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Elizabeth Tallent
214 Margaret Jacks Hall
office hours: Tuesday 3:30-5:30
and by appointment (email me and well find a time)
Email: tallent@stanford.edu
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a
little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the
reader come out just 6 per cent more awake to the world.
George Saunders
Course Description
Welcome, all! And a warm welcome to non-English majors considering this class.
Former students from a wide range of disciplines tell me that they had the chance to
take only a single literature class while at Stanford, and that they found this course
accessible and rewarding. As a teacher Im aware that students whove never before
taken an English course enter this classroom with the trepidation natural when
facing a new challenge. If this is true of you, Id like to say, first, this syllabus can give
you a good sense of what this course will be like, and, second: Take a chance on
these stories. They have a lot to say about what matters in our lives.
I find the short storys capacity for illumining our experience enthralling, and
see this class as a chance to explore that capacity through the dual concepts of
continuity and innovation that structure our progression through the quarter.
These concepts are the most useful way Ive found for illumining the tension
between the short storys gorgeous literary inheritance and the forms genius for
addressing absolutely new perceptions about life as we live it. Guided by these
paired concepts, we will approach each short story as if it is part of a brilliant, time-
transcending conversation. Students in this course are seen not as passive
eavesdroppers on this conversation, but as its newest voices, generating the fresh
views that keep the short-story form alive and vital even as literatures place in
culture is rocked by powerful changes.
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Wed 5 Apr Just you put a patch on it: Gogols uncertainty principle
Gogol, The Overcoat
Mon 17 Apr Here was life, not fiction: How subversive is Chopin?
Chopin, The Story of an Hour
Chopin, How I Stumbled upon Maupassant
Chopin, Dsires Baby
Chopin, The Storm
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Mon 8 May The inscrutable woman remains inscrutable: Mansfield
Mansfield, Bliss
Mansfield, Carnation
Mansfield, At the Bay
Mon 15 May On then. Dare it. Let there be life: Joyces daring
Joyce, Araby
Joyce, The Dead
Joyce, An Encounter
*Short Writing Exercise 2 Posted on Canvas
Wed 7 June Six per cent more awake to the world: Questions Were Left
With
** Take-home final exam handed out in class **
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Mon 12 June Take-home final exams due at 6:30 p.m.
Please submit a copy of your final exam via Canvas. Lateness
will definitely affect your grade.
Syllabus
These stories have been chosen not only for their beauty and significance but
because each seems to me somehow inexhaustible: these are stories that invite the
readers deepest engagement with their ambiguities. Such ambiguity, Id argue,
characterizes great literature: each story is open to a multiplicity of interpretations.
How, then, will you know when youve read a story right? Its the aim of this
course to support each student in devising original and compelling questions to ask
of each story, and to gain experience in articulating and examining various
interpretations of a story. These stories are also, in my view, the essential ones a
serious young writer needs to have absorbed before writing stories of her own.
They are offered here in roughly chronological order.
Teaching Philosophy
As a reader and writer of short stories, Im frankly in love with and awed by the
form. To be there as a teacher for those moments when a student is startled by some
fresh glimpse into the depths of a story counts, to me, as terrific good fortune. To
every one of our classes I will bring my sense of being honored and delighted to
teach and my conviction that literature not only can change lives but can do so in ten
thousand ways during ten weeks we will spend together. Let me just come out of the
closet right now: Im persuaded that literature is humanitys great means of self-
transformation.
If Im right about that, or even if Im not, literature needs and desires serious and
intimate involvement. For this reason the expectations I have of you as a student in
this class are high. I ask for genuine commitment and sustained attention, your
willingness to engage with a wide range of views and interpretations, to speak your
mind honestly and clearly and courteously, to exercise some serious playfulness in
creative exercises designed to illumine from within the problems of craft a writer
faced in a story.
A high point of the class, for me, is the discussions about the stories I have with
students during office hours. Even if you dont have a specific question, I invite you
to come by to introduce yourself and talk. If you dont get something about a story,
thats a terrific starting point for our conversation.
Im serious when I say that the aim of beautiful and lasting short stories is to change
their readers. Ultimately, your relation with any storywith those stories you find
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beautiful, and those stories you dontis private, bound up with questions about
what matters to you about being alive. Yet this course is a public, shared, communal
experience of responding to stories linked by their genre and aesthetic concerns,
and as you voice your perceptions and engage with your peers and instructors, you
can expect to become a more confident, articulate participant in this communal
investigation, capable of identifying aspects of style, assessing the value of different
interpretations, and effectively (and courteously) challenging interpretations. As the
quarter progresses you will gain a sense of the intricate connections among the
texts in the syllabus, and will be able to interpret stylistic continuity and evaluate
aesthetic breakthroughs in the genre of the short story. You can expect your
increasing prowess as a reader to inform and strengthen the writing youll do, and
youll receive thoughtful feedback and support for the intelligent risks you take in
interpretation and the originality of your perceptionsand of your own sentences.
Not least, youll gain an acute sense of the pleasures of confronting complexity.
Since short stories deal intimately with trauma, violence, illness and death, and just
as intimately with love, desire, and sex, you can expect our quarter-long
conversation to be direct and realistic, its language clear, frank, and adult.
Heres something not to expect: lecture isnt meant as a preface to the stories. Its
not an introduction. A more meaningful take on lecture is that its an experience, one
youll be actively involved in. These are interactive lectures designed to work with
questions youve formulated as you read and to encourage you to articulate your
perceptions.
