consultation
Means of assessment
The course evaluation is consistent with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. Instructors may use a student’s record of attendance and/or level of active participation in a course as part of the student’s graded performance. Where this occurs, expectations and grade calculations regarding class attendance and participation must be clearly defined in the Instructor Course Outline.
- A minimum of two formal academic essays, with a combined value of at least 40% of the course grade.
- A minimum of 80% of the course grade will be based on writing assignments such as essays, essay-based exams, journals and paragraphs. A maximum of 20% of the course grade may be based on informal writing such as quizzes and short answer tests, and/or non writing-intensive assignments such as oral reports, presentations, participation and preparation.
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of any first-year English literature course, the successful student should be able to
- read analytically and reflectively with attention to the subtleties of language;
- recognize and understand literary devices;
- practice writing as a process involving pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing;
- write an essay of literary analysis that develops an argumentative thesis supported by appropriate, correctly integrated and cited evidence; and
- give and receive constructive criticism on written work.
Upon completion of English 1109, the successful student should be able to recognize and understand,
- in reading fiction,
- the features of genre in fiction;
- different strategies of narrative development in fiction;
- elements such as plot, setting, character, and point-of-view; and
- the development of themes in fiction.
- in reading poetry,
- poetic forms (open/free verse versus closed or constraint-driven forms, such as the ballad or sonnet);
- the difference between poet and speaker;
- tone, including irony;
- figurative language, such as metaphor and symbolism;
- diction, including the differences between denotative and connotative meaning;
- syntax and other details of grammar and style, such as enjambment; and
- prosody and sound effects, such as alliteration, rhythm, and rhyme.
- in reading plays,
- character;
- components of structure, including plot and sub-plot, exposition and conflict;
- dialogue, monologue and soliloquy; and
- performance and staging.
Textbook materials
A list of required textbooks and materials will be provided for students at the beginning of the semester.
Sample reading lists:
Sample 1:
McMahan, Funk, Day and Ashley, eds. Literature and the Writing Process, Canadian ed.
Thompson, Lion in the Streets
Sample 2:
Jones, Live from the Afrikan Resistance
Gordimer, Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories
Mtwa, Ngema, and Simon, Woza Albert
Pierre, Shakespeare's N****