Course Description: If you’ve ever been involved in a book club or group discussion of a literary work, you’ve probably used Reader-Response criticism. Preparing for the discussion at home, you may have used New Criticism along with one or more other possible approaches without being aware of their properties. Becoming aware of the various approaches and their usefulness in understanding literature can help you choose the most appropriate ones for the specific text you are reading. This course will study the most common critical approaches to understanding literature by examining and then applying each.

Instructor: Prof. Norman Wesley’s career spans fifty years of teaching English, American, and world literature as well as grammar and linguistics at American colleges and universities and briefly at Cambridge University in England. He is now a retired [emeritus] professor from The State University of New York and lives in Fernandina Beach.

Schedule: 8 sessions. Wednesdays, September 27 through November 15, 10:00-11:30AM.

Location: Upstairs conference room at Scott and Sons Jewelry, 9900 Amelia Island Parkway, Fernandina Beach. Please park away from the front door to the store.

Fee: $50 per person

Materials: The course text is Texts and Contexts by Steven Lynn, in any affordable, used edition you can find. A digital soft copy will be provided to the students.