English 104 - Cora Agatucci
Introduction to Literature: Fiction

ENG 104 TENTATIVE COURSE PLAN - FALL 1999
(...LIKE ANY PLAN, SUBJECT TO CHANGE--BUT, CORA PROMISES, WITH ADVANCE NOTICE)
Section # 1337, Prof. Cora Agatucci, T-Th 9:30-10:45 a.m., Des 1
All reading assignments
listed under "ASSIGNMENTS DUE" below, unless otherwise indicated, refer to
our course text The Story and Its Writer (Compact 5th ed.), and
should be read thoughtfully before coming to class on the date due. Annotations on
assigned readings & notes on your responses are highly recommended!

Assignments for Weeks #1-2 #3-4 #5-6* #7-8* #9-10* #11-Finals
*Course Plan Revised for Weeks 6-10, as discussed in class
NOTE WELL: Final Project Deadlines were amended in class:
Be prepared to discuss your Final Project at the Eng 104 Final Exam Meeting
Deadline for Final Project can be extended to Fri., Dec. 10, by noon,
with no grade penalty.
Also Note Well: No late Final Projects can be accepted &
there is no revision option on the Final Project.
Relevant quotations to stimulate thinking precede each week's assignments &
author links are embedded in this online Course Plan: visit & find out more!

 

"Our first stories come to us through the air. We hear voices.
Children in oral societies grow up within a web of stories. . . . We listen before we can read. . . .
From listening to the stories of others, we learn to tell our own."Margaret Atwood (1989):

Virginia Woolf: "Fiction is like a spider’s web,
attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."

WK #1 ASSIGNMENTS DUE
Tues.,
9/21
  1. Intro to Course - HANDOUTS: Syllabus & Course Plan
  2. In-Class Activity: Telling Your Stories
Thurs.,
9/23
  1. Bring Questions re: Syllabus & Course Plan
  2. "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective" (1979), by Leslie Marmon Silko: pp.856-862
  3. "Reading Blind" (1989), by Margaret Atwood, pp. 791-794
  4. HANDOUT: "Helping to Lie" (German exempla, 12th century), & "The Emperor’s New Clothes" (Hans Christian Andersen, 1872)

Recommended Background Readings:
a. “Introduction: The Story and Its Writer,” pp. 3-5
b. "Appendix 1: A Brief History of the Short Story”, pp. 929-938

Richard Wilbur, The House of Poe:
"Poe is a great artist, and I would rest my case for him on his prose allegories of psychic conflict.
In them, Poe broke entirely new ground, and they remain the best things of their kind . . .
Poe’s mind may have been a strange one; yet . . . he will have something to say to us
as long as there is civil war in the palaces of men’s minds."

Guy de Maupassant "was a man who escaped from tradition and authority,
who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes;
and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw."Kate Chopin, 1896

WK #2 ASSIGNMENTS DUE

Instructor’s signature required to add classes beginning Week #2
Tues.,
9/28
  1. Edgar Allan Poe (U.S.A., 1809-1849): "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), pp. 665-671
  2. "The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale" (1842), pp. 854-856
  3. "Plot," "Character" & "Theme" (from App. 1: "The Elements of Fiction"): pp. 939-944, 950-951
Thurs.,
9/30
  1. In-Class Response Writing #1 (on Poe)
  2. Guy de Maupassant (France, 1850-1893): "The Necklace" (1884; trans. Marjorie Laurie): pp. 534-541
  3. "The Writer’s Goal" (1888; trans. Mallay Charters): pp. 831-832

Fri., Oct. 1: End of 100% Refund Period

Recommended: Use the "Glossary of Literary Terms," pp. 979-988,
for brief definitions of literary terms introduced in class or readings
Visit 19th Century Authors

top of this page

Vladimir Nabokov (1981): "All the traditional rules of story telling have been broken
in this wonderful short story [Chekov's"The Lady with the Pet Dog"]. . . .And it is one of the greatest stories ever written."

