The English 215 Critical Methods "Crit-Off"

        I've picked the team members for the 2008 English 215 Doubles Critical Methods Tournament (AKA, "the Big Crit-Off")  You have been chosen for the critical theory you will represent because you did very good or excellent work on it in the "Working With" assignment, and you have been paired with someone else who also did well.  Though I will be working mainly with Adam on Structuralism, I will be available at the beginning and end of the 30 minute work period to help groups figure out how to apply the theory.  Make sure you have read the Hemingway story, "My Old Man," and both versions of the 18-line Wyatt poem, "They Flee from Me [That Sometime Did Me Seek]" before class.  Your choice of which text to analyze often will make a huge difference in how well your theory works. 

        Happy Kentucky Derby day (Saturday, May 3)!  By coincidence, a court ruling a few years ago has allowed jockeys to sell advertising space on their racing silks or elsewhere.  To someone doing a Cultural Criticism or Semiotic analysis of a story involving the economics and symbolic structure of horse racing (i.e., "My Old Man"), this would be a present from the culture.  To see how it might be incorporated into the argument as a New Historicist rereading of the sign-system of the race, and class, click here.