ELIT 609  Research Methodology for Literary Studies.

Fall Semester, 2006

Margaret J-M Sonmez

Week 1: Introduction

What is methodology?  Misconceptions about methodology swept away forever.

Some technicalities (resources etc.) 

*Check: who said ‘know thyself?’ How can you find out? Are you sure you have found the right answer?  (Why have I introduced this quotation at this stage of the course?)

 What about other well-known quotations (‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever’, ‘no man is an island’, ‘writing maketh the precise man’, 'we murder to dissect')?   Who wrote Erewhon?  In which play do we find ‘A horse! A horse! my kingdom for a horse!’?  How popular was Mill on the Floss?  Did Dickens read The Origins of the Species? Had Virginia Woolf read any Freud? Was Eliot familiar with Freud's writings?  How many people bought the first edition of Finnegans Wake? Has anyone else researched the topic you wish to write about? Find out where to find things out.

The all-important menage-a-trois: Aim (research question) - Materials – technique

Analysis of the methodologies of selected literary studies

Why are YOU  studying literature?

. . . I mean really.

Introducing a tough topic  for the final exam:

‘what is the validity of literature to the universe of scholarship and knowledge, and what exactly is the academic study of literature’ (how do you justify time spent  studying and teaching literature?  What is the value of your proposed research and thesis)

HOMEWORK 1:  This is for next week.

(a) Investigate the reference section of 1 or 2 libraries.  Report on at least 1 important discovery each (something useful for literary studies).  Share all references including shelf  numbers.

                        (b)  How do you find out answers to questions like those in * above?

                        (c)  Investigate and report on mailing lists you should join.

(d)  Prepare a paragraph telling us why YOU think studying literature is interesting. (If the reason is just that you don’t, then explain why it is not interesting, and why you are doing it, anyway.)  No cheating – you will all be asked. Do not give the answers you think you should give, play the honesty game, please.

Week 2:  Sources and subjectivity

Results of library and reference search, heart-searching question (d) above, discussion

So . . .  if that is why literature is interesting or uninteresting, what sort of literature interests you ?  Is it the same as the literature you like?

More analysis of other people's methodologies

HOMEWORK 2 (This is for next week):   (a)  Library work again:  find and photocopy the methodology sections of 1 or 2  works from the humanities or social sciences.  Prepare to discuss them briefly.  You should bring photocopies for the class.  NB we are looking at:

Aims/research question:  are they clearly stated?  What is the scope of this question?  What are the limitations?

Materials:  are they clearly set out?  Scope/limitations?  Do they suit the research question perfectly?

Technique:  is it clearly stated?  What are its strong points?  What are the weak points? Does it suit the aims and materials?

                        (b)  Write a paragraph about a work or type of literature that you really hate (or, at least, find uninteresting) - and why.  Be extremely honest and detailed, please.

Week 3: Methodological analysis and prejudice 

Last analyses of other people's methodologies.  Starting to discuss the Tough Question

Methodologies of the photocopies you have prepared. Discussion

 2 minutes Hate (in which novel does this occur?) - each.

OK, so what does this tell us about literature, validity, the point of studying it according to you, personally?

Methodologies of the photocopies you have prepared. Discussion

SECRET HOMEWORK

Week 4:  Ssssshhhhh!  Secret.

What have we learned from this?  

HOMEWORK:  What have others said about the Tough Question?

 Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Sidney, the Romantics [who said a lot], Arnold, Pater, and all those 20th century critical theorists.  Each of you to look up one old writer and one new writer on this.  Prepare (don't just read and have a general feel-good feeling) arguments for and against these views.

Week 5: Critical background to methodology

Present findings from last week's homework.  What are the methodological consequences of each approach to literature?

More honesty:  Which important thinkers or theorists do you not understand or even know about?

HOMEWORK:  Each of you to grapple with a thinker or a theory that you are not familiar with or don't understand, and prepare a  15 minute presentation (with handout):

('XYZ in a nutshell' ie, (a) NAME and DATES.  (b) TITLE OF MAIN WORK and availability. (c) What is clear and easy, what is or was hard about him/her.  (d) What sort of thesis this thinker's ideas  would be useful to. 

 NB it takes longer to prepare a short presentation than to prepare a long one, so don't leave this until the last minute.

 Week 6:  Thinkers.

