I’d like to make sure that you’re somewhat self-conscious about how you’re approaching and interpreting your texts. The presentations in second term will get 2 or 3 of you to interpret the same poem using different approaches. This selection of reading s will give you an idea of the kinds of critical approaches that are available to you.

Although I don’t expect that you’ll implement much of this, I do expect you to read all of Culler and the entries in Abrams in order to get a sense of how critics can and have approached their texts. The "applied" readings are a lso really useful: you can see the "same" poem analyzed in different ways.

You’ll probably find that it’s most congenial to look at your text from the point of view of identity politics (race or gender, for instance), "intertextuality" (does your poem fit into a "genre"? explicitly allude to other poems?), historical or biographical context (this is easy to do badly—focus on something very precise, and use the context to complicate your text, not to simplify it). Particular poems may invite particular approaches: come and talk to me!

Culler, Jonathan. Literary theory: a very short introduction.Oxford University Press, 1997.

PN 81 C857 1997 Short-term loan at Gerstein.

"Criticism" and "Interpretation and hermeneutics". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed.. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999. PN 44.5 A2 1999 Robarts, Trinity, Victoria College reference.

UTEL [University of Toronto English Library] has an online glossary of terms: see http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/index.html

"Cultural Studies", "New Historicism", "Sociology of literature". Literary theory: a very short introduction.Oxford University Press, 1997.

"Feminist criticism", "Marxist criticism", "Postcolonial studies", "Queer Theory". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed.. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999. à

Culler, Jonathan. "Identity, Identification, and the Subject". Literary theory: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, 1997.

"Psychological and psychoanalytic criticism". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed.. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

Culler, Jonathan. "Rhetoric, poetics, and poetry"; "Narrative". Literary theory: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, 1997.

"Formalism", "New Criticism". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed.. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

"Narrative and narratology". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed.. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

"Deconstruction". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed.. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

"Reader-response criticism". A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7^th ed. Ed. M.H. Abrams. Fort Worth, etc.: Harcourt Brace, 1999.

The same poem through different critical filters. Very useful!

Borowsky, Bruce. "The Tyger—An Annotated Bibliography".

Lentricchia, Frank. "In Place of an Afterword--Someone reading". Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2^nd ed., ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. The University of Chicago Press, 1995. 429-446. PN 81 C84 1995 ROBA, TRIN. PN 81 C6 1995 VUPT.

"Goblin Market", by Christina Georgina Rossetti. Nineteenth-century literature criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1981- . Volume 66: 297-390. PN 761 N5 GENR [Robarts 4^th floor], SMCR,