English

"I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework." -- Edith Ann

As a discipline, English has two aims. First, it seeks to increase students' appreciation and understanding of what makes a written text "literary" and why readers return to great literary works to provide pleasure and insight into the human condition. Second, it seeks to teach students, through the writing of critical essays, how to analyze and communicate effectively. The study of literature is largely the study of story and figures of speech and forms of language which are most brilliantly and extravagantly employed by poets, playwrights and writers of fiction. They also play a crucial role in other less obviously literary kinds of writing, like history, philosophy and science. The study of literature should therefore increase the students' awareness of the wondrous power of language to shape and illuminate (or when improperly used, to misshape and obscure) our place in creation.

English

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