Maupassant was a "relentless realist"; Chekhov a "persistent moralist."Sean O’Faolain

WK #3 ASSIGNMENTS DUE

Mon, 10/4: Begin Late Registration fee of $30
Tues.,
10/5
  1. Anton Chekhov (Russia, 1860-1904): "The Lady with the Pet Dog" (1899, trans. Avrahm Yarmolinksy), pp. 153-154, & 163-175
  2. "A Reading of Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Pet Dog’" by Vladimir Nabokov (1981): pp. 835-840
Thurs.,
10/7
  1. DUE: Seminar #1 Preparation
  2. In-Class Seminar #1 (on Maupassant and Chekhov)

Recommended/Extra Credit Options:
Find out more about literary study & authors that interest you by visiting
Cora’s English 104 course website links & author links:
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/links.htm
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors.htm
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors2.htm

Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" (1894): "It was only yesterday that she had thought with a shudder that life might be long."

"One by one they were all becoming shades.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion,
than fade and wither dismally with age."James Joyce, "The Dead" (1916)

"It was not written to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" (1913)

WK #4 ASSIGNMENTS DUE
Tues.,
10/12
  1. Kate Chopin (U.S.A. 1851-1904): “The Story of an Hour” (1894): pp. 176-178
  2. “How I Stumbled upon Maupassant” (1896): p. 807
  3. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (U.S.A. 1860-1935): “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892): pp. 318-330
  4. HANDOUT: "Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’" (1913)
    http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/wallpaper/whywrote.html
  5. "Point of View" (from App. 1: "The Elements of Fiction"): pp. 945-948
Thurs.,
10/14
  1. In-Class Response Writing #2 (on Chopin & Gilman)
  2. James Joyce (Ireland, 1882-1941): "The Dead" (1916): pp. 403, 408-437
  3. "Setting" (from App. 1: "The Elements of Fiction"): pp. 944-945
  4. In-Class Videotape Viewing: Scene from The Dead (1987, dir. John Huston)

top of this page

"EPIPHANY A 'showing forth' or sudden revelation of the true nature of a character or situation through a specific event--
a word, gesture, or other action--that causes the reader to see the significance of that character or situation in a new light.
The term was first popularized in modern literature by James Joyce."Ann Charters, "Glossary of Literary Terms," p. 982

Lesley Brill, "Filming James Joyce's 'The Dead'..." (1997): ". . . at the conclusion[,]
Huston's visual art at once reveals the interior of Gabriel's mind and heart (as do Gabriel's words),
and maintains a point of view outside him. (The camera thus imitates the double perspective of Joyce's prose.)"

"That's all we [writers] have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones,
with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say. . . .
if used right, they can hit all the notes."Raymond Carver, "On Writing":

WK#5 ASSIGNMENTS DUE
Tues.,
10/19
  1. HANDOUT: "The Dead: Overview" by Michael H. Begnal, (1994)
  2. "Style and Form in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’" by Frank O’Connor (1963): pp. 848-849
  3. "Filming James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’: The Camera as Character" by Lesley Brill (1997): pp. 908-913
  4. In-Class Videotape Viewing: More scenes from John Huston's adaptation of The Dead
  5. In-Class Writing: Midterm Discussion Paper Topic Ideas
Thurs.,
10/21
  1. HANDOUT: Directions & Topics for Midterm Discussion Paper
  2. DUE: Seminar #2 Preparation
  3. In-Class Seminar #2: (on Joyce & Huston)

To my ENG 104 students: Start promptly on the Midterm Discussion Paper,
ask Cora questions when you need clarification and direction,
& seek help when you need it! E-mail Cora nowcagatucci@cocc.edu
Remember, a Revision Option will be extended for Midterms turned in on time.
Also for try these resources:

  1. Read/Skim Appendix 3: "Writing about Short Stories," pp. 952-978
  2. Visit ENG104 Links: Writing about (and Reading) Literature
  3. Visit COCC LINKS, a hyperlinked list of COCC Online Resources for Student Writers & Researchers

