This class will introduce you to the connections between the English language and its literature. We will read a limited number of texts—a few stories, a few poems. As we do, we’ll also study elementary linguistics to account for many of the effects these texts have. We’ll look at the sounds of English to study rhyme; we’ll look at the forms of sentences to understand tone; and we’ll look at how words mean in order to understand how poems—in English or in any language—develop symbolic meaning.

Though much of what we do will be in English, I also hope to have students who speak other languages enrolled so we can do some comparing of the phonetics and syntax of one language with those of another. So: Subject? Language and literature. Object? Fun with language and a solid introduction to the basics of reading literary English.