Presentations and discussions as above

Check the Big Names relevant here:  quite apart from Plato and the rest mentioned above,  are you au fait with Kant, Nietszche, Hegel?  Berkeley?  How good at Popper are you?  Do you remember Hobbes’s view of the world?  How does that fit in with Rousseau’s?  Can we see Darwin, Marx and Freud as part of an intellectual continuum, or are they one-offs.  Why do so many people go on about Jung when they are talking about literature?   Let’s find some good sources to save us from ignorance in these essential matters.

Even if you have already done one presentation, don't stop there.  Do another some time:  we may run out of things to discuss one day, and that would never do.  We have to be LIVE WIRES of interest and intellect.  Nice thing about Lit is that it is a never-ending subject.  Get chatty.

HOMEWORK:  Using Dissertation Abstract Indexes, each of you to Find the titles and abstracts of 2 Lit PhD theses: one that seems exceptionally interesting and one that seems exceptionally dull or worthless.

Week 7:  Thinkers continued, further structural issues.

The main elements of research: Dependent and Independent Variables.

Dissertation titles and abstracts presentations and discussions

HOMEWORK:  Think about your own thesis.  Make up lots of different possible thesis titles

Have you read any really good (English) books recently?  Share the good news. What sort of theses would these books give rise to?

Week 8: Your own theses. 

Theses: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (where does this quotation come from?)

Thesis titles, ideas, discussion of methodologies for each one.  OUTLINES.

Brief discussion of other practical issues like KEEPING RECORDS (not musical), SUPERVISORS (practical?  Not always), TIME, DEADLINES, ULCERS AND PANIC ATTACKS..

HOMEWORK: Who was Fredson Bowers and what did he write about?  What do other Literary methodology teach?  Why?

Week 9: The Secret Life of the Literary Text.

Information about text production, reproduction and transmission; 

“What do you mean – bibliography?” 

"The author is dead" (who said that and why?)

What You Should Know About Your Texts and Their Writers. 

How to Avoid Dreadful Mistakes and Omissions

(don't you love those Victorian Chapter titles? - but why did they do that?  When did the habit stop? What about illustrations?  Why did they stop?  What is the semiology of book appearance?  Who coined the phrase semiology?  Who produces semiological studies of literature?)

HOMEWORK: What were the working habits of your chosen author(s):  did they  make corrections before, during, and/or     after printing?  From where do we get this information? What is the history of  their textual transmission? Where are their manuscripts kept, and which are the best copies or editions of their works? 

Week 10:   Catch-up week

By which I mean that usually by this time we are hopelessly behind schedule, so it is best to leave at least one week blank in order to catch up with this demanding timetable.

HOMEWORK:  Prepare one paragraph on each of Bacon's Four Idols

Week 11: Presentations, ologies and isms

What, anyway, are the different approaches to knowledge that are implicated in our Tough Topic and, ultimately, in all research?  What is teleology? Do we really understand the difference between inductive and deductive knowledge ?  Rationalism?  Idealism?  Empiricism?  Where do materialism and relativism fit in?  What is Narratology?  Semiotics?  Questions (and, where possibile, answers) about –isms and –ologies.

Weeks 12-14:  Down to the Nitty Gritty:

Brainstorming and working on your theses or on your hypothetical theses (if you have no idea what you are going to write about, you should choose a topic that seems interesting, even though you may not take it up at a later stage. 

Are you free and flexible in your thinking about possible thesis topics?  Why not?  Are you tortured with lack of self confidence?  This is a luxury.  ‘boş ver’ your personality problems: Literature interests more people more of the time.    Now, ‘let it all hang out’ and put those ideas down.  In week 14 we’ll play the ‘thesis topic consequences’ game to test your humour and your ability to think on your feet.

GRADING

You will be given 2 hours to sit down and write an essay about the Tough Question.  That’s your final exam (50%).  It is very difficult.  You have been warned. If you think it is easy you are probably not taking your discussion deep enough, or you have forgotten to get supporting evidence from other sources.

You will be given a bar of chocolate if you win the thesis topic consequences game (0%, 300 calories)

Your discussions of other people's methodologies (photocopies of your own) will earn you up to 20%

Your 'XYZ in a nutshell' classroom presentations will earn you 20% - but only if they show personal input and provide useful information and references for the rest of the class.

Your useful contribution to classroom activities (reports about libraries, reference books, the writing habits of authors, recent ideas or good articles to read,  good jokes and keeping a smiling face through thick and thin) will earn you 10% (and some friends).