Introduction to Literary Studies

Literature here is treated as a craft that rewards careful attention: you learn to read closely enough that form, voice, and structure become arguments in their own right, not just decoration around a plot. Expect to work through a short fiction text, a play, and a body of poetry while writing essays that defend an interpretation with textual evidence, plus two midterms and a take-home final that test the same close-reading muscle. As the gateway course for the ELIT major, it sets the vocabulary and analytical habits — metaphor, irony, meter, characterization — that every later literature seminar will assume you already own.