Critical Reading

Overview

The Critical Reading course at University of Oxford will introduce you to some key concepts in criticism and theory. It will help you to acquire skills of close critical analysis that will enable you to study, write about, appreciate, and above all enjoy literary texts. Illustrations and exercises will be taken from nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry and narrative fiction.

Course aims

• Enhance understanding and enjoyment of literary texts.
• Understand basic concepts of the critical idiom.
• Distinguish between opinions and appreciations, and analysis.
• Produce close critical analyses of prose and poetry.
• Have a working knowledge of the broad chronological, thematic, and stylistic categories of English Literature.
• Make effective use of online resources in English Literary Studies.
• Begin to build a personal reading list.

Teaching outcomes

By the end of the course you will know:

• basic concepts of the critical idiom.
• key arguments relating to literary value.
• key arguments relating to the methods and function of literary analysis.
• your own position as literary and critical theorists.
• differences between opinions and appreciations, and analysis.