Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.
Or rest.
Neil Gaiman “Instructions”
Course Description:
Welcome to the Forest. This course focuses on composition viewed through the lens of literature. For this quarter, we will be embarking on a journey to understand what writing well and effectively looks like and this journey will be through the Enchanted Forest of the Fairy Tale. The fairy tale is a familiar genre through which we can explore the tools needed to write effectively. Much like how the hero of a fairy tale must collect magical items such as glass slippers, singing harps, or magic beans, so will we collect composition skills such as genre analysis, argument formation, and audience awareness. The first half of this quarter will focus on famous fairy tales and all of their versions—Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and an assortment of “Trickster” tales—while the second half will focus on contemporary fairy tales and films as well as your own research on a topic related to fairy tales. We will ask questions such as Why do we love fairy tales? How have fairy tales changed throughout the years? What makes the genre of fairy tale unique? What is the purpose of fairy tales? Should fairy tales be deemed as important as other literary genre? It might be a long quest through this Forest of Faerie but hopefully we will finish this class happily ever after.
Class Texts:
PDFs on Canvas
Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Maria Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales (Second Edition)
***All texts should be available at the UW Bookstore but you are more than welcome to find them in any way if you are searching for cheaper options such as libraries or used bookstores.