This course introduces students to the practices of critical reading and writing by examining in depth a small group of works selected to illustrate the chief modes of English literature: fiction, drama, poetry, and essay. The four writers we will consider, C. S. Lewis, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and Henry David Thoreau, were at once masters of their craft and acute commentators on the dialectic of art and nature that will frame our critical investigation of how literature works. Course requirements include four short critical essays, one of which may be rewritten for credit.