ENGL 121(F) Precocity+
Precocity-knowing too much too early and without understanding the implications of what you know-is often the subject of literary texts, perhaps because it dramatizes the stakes of interpreting. Precocity can emerge in a character, as a narrative posture, or in the very texture of the writing. It can produce highly-charged dramatic situations, comic or ruinous; it can precipitate crises of character; but it can also problematize how we interpret a text. We will read Nabokov's Lolita, James' The Turn of the Screw, Stoppard's play Arcadia, stories by Bambara and Mann, Welles' film Citizen Kane, and poems by Donne, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Trakl, Yeats, Stevens and Berryman. Requirements: students will write four short papers totaling 15-20 pages. No prerequisites. Enrollment limited to 19. Two sections.