You might also get some helpful ideas from sample student ENG 109 Discussion Papers:
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng109/studex.htm

Visit Early to Mid-20th Century Authors &
Film Adaptations & Filmmaking
Make-Up/Extra Credit Option: Re/View the entire videotape The Dead
(After class on Tues., 10/19, Cora will place the video on library reserve for in-library viewing; it is also available for checkout from some local video rental stores)

Raymond Carver (1958/1983): "I remember [John] Gardner telling me [in Creative Writing 101],
‘Read all the Faulkner you can get your hands on, and then read all of Hemingway to clean the Faulkner out of your system.’"

"Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it.
In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right.
In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote.
That's why I rate [the short story] second [right after poetry]—it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude."
William Faulkner http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/stories.html

"I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows.
Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.
It is the part that doesn't show." Ernest Hemingway, 1958

WK #6 ASSIGNMENTS DUE: Revised
Tues.,
10/26
  1. Ernest Hemingway (U.S.A. 1898-1961): “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927), pp. 342-346
  2. HANDOUT: Hemingway
  3. “Style & Voice” and “Symbolism & Allegory” (from App. 1: The Elements of Fiction"): pp. 948-949
Thurs.,
10/28
  1. Discuss Questions re: Midterm Discussion Paper Directions & Topics (handouts)
  2. In-Class Videotape Viewing: “Hills Like White Elephants” (dir. Frederic Raphael) from Women & Men: Stories of Seduction (1990)

Note: Because of computer difficulties, the deadline for the Midterm was delayed until Tues., 11/2.

Also Note: After class on Thurs., 10/28, Cora will place the video Women & Men ["Hills Like White Elephants"] on library reserve for in-library viewing; it is also available for checkout at some local video rental stores)

Recommended Reading/Extra Credit Options:
1. Visit these Nobel Foundation webpages on Ernest Hemingway,
who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954:
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1954.html
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1954-acceptance.html
http://www.nobel.se/essays/french-lit/poster14.html
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1954-1-bio.html
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1954-press.html
2. Visit the Internet Movie Database: Women & Men: Stories of Seduction –
& explore the links http://us.imdb.com/Title?0100949
Note: Other short stories have also been adapted into film (see Appendix 6 in our textbook) and can be searched in the online Internet Movie Database
3. "This is to tell you about a young man named Ernest Hemmingway [sic], who lives in Paris,
...and has a brilliant future....I'd look him up right away. He's the real thing."
F. Scott Fitzgerald to his editor Max Perkins (1924)
Visit this great site: Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time, Smithsonian Institution online exhibit:
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/ess-index2.htm
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/index.htm

top of this page

William Faulkner, 1949 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speechhttp://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1949-acceptance.html
"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it.
There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?
Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself
which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."

"...in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable
of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.
Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work.
This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost,...
is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world."
Flannery O'Connor, "A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable" (1969)

WK #7 ASSIGNMENTS DUE: Revised
Tues.,
11/2
  1. DUE: MIDTERM DISCUSSION PAPER
  2. In-Class Exchange Readings & Responses (Midterm Discussion Papers)
  3. Discuss further Revisions to Course Plan
Thurs.,
11/4
  1. William Faulkner (U.S.A. 1897-1962): "A Rose for Emily" (1931), pp. 291-298
  2. "The Meaning of ‘A Rose for Emily’" (1959), pp. 816-817
  3. Flannery O'Connor (U.S.A. 1925-1964): "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" ( 1955): pp. 619, 631-642
  4. "A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable" (1969) & "Writing Short Stories" (1961), pp. 840-848

NOTE: Seminar #3 (originally scheduled for Thurs., 11/4) has been delayed -Date for Response Writing #3 will also need to be renegotiated - to be discussed in class on Thurs., 11/4.

