Literary Theory 4219-AW027
Survey of literary theory with an emphasis on the twentieth century. Survey includes Russian Formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, feminism, and queer theory.
Type of course
Learning outcomes
Students are familiar with the major approaches to literary theory.
Assessment criteria
Final exam based on readings.
Bibliography
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” and “The Philosophy of Composition.” The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe with Selections from His Critical Writings, New York: Dorset Press, 1989, 72-74 and 742-750.
Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique.” The Critical Tradition,738-748.
Mikhail Bakhtin, from Discourse in the Novel and from Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, The Critical Tradition, 780-798.
David Lodge, “Mimesis and