ENGLISH 104 Syllabus ~ Fall 2002
Introduction to Literature: Fiction
ENG 104, CRN #40389, Mon-Wed., 12:30-1:45 p.m., Deschutes 1
Instructor:  Cora Agatucci
Office Hours: TBA  & by appointment ~  See Cora's current Course Schedule:
 http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/schedule.htm 
 Office Location: Deschutes 14; Telephone/Voicemail: (541) 383-7522;
Mailbox:  Modoc 226; Fax: (541) 317-3062; E-Mail: cagatucci@cocc.edu
Cora's Home Page:  http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/
ENG 104 Course Web Site: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/

Short Cuts: Course Requirements & Information | Course Description | Course Grading |
Learning Objectives & Course Competencies | Plagiarism Policy | Works Cited

What does fiction have to offer us? (1) 
"I will tell you something about stories. . . . They aren't just entertainment. . . .
They are all we have . . . to fight off illness and death.
You don't have anything if you don't have the stories."
--Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony, 1977

What does fiction have to offer us? (2) 
"[T]he purpose of playing...was and is, to hold...the mirror up to nature...."
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet III.ii.20-22.

GENRE:  "A type of literary work, such as SHORT STORY, NOVEL, essay, play, or poem. The term may also be used to classify literature within a type, such as science-fiction stories or detective novels. In film, the term refers to a recognizable type of movie, such as a western or a thriller, that follow familiar NARRATIVE or visual CONVENTIONS"  (Charters 1048).

English 104 will introduce the study of narrative fiction, focusing on the genres of the short story and novel.  Survey of storytelling traditions and the Western literary history of fiction will establish contexts for study of significant fiction writers and works from the 19th and 20th centuries. As we sample works representing the rich diversity of fiction, students will be guided in analyzing fiction’s major elements (or conventions), such as plot, character, theme, point of view, setting, style, and symbol. Comparative analysis of these elements will develop students' appreciation their functions and contributions to the meaning and impact of literary works.  Biographies and critical commentaries by and about fiction writers and their works will provide additional contexts and approaches for analyzing and interpreting fiction. Film adaptations of selected literary works will also be viewed to examine the possibilities and limitations of different genres of narrative fiction.  It is Cora's hope that English 104 will enhance students' personal enjoyment and appreciation of literature as a uniquely human form of creative expression, and of narrative fiction as a richly diverse and meaningful form of serious imaginative play.  And no less valuable and instructive are the diverse interpretations and evaluations that even the same work of narrative fiction can generate, so English 104 students will be given many opportunities to present their own opinions and consider the opinions of others.

FICTION:  "The word fiction comes originally from Latin fingere, to fashion or to form," and "Fiction is usually narrative..." (Lynch): that is, a sequence of events is recounted to tell a story. In "Glossary of Literary Terms," Ann Charters defines FICTION as "A NARRATIVE drawn from an author's imagination, made up of an ACTION or PLOT of imaged events involving imaged CHARACTERS in imagined or imaginatively reconstructed SETTINGS;" or, put another way, FICTION is "lies told with the tolerance, consent, and even complicity of the listener or reader" (1047).

What does fiction have to offer us? (3) 
"She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine.
That if they could not see it, they could not have it."
--Toni Morrison, Beloved

What will you learn in ENG 104?  Assignments and activities, detailed in the ENG 104 Course Plan, have been designed to enable students to achieve major ENG 104 Course Competencies, by developing independent & collaborative learning skills necessary to successful college-level study of literature, including:

(a) close reading of literary texts and annotating (i.e. taking notes on) significant passages in those texts;
(b) describing and analyzing personal responses to literary texts;
(c) applying literary terms and concepts, approaches and methods of analysis, and relevant background information, introduced in class and assignments;
(d) identifying and investigating informational resources (e.g. library and internet sources) valuable to the study of narrative fiction;
(e) formulating and explaining tentative interpretations and evaluations of literary works--drawing upon logical reasoning and specific examples from the works, as well as other relevant sources;
(f) actively participating in class discussions and small-group seminars--prepared to explain and illustrate one's own interpretations and questions, as well as to understand and respond to others'  interpretations;
(g) seriously considering, and evaluating the merits and limitations of, others' opinions and evidence--especially those different from one's own; and being willing to re-think one's own interpretations and evaluations of literary works as warranted;
(h) adapting general academic writing skills to the special forms and requirements of writing successful literary criticism (i.e. literary analysis, interpretation, evaluation)

