ENG 604 Take home
ENG 604 Take home
Please write a five page paper on one of the following:
1. Please read the following quotation from Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory
(Chapter 1: The Rise of English). Eagleton brings to our attention how
English studies (re) gained power. Considering the argument in the
quotation below, please discuss your understanding of the canonical
works:
“In fashioning English into a serious discipline, these men and women
blasted apart the assumptions of the pre-war upper class generation. No
subsequent movement within English studies has come near to recapturing
the courage and radicalism of their stand. In the early 1920s it was
desperately unclear why English was worth studying at all; by the early
1930s it had become a question of why it was worth wasting your time on
anything else. English was not only a subject worth studying, but the
supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social formation.
Far from constituting some amateur or impressionistic enterprise, English
was an arena in which the most fundamental questions of human
existence- - what it means to be a person, to engage in significant relations
with others, to live from the vital centre of the most essential values--were thrown into vivid relief and made the object of the most intensive
scrutiny. Scrutiny was the title of the critical journal launched in 1932 by
the Leavises, which has yet to be surpassed in its tenacious devotion to
the moral centrality of English studies, their crucial relevance to the quality
of social life as a whole.”
Terry Eagleton. Literary Theory An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1983, p. 31.
2. Trace the excerpts or essays we have read throughout the semester and
analyze the meaning/function of literature in 3 of the authors of your
choice
3. Provide a general description of the dissertation topic in your mind and
give a brief review of the studies you have conducted so far in this area by
referring to some of your resources.
Please write a five page paper on one of the following:
1. Please read the following quotation from Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory
(Chapter 1: The Rise of English). Eagleton brings to our attention how
English studies (re) gained power. Considering the argument in the
quotation below, please discuss your understanding of the canonical
works:
“In fashioning English into a serious discipline, these men and women
blasted apart the assumptions of the pre-war upper class generation. No
subsequent movement within English studies has come near to recapturing
the courage and radicalism of their stand. In the early 1920s it was
desperately unclear why English was worth studying at all; by the early
1930s it had become a question of why it was worth wasting your time on
anything else. English was not only a subject worth studying, but the
supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social formation.
Far from constituting some amateur or impressionistic enterprise, English
was an arena in which the most fundamental questions of human
existence- - what it means to be a person, to engage in significant relations
with others, to live from the vital centre of the most essential values--were thrown into vivid relief and made the object of the most intensive
scrutiny. Scrutiny was the title of the critical journal launched in 1932 by
the Leavises, which has yet to be surpassed in its tenacious devotion to
the moral centrality of English studies, their crucial relevance to the quality
of social life as a whole.”
Terry Eagleton. Literary Theory An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1983, p. 31.
2. Trace the excerpts or essays we have read throughout the semester and
analyze the meaning/function of literature in 3 of the authors of your
choice
3. Provide a general description of the dissertation topic in your mind and
give a brief review of the studies you have conducted so far in this area by
referring to some of your resources.