Guia Academica - Facultad de Filología - Universidad de Salamanca

299 FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA GUÍA ACADÉMICA 2009-2010
14845-EL RELATO CORTO EN LENGUA INGLESA
Asignatura Optativa. Primer Semestre. 6 créditos
Profa.: Mercedes Peñalba García
mpg@usal.es
UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will introduce you to the pleasures of exploring fiction, and to the challenges of interpreting, confronting, and discovering human
experience. The short story is an incredibly versatile literary form which can deal with many issues, ranging from very personal concerns like identity,
sexuality, loss, and family life, all the way through to social issues: for instance, the relationship between individuals and the societies they live in;
freedom and unfreedom; gender and race. The short story is also an excellent form to study if you wish to improve your English comprehension and
writing. It allows you to read carefully, and to see how writers use the English language, and how they employ various aspects of narrative technique—narrative
point of view, the creation of characters, scene building, and much else.
You are expected to actively participate in class discussions and write short papers to demonstrate close reading skills, to express individual
interpretation, and to understand the common themes and unique literary characteristics of the genre. You are also encouraged to view films based
on the literary selections to enlarge your perceptions of themes, characters, and settings. This course will also introduce you to a basic language of
metaphor and symbol, which traditionally underlies and gives a frame of expression to imaginative writing. Class time will be devoted heavily to lecture
on these occasions, but otherwise will consist of focused discussions of the readings. The course includes the formal analysis of individual stories
and some attention to general literary trends and theories of fiction that have affected the short story in its historical development in America.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
A. To promote student understanding and appreciation of representative short fiction in the English language.
B. To provide a framework for the study of the literature and culture of the United States.
C. To appreciate the short story’s importance as a literary form.
D. To recognize important literary elements and figurative language in short stories.
E. To focus on the analysis of events, movements, groups, and individuals who have shaped and continue to shape American culture, history,
and literature.
F. To analyze texts as a basis for original thinking and writing.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
A. Outcomes of the course
By the end of the course, you should feel that you have developed some of the following:
a) A heightened sensitivity to different kinds of literary writing and to experiments with the short story;
b) A greater understanding and appreciation of the short story in critical and historical terms: how short stories reflect human experience over
time and through different cultures.
c) A larger critical vocabulary for thinking, talking and writing about the short story;
d) An enhanced capacity to compose ideas and arguments in clear and accurately presented critical prose. Students will be able to
B. Skills imparted by the course
Additionally, by the end of the course, you should have acquired some of the following skills:
a) The ability to evaluate key literary and theoretical texts: you will be encouraged to think about genre (the form of writing), representation (the
rhetoric in which writing conveys experience), and theme (the ideas and issues that writing actualises).