ENGL102 Key Concepts Summary

Reading Keywords

• Keywords guide analytical focus in ENGL$102$
• Familiarity with them recommended before Week $1$

Canon

• Traditionally “Great Books” list dominated by dead, white, middle-class men
• F.R. Leavis’s The Great Tradition $($ $1948$ $)$ set influential criteria: enduring craft, moral intensity
• Multiple alternative canons now: women’s, African, queer, Indigenous, etc.
• Heart of Darkness long treated as canonical; Things Fall Apart critiques & repositions the canon

Class

• Derived from Marx/Engels: Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat $($ $1848$ Manifesto$)$
• Novels reveal class through inheritance, labour, prejudice, mobility
• Class often naturalised and invisible; literary criticism unmasks it

Culture

• Encompasses art, beliefs, way of life; often ranked hierarchically
• Arnold: culture = “best” of society
• Literature can reinforce $($ Heart of Darkness $)$ or contest $($ Things Fall Apart $)$ cultural hierarchies

Gender

• Socially constructed roles; patriarchy naturalises male dominance
• Analyze presence, roles, absence of women & masculinity patterns
• Texts may highlight gender constraints $($ Wuthering Heights, Things Fall Apart $)$ or render women invisible $($ Heart of Darkness $)$

Ideology

• Marx/Engels: unconscious, false system benefiting ruling class
• Identified via hidden assumptions about race, class, gender
• Literary criticism = deconstruction of ideological layers

Race

• Social construct used to justify hierarchies
• Essentialism fixes traits to groups; needs critical exposure
• Achebe vs. Conrad debate exemplifies uncovering racial ideology

Postcolonialism

• Examines colonial power relations and their after-effects
• Makes ‘natural’ colonial hierarchies visible
• Reading colonial texts through postcolonial lens reveals embedded assumptions

Nature

• Complex, often framed as opposite of culture yet culturally loaded
• Question how texts deploy ‘nature’ to comment on emotion, class, gender, race

Text

• Beyond words on page; node where meaning is produced
• Intertextuality: texts dialogue with prior texts; reading alters interpretation
• Critical practice trains readers to decode broader social “texts”