CLIT 2095 World, Text, Critic

Spring 2024
Fridays: 3:30-5:20

Dr. BETH HARPER

Office hours: by appointment, office 9.36, RRST.

email ekharper@hku.hk to arrange individual consultation at any time

throughout the course

You are required to participate enthusiastically in all aspects of the class, using
each component thoughtfully to further your own interests and abilities. The
course offers a variety of pathways to approach its key texts and questions: it
will teach you the craft of interpretation and introduce you to the arts of
narration, which will prove invaluable in a variety of disciplines and settings.
This is both a reading and writing intensive course. Do not take unless you are
willing to read whole novels (there are three).
Texts:

Narration as Detection:

1. Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes Mysteries [selections] (Signet; ISBN:

0451529995)

2. Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon

Stories of The Self:

3. Augustine, The Confessions [selections] (Oxford World’s Classics; ISBN:

978-0199537822)

4. Tao Qian / Tao Yuanming, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, trans. James Robert
Hightower (Clarendon Press, Oxford)

5. Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner, trans. William Grossman

(FSG; ISBN: 9780374531232)

Narrating the Nation:

6. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Vintage; ISBN10 0099478293

ISBN13 9780099478294)

7. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (IndiaInk; ISBN 81-86939-00-8)

8. Emmanuel Guibert, The Photographer (First Second Press; ISBN: 978-

1596433755)

9. Xi Xi, My City (CUHK Press) and The Teddy Bear

Chronicles (CUHK Press)

*These editions are suggested editions only. If you already own a copy of the
book, then by all means use your own copy in class. You will ideally need
your own copy of the novels (5, 6, 7) to facilitate class discussions. You
might seek out copies of the texts in the HK library system. Given that so
much is virtual in our lives at the moment, there is something very
comforting about having and holding a physical book. That being said, you
do not have to buy any books. PDF scans of all class materials will be
available on moodle. Rashomon link will be provided. Supplementary
 critical and theoretical works will be available on moodle and/or email to the
class.

Week 1: Friday, January 19th 2024 Introduction

Explaining our terms. What do we mean by Literature, Text, Narrative, World,
Critic?
Discussion: “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction”, by Zadie Smith,
The New York Review of Books (PDF on moodle) and Virginia Woolf’s “The
Lady in the Looking Glass”

I. Narration as Detection

Week 2: Friday, January 26th 2024 Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
Mysteries (1892) [selections]
required: “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-
Headed League” , “The Speckled Band”

Week 3: Friday 2nd February 2024 Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon (1950)

Week 4: Friday 9th February 2024 CNY No class.

Week 5: Friday 16th February 2024 CNY No class.

II. Narratives of the Self

Week 6: Friday 23rd February 2024 Augustine, The Confessions (397-98 CE)
[selections] (required: Books 1, 2, 6: 18-26, 8: 12-30, 9: 10-12, 11: 25-28), Tao
Yuanming [selected poems posted online]

Week 7: Friday 1st March 2024 Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner
(1880) [title in Portuguese translates literally into English as The Posthumous
Memoirs of Bras Cubas)

Reading week

Week 8: Friday 8th March 2024 Reading week no class

III. Narratives of the Nation

Week 9: Friday 15th March 2024 Virginia Woolf To The Lighthouse (1927) part
1
Week 10: Friday 22nd March 2024 Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (1927)
part 2

Week 11: Friday 29th March 2024 National holiday no class [prepare the large
Roy novel]

Week 12: Friday 5th April 2024 Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
(1997) part 1

Week 13: Friday 12th April 2024 Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
(1997) part 2

*Sunday 14th April 2024 Practical Criticism assignment due*

Week 14: Friday 19th April Emmanuel Guibert, The Photographer (2009)

IV. Narrating the Self / Narrating the Nation

Week 15: Friday 26th April 2024 Xi Xi, My City (1993) [selections]; The Teddy
Bear Chronicles (2020) [selections]

*Final Paper due Friday 10th May 2024* Essay prompts will be provided.

Assessment:

1. Attendance and Participation in tutorials and lectures and tutorial

presentation – 20%
2. Moodle Posts – 20%

Regular attendance at every class and tutorial and active participation is

essential to your success in this course. The class moves quickly through
several texts. If you miss even one class or tutorial that is a lot to catch up
on. Please try and plan your time so that you have done the bulk of the
reading before class and are able to post an intelligent moodle post on the
reading that reflects that (ideally before lecture, but can also be before
tutorials). This may be a question, a reflection, reaction, provocation to
the reading that week. These regular moodle posts (short c. 100 words on
each text/film) along with the quality of your participation in class
exercises and discussion will account for 40% of your grade. You must
hit a minimum of 6 posts (there are 9 texts) to capture this portion of your
grade. The goal is to maximise your interaction with me, your TA, the
 texts and each other as much as possible. Reading is about connecting,
and I want this class to be as dialogic as possible. The course will be a
mix of lectures and student active and dynamic engagement with the
lecture, the material and each other’s moodle posts. The tutorial portion
of the course will focus on student-led discussions and presentations.

3. Practical Criticism (Close Textual Analysis) – 25% 1000 words max.

commenting on the language features, narratological construction, sentence or

scenic structure of a film, novel, poem, graphic from the course (you may also,
if you wish, choose two works and do a comparative textual analysis but for this
paper, you may just focus on one). Training and discussion of what constitutes
practical criticism (ie. close reading) will take place ahead of the assignment.

4. Final Research/Response Paper – 35% 1500-2000 words max.

must treat at least two works, either two from the course, or one from the
course in dialogue with another from your own past reading. The works you
choose for your research paper should ideally not be the same genre or medium
as the work (s) you chose for your practical criticism. So if you wrote on a
graphic novel for your practical criticism, you should choose from different
kinds of text for your research paper (ie. autobiographies, novels, film, poetry
etc.). This paper may incorporate secondary criticism in the form of a traditional
research paper with a bibliography but it doesn’t have to. It may also take the
form of a personal response to the texts which expands upon the practical
criticism skills honed in the previous paper. This is a course about paying close
attention to how imaginative works craft themselves as works of fiction and you
are encouraged to stay close to the texts in your analysis. It will be a
comparative essay and the essay prompts will be provided. You must not repeat
work from either your tutorial presentation or your practical criticism in your
final paper.

A note on Plagiarism: Plagiarism, or academic dishonesty of any kind, is a serious offense.

To my mind, it is the worst offense you can commit in an academic context: it is disrespectful
not only to your source, but your own intellectual integrity. Forms of plagiarism include
submitting papers, or portions of papers, written by other people as your own, as well as
presenting someone else’s ideas as your own without acknowledging the source. You are
responsible for understanding what constitutes academic dishonesty and avoiding it. When in
doubt, or if you have questions, don’t hesitate to talk to me. Your written assignments must
be submitted via Turnitin on Moodle and this has an in-built plagiarism checker. We have
had students fail a module because they have plagiarized large chunks of material from the
internet. Please spare yourself the hassle and embarrassment, and just don’t do it. I would
also discourage the use of AI tools to write your papers in order to avoid bland generalised
essays. We can always tell when work is your own.