Fri., 11/5: last day to drop classes with no grade on transcript,
to change grading status, or to add classes.
Recommended/Extra Credit Options:
1. Visit these Nobel Foundation webpages on William Faulkner,
who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949:
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1949-acceptance.html
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1949.html
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1949-press.html

Visit Mid- to Later 20th Century Authors

James Baldwin, "Sonny’s Blues" (1957): "For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted,
how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.
There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in the darkness."

"Some writers have a bunch of talent....But a unique and exact way of looking at things,
and finding the right context for expressing that way of looking, that's something else. . . .
It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes.
It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another.
Not talent. . . . But a writer who has some special way of looking at things
and who gives artistic expression to that way looking: that writer may be around for a time."
Raymond Carver, "On Writing" (1981)

WK #8 ASSIGNMENTS DUE Revised
Tues.,
11/9
  1. In-Class Response Writing #3 (on Hemingway, Faulkner, O'Connor)
  2. James Baldwin (U.S.A. 1924-1987): “Sonny’s Blues” (1957), pp. 36-60
  3. "Autobiographical Notes" (1955), pp. 794-798
  4. Raymond Carver (U.S.A 1938-1988): "Cathedral" (1981), pp. 97-108.
  5. "On Writing" (1981) & "The Origin of 'Cathedral'" (1993), pp. 881-885, 896.

Return & discuss graded Midterm Discussion Papers, discuss Optional Revision, & distribute midterm grade reports.

Thurs.,11/11: Veteran’s Holiday – NO CLASSES, COLLEGE CLOSED

top of this page

Raymond Carver, "On Writing" (1981): "The real experimenters have to Make It New, as [Ezra] Pound urged,
and in the process have to find things out for themselves. But if writers haven't taken leave of their senses,
they also want to stay in touch with us, they want to carry the news from their world to ours."

"The ‘official’ version of the [Vietnam] war lost credibility early and individuals had to make sense of it for themselves."
Ken Lopez, "The Literary Legacy of the Vietnam War" http://www.lopezbooks.com/articles/vnfirsts.html

Tim O’Brien (1990 Interview):"I want you to feel what I felt.
I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes that happening-truth."

"The thing is, the events people pick out as magical don’t seem unreal to me.
Unusual, yes, but I was raised believing in miracles . . . . I am on the edge,
have always been on the edge, flourish at the edge, and I don’t think I belong anywhere else."
Louise Erdrich (1993 Interview)

WK #9 ASSIGNMENTS DUE as revised in class....
Tues.,
11/16
  1. DUE: Seminar #3 Preparation
  2. In-Class Seminar #3: (on Baldwin & Carver)
Thurs.,
11/18
  1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia, b. 1928): "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" (1955), pp. 312-317
  2. HANDOUT: Garcia Marquez & Magic Realism
  3. Ursula Le Guin (U.S.A. b. 1929): "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1976), pp. 489-494
  4. Margaret Atwood (Canada, b. 1939) "Happy Endings" (1983), pp. 32-35

Distribute HANDOUT: Final Project Directions
Recommended/Extra Credit Options:
a. Visit: "The Solitude of Latin America," Garcia Marquez's 1982 Nobel Prize lecture:
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1982-lecture.html
& Nobel Prize in Literature 1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(at the mirror site Univ. of Calif.-San Diego):
http://nobel.sdsc.edu/laureates/literature-1982.html
b. Visit PBS Battlefield Vietnam website.... http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/
to "access a multimedia timeline of the major battles of the Vietnam War,
trace the evolution of military air power,
experience the siege of Khe Sanh through a Shockwave activity, and much more."
(Companion website to the PBS TV series of the same title)

"Meaning is what keeps the short story from being short. . . .
[People] think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction. When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.
A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing to tell him is to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning, but experienced meaning . . ."
Flannery O’Connor, "Writing Short Stories" (1961)

"Of all the stories I've read in the last decade, Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried' hit me the hardest.
It knocked me down, just as if a hundred-pound rucksack had been thrown right at me."
Bobbie Ann Mason, 1994

