Creative Writing Courses
Writing Criticism - English 27
Visiting Lecturer Dan Chiasson

This course aims to make us better critics by making us better writers of criticism.  In the first half of the course we’ll read a range of critical works (some by professional critics and others by poets, novelists and other “amateurs”).  In the second half we’ll study the history of criticism of a single book of poetry, Elizabeth Bishop’s North and South.  Students will write critical essays that incorporate a range of genres–reviews, scholarship, cultural criticism, critical theory and memoir.  Some familiarity with Bishop and with the following authors would be helpful but is not required:  Dickinson, Hawthorne, Marianne Moore, Frank O’Hara.  Critics to be read include Susan Howe, Richard Poirier, Marjorie Perloff, Helen Vendler, Henry James, Randall Jarrell, Rick Moody, Hugh Kenner, Robert Lowell, William H. Pritchard, Louise Glück, and Adrienne Rich.

Admission to the course:

Limited enrollment. Please submit, via email, (dchiasso@wellesley.edu) a five-page sample of your best critical writing by 4 pm Monday, September 5. I will post the class list by 10 AM, Wednesday, September 7 on the Creative Writing Center bulletin board and with the English Department.

Please incude your complete contact information, including email, on your submission.

Questions? Email Dan Chiasson.

Additional Information

Please put your name on every page of your writing sample. Your contact information (school, year, phone, e-mail) should go on the first page.