So its crucial that you read the assigned stories before lecture. Further, I ask that,
while reading, you make notes in the margins of the story. Simple as it is, theres no
equivalent for this strategy of annotating your responses in the act of reading. It can
prove illuminating as a record of your experience of the text, and valuable in
assessing your gains in confidence and insightfulness as our course progresses. For
example, when an interpretation is offered in lecture, you can refer back to your
own responses: did you notice the detail, image, or ambiguity lecture addresses?
When you came to that moment in the text, did it spark a question? Just about the
most valuable note you can make in the margins looks like this: ? Valuable, why?
Because its ?s, yours and mine, that can get us deeper into the story.
Students tell me that the balance of the time they devoted to this course was in the
hours they spend reading the stories. As a teacher Im lucky because the same
students often tell me they loved doing the reading. Edgar Allan Poe described the
short story as a prose narrative brief enough to be read in a single session, and that
definition suggests the ideal approach: the story aims to saturate the readers
imagination so completely that she or he seems, for the storys duration, to live
within it. This is much less likely to happen if you permit distractions. For that
crucial encounter, I hope youll grant each of these stories your sustained attention.
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Grading
Please note: Because attendance at both lecture and section is essential to students
experience of this course, unexcused absences are taken very seriously. For each
unexcused absence, either from section or lecture, 2 points will be deducted
from the students total final grade (that is, the final grade for the course as
calculated from the components below).
Lecture
First, the practical aspects: Lecture is essential to a valuable experience of this class,
and attendance is required. TAs will record attendance at lectures; if you feel your
absence should be excused, please speak with your TA. Unexcused absences will
affect your grade.
Im extremely committed to the quality of your experience in this class, and because
theres a great deal of pedagogical research documenting their negative impact on
students experience of a class and on their grades, I have a no open laptops policy
for lecture. Fairness is also an issue here: the research shows that in-class use of a
laptop or other device negatively affects not only the users experience but also the
experience of nearby students. The exception, of course, is students who require
special accommodation: please talk with me if this is true for you.
Second, the overview: The aim of lecture is not only to build on but also to
complicate your reading experience by suggesting fresh perspectives. Because I
believe literary texts necessarily reflect (and engage with) their cultural moment, I
establish a context for each story both by placing it literarily and culturally and by
discussing the writers style and ambitions in general. Since were approaching each
short story as part of a great, far-flung conversation, connections between writers
will be described (and to tell you the truth, writers simply interest me a lot). But the
essence of each lecture is close reading, addressing the story through language,
imagery, detail, and the psychology of the characters. As this is modelled in lecture,
even inexperienced students will become increasingly confident practicing close
reading.
In my view a strong lecture not only answers questions, but sparks new ones. And in
order to answer these new questions, Ill sometimes post an answer to a selected
question on our Canvas site.
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Youll note that our syllabus generally offers more than one story by a writer, with a
view to deepening your acquaintance with the writer and illumining her/his project.
Often, lecture will delve into one story in detail, leaving the others to be explored in
section discussion. The aim here is to offer students fresh territorythe chance to
test the views offered in lecture against a new text and to voice the perceptions that
an untouched text may invite.
Section Participation
To help address the uncertainty many students feel about how discussion is
evaluated by instructors, youll receive a mid-term grade on your section
participation. This gives you the chance, well before the assignment of your ultimate
grade for section discussion, to consult with the TA and to resolve any problems.
(Former students in this class have found our TAs incredibly helpful.) Of course, we
welcome the opportunity to address any difficulties youre having at any time
during the quarter.
Section attendance is essential for success in this course, and its mandatory. If you
feel your absence should be excused, please speak with your TA. Unexcused
absences will affect your grade.
Twice during the quarter, youll be asked to complete a short writing exercise. A
prompt will be posted on Canvas, to which you will respond in 300 words or less.
Youll submit your response via Canvas to your TA. Lateness will affect your grade.
Intended to deepen your exploration of the texts, these writing exercises will also
prepare you for the final exam. Each prompt will ask you to practice the skills
required for the exam: original interpretation, clarity of reasoning, skillful close
reading and use of critical concepts, and the ability to suggest connections among
the texts on the syllabus. Quality of writing counts. Your TA will provide feedback on
your responses, so that over the course of the quarter youll have the chance to
strengthen your writing and build confidence in your reading and interpretation
skills. On the discussion forum, youll be able to viewand perhaps be inspired
bythe work of your section-mates.
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Please note that short writing exercises do not receive letter grades. You receive full
credit for each response when (a) you submit it on time, (b) you follow the
instructions, and (c) your response demonstrates serious engagement with the
prompt.
Final Exam
The comprehensive final exam will consist of essay questions requiring skill in close
reading and interpretation as well as the ability to synthesize material covered
throughout the course: an ideal final exam will display not only meaningful ideas
about what youve read, but confident expression of these ideas. Again, quality of
writing counts. Final exams are due June 4 at 4 p.m.
Texts
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2. that they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as
well as themselves uphold the spirit and letter of the Honor Code.
3. The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by
refraining from proctoring examinations and from taking unusual and unreasonable
precautions to prevent the forms of dishonesty mentioned above. The faculty will
also avoid, as far as practicable, academic procedures that create temptations to
violate the Honor Code.
4. While the faculty alone has the right and obligation to set academic
requirements, the students and faculty will work together to establish optimal
conditions for honorable academic work.