ENGL 200 covers techniques and practice in reading and enjoying literature in its various forms: poetry, drama, prose fiction, and film. Examines such features of literary meanings as imagery, characterization, narration, and patterning in sound and sense.

In our section, we will complicate this study of literary forms by examining how authors from throughout the 20th century interrogated and resisted the genres in which they wrote. Many ended up inventing entirely new or boundary-crossing forms for their writing, and our concerns throughout the quarter will focus on discussing how this resistance to given genres is carried out, and why it is essential to the meaning of these texts to consider questions of form. Our primary task will be to analyze the techniques employed in each of these narrative forms, not as an arid taxonomy of rhetorical devices, but as an integral aspect of the personal and intellectual work they perform. We will consider both the social and aesthetic motivations for resisting given forms of narrative to understand how and why such resistance is necessary.