WK #10 ASSIGNMENTS DUE as revised in class....
Tues.,
11/23
  1. Tim O'Brien (U.S.A. b. 1946): “The Things They Carried” (1986), pp. 605-618
  2. "On Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,'" by Bobbie Ann Mason (1994): pp. 829-830
  3. Louise Erdrich (U.S.A., b. 1954): “The Red Convertible” (1984), pp. 282-290
  4. Final Project Description

Distribute HANDOUT: Evaluating Fiction
(also available online: ENGL 2F55 Modern Fiction (Prof. John Lye, Dept. of English, Brock Univ.) http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/ -
(1) Evaluating Fiction (suggested criteria) &
(2) On the Uses of Studying Literature (which can yield criteria for evaluating fiction)

Thurs., 11/25 & Fri., 11/26:
THANKSGIVINGS HOLIDAY - NO CLASSES - COLLEGE CLOSED

Recommended Reading (Someday)/Extra Credit Options:

  1. Sandra Cisneros (U.S.A. b. 1954): "The House on Mango Street," "The Monkey Garden," "Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes" (1983), pp. 179-183

  2. Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua, b. 1949): "Girl" (1984), pp. 473-475

  3. Amy Tan (U.S.A. b. 1952): "Two Kinds" (1989), pp. 689-698

top of this page

Louise Erdrich (1993 Interview): "The point we’re striving for is one at which the criteria for the work
is its worth to readers, its excellence, the qualities that shine out and endure . . . ."

"A story that is any good cannot be reduced, it can only be expanded.
A story is good when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you."
Flannery O'Connor, "Writing Short Stories" (1961)

WK #11 ASSIGNMENTS DUE as revised in class....
Tues.,
11/30
  1. Distribute handout: ENG104 Self-Assessment (Student Learning Outcomes & Course Reflections): Due next week with Final Project
  2. DUE: Seminar #4 & Response Writing #4 Preparation, including HANDOUT: Evaluating Fiction
  3. In-Class Seminar #4: Evaluating Fiction (30 min.)
  4. In-Class Response Writing #4: Evaluating Fiction (30 min.)
Thurs.,
12/ 2		 No Regular Class meeting
(Cora out of town 12/1 - 12/5)
Most assignment directions are posted to Eng104Assignments

Fri., 12/3: Last day to withdraw & receive "W" grade
(NOTE WELL: Instructor’s signature required)
Cora is out of town 12/1/- 12/5:
If you wish to withdraw,
go to Humanities Dept. Office, Des 12.

If you have a question or problem,
E-mail Cora cagatucci@cocc.edu

"Who reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that
they are read by men and women in the dentist’s office, waiting to be called to the chair;
they are read on transcontinental plane trips
instead of watching banal and vulgar film spin out the time between our coasts;
they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that
narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us."
Raymond Carver, "Why I Write Short Stories" (1978)

FINALS WEEK ASSIGNMENTS DUE
Scheduled Final Exam Meeting:
Tues., Dec. 7
10:15 am-12:15 pm, Des 1
  1. Be prepared to discuss your FINAL PROJECT (for PC)

Return graded Response Writing #4 & Seminar #4 Notes, and Distribute Grade Reports to date
No later than 12 noon,
Friday, Dec. 10
  1. DUE: FINAL PROJECT
  2. DUE with Final Project: Eng 104 Self-Assessment
  3. Any further late, make-up, extra credit work, or Optional Revisions

. . . The Endand may you prosper in the new Millenium!

 Learn More: Explore ENG 104 Links Authorlinks Authorlinks 2 Genre: Short Story Links
ENG 104 Fall 1999 Syllabus | Course Plan | Assignments | Links | Authorlinks |StudentWriting
 CORA'S ENGLISH 104 HOME PAGE

URL of this webpage: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/fall1999/coursepl.htm 

top of this page

[../../../footer.htm]