ENG 104 Course Competencies state major learning objectives of this course, and will be used when evaluating assignments.  Study of narrative fiction in English 104, will enable students to:

1.  Define and illustrate principal literary elements of narrative fiction (e.g. plot, character, theme, point of view, setting, symbol, style), as well as significant variations within this genre (e.g. static vs. dynamic character, short story vs. novel), using well-selected examples from representative works.

2.  Analyze relationships among selected elements of literary form and thematic content (e.g. setting and characterization, or symbol and theme) within a work of narrative fiction, to explain how these literary elements can interact to shape the meaning and impact of individual works of narrative fiction.

3.  Identify key characteristics of literary historical periods and movements (e.g. 19th-century literary Realism) influential in the development of narrative fiction; and illustrate these characteristics using representative literary works.

4.  Apply background information by and about authors--e.g. their lives, cultural identities, socio-economic circumstances, reputations, literary influences, creative practices--to analysis and interpretation of their works of narrative fiction.

5.  Analyze others' literary criticism (e.g. commentaries of professional literary critics, interpretations of other ENG 104 students), and apply relevant critical opinions to one's own analysis and interpretation of narrative fiction.

6.  Use comparison/contrast analysis to demonstrate significant differences and similarities between selected works of narrative fiction (e.g., in fiction by the same or different authors; in fiction from different literary-historical periods; in different types of narrative fiction, such as short story, novel and/or film adaptation).

7.  Evaluate selected works of narrative fiction, based on defensible evaluation criteria appropriate to literary genre and context, and persuasive with a diverse English 104 audience.

8.  Demonstrate effective writing skills when communicating and supporting literary analysis, interpretation, and evaluation, in graded writing assignments.

9.  Select and interpret persuasive specific examples from primary works of narrative fiction, as well as from relevant secondary sources, in order to illustrate and support one's points.

10.  Avoid plagiarism by using an acceptable academic style (e.g. MLA) to cite direct quotations, paraphrases (indirect quotations), and summaries taken from primary and secondary sources.

Plagiarism Policy: Proper citations and documentation of any sources that you quote, paraphrase, and/or summarize in your writing are required whenever you borrow the words, facts, and/or ideas of others.  **Note well that even putting others’ ideas into your own words still means you are borrowing, and you need to give credit where credit is due.
To avoid plagiarism, source(s) must be cited and documented, both

(a) at the point in your papers where the borrowing occurs (using parenthetical citations for most documentation styles), and

(b) in a list of all sources cited given at the end of your paper.

Plagiarism—intended or not—is considered a serious academic violation of intellectual property rights, and may earn your written assignment an automatic "F" or worse.

Quick and acceptable ways of citing your sources, using MLA style,  in English 104 written assignments will be discussed further in class and/or in assignment direction handouts. 

What does fiction have to offer us? (4)
"If in my life I have developed any ability to understand those who are other to me,
other in race or gender or culture or sexual preference,
a good deal of my training in empathy must have come from the practice
 fiction and poetry have given me in taking on other selves, other lives."
--David H. Richter, Falling into Theory, 1994

I look forward to working with and learning from all of you this term! ~ Cora

Works Cited

Charters, Ann, ed. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Compact 6^th ed. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2003.

Lynch, Jack.   (Rutgers Univ.). "Fiction."  Glossary of Literary and Rhetorical Terms, 1999.
[Accessed] March 2002. <http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Terms/>

Morrison, Toni.  Beloved.  1987.  Rpt. New York: Penguin-Putnam, 1998.

Richter, David H.  Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. 1994.  2nd ed.  Boston: Bedford-St. Martin's, 2000. 

Shakespeare, William.  Hamlet.  In The Riverside Shakespeare.  Textual ed. G. Blakemore Evans.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.  1135-1197.  [Act III, scene ii, lines 20-22: see pp. 1161-1162.]

Silko, Leslie Marmon.  Ceremony.  New York : Viking Press, 1977.

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