Literature Course

Lesson 1 • Core Elements of Narrative

Introduces plot, character, setting, point of view, and theme as analytical tools. This module provides a shared vocabulary that is used throughout the course.

Lesson 2 • Reading Actively and Critically

Teaches annotation, close reading habits, and question-driven engagement. These active reading skills underpin every analytical task in the course.

Lesson 3 • What Literature Is and Does

Defines literature as a category and examines its cultural functions. This module establishes the conceptual baseline for all subsequent analytical work.

Lesson 1 • Language, Diction, and Tone

Examines word choice, connotation, and tonal register as meaning-making tools. This unit connects micro-level language decisions to larger interpretive claims.

Lesson 2 • Syntax, Structure, and Rhythm

Analyses sentence construction, paragraph organisation, and rhythmic patterns. This unit shows how form reinforces or complicates a text's content.

Lesson 3 • Writing a Close Reading Analysis

Guides students from passage selection through thesis formation to polished prose. This unit integrates all close reading skills into a coherent written argument.

Lesson 4 • Irony, Ambiguity, and Complexity

Explores verbal, situational, and dramatic irony alongside textual ambiguity. This unit prepares students to hold multiple interpretations simultaneously.

Lesson 1 • Prosody: Meter and Sound

Teaches scansion, metrical feet, and sound devices such as rhyme and alliteration. Students will hear how sound patterns create meaning and emotional texture.

Lesson 2 • Thematic and Imagistic Reading

Traces recurring images and thematic threads across a poem or a poet's body of work. This unit connects local imagery to larger conceptual arguments.

Lesson 3 • Speaker, Voice, and Persona

Distinguishes the speaker from the author and examines how voice constructs identity. This unit builds interpretive precision around who speaks and to whom the speech is addressed.

Lesson 1 • Setting, World-Building, and Atmosphere

Explores how physical and social environments shape character and theme. Students will read setting as an active narrative element, not as a mere backdrop.

Lesson 2 • Narrative Point of View

Examines first, second, and third-person narration and their interpretive consequences. Students will assess how perspective shapes reader access and sympathy.

Lesson 3 • Short Story versus Novel Dynamics

Compares the compression of the short story with the expansiveness of the novel. Students will adapt analytical approaches to each form's distinct demands.

Lesson 4 • Plot, Time, and Structure

Analyses chronological and non-linear plot structures, including flashback and frame narratives. This unit shows how temporal manipulation creates suspense and meaning.

Lesson 1 • Theatrical Conventions and Context

Surveys conventions of Greek tragedy, Elizabethan theatre, and modern realism. Students will situate plays within their theatrical traditions to deepen interpretation.

Lesson 2 • Dramatic Structure and Conflict

Applies classical and modern structural models to plays, including exposition and crisis. Students will trace how conflict drives dramatic action and character revelation.

Lesson 3 • Character and Dialogue in Drama

Analyses how playwrights reveal character exclusively through speech and action. Students will interpret monologue, soliloquy, and ensemble dynamics.

Lesson 1 • Reader-Centered and Psychoanalytic Approaches

Examines how readers construct meaning and how psychoanalytic concepts illuminate character. Students will apply reception theory and Freudian or Lacanian frameworks.

Lesson 2 • Introduction to Literary Theory

Explains what theory does and why multiple frameworks coexist. Students will understand theory as a tool for generating questions, not as a fixed truth.

Lesson 3 • Identity-Based Critical Frameworks

Applies feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories to expose power dynamics in texts. Students will analyse how identity categories shape literary production and reception.

Lesson 4 • Formalism and New Criticism

Focuses on the text as a self-contained aesthetic object independent of context. Students will practice close reading as a theoretically grounded method.

Lesson 1 • Modernism and Its Experiments

Explores stream of consciousness, fragmentation, and formal innovation in modernist texts. Students will connect modernist technique to the cultural crises of the early twentieth century.

Lesson 2 • Classical and Medieval Foundations

Surveys epic, tragedy, and lyric traditions from antiquity through the medieval period. Students will identify foundational forms and themes that recur in later literature.

Lesson 3 • Postmodernism and Contemporary Literature

Analyses metafiction, pastiche, and the collapse of grand narratives in postmodern texts. Students will situate contemporary writing within and against postmodern conventions.

Lesson 4 • Renaissance Through Enlightenment

Examines humanism, the sonnet tradition, and Enlightenment rationalism in literature. Students will trace how print culture transformed literary production and readership.

Lesson 1 • Developing a Literary Thesis

Moves from observation to arguable, specific, and significant thesis claims. Students will distinguish weak theses from interpretively rich ones through revision.

Lesson 2 • Revision and Peer Review

Applies systematic revision strategies to strengthen argument, evidence, and prose style. Students will give and receive productive feedback through structured peer review.

Lesson 3 • Evidence, Quotation, and Citation

Teaches selection, integration, and citation of textual evidence in literary essays. Students will avoid over-quoting and learn to analyse rather than summarise.

Lesson 4 • Engaging Secondary Sources

Integrates scholarly criticism to support, complicate, or contest a student's argument. Students will position their own readings in dialogue with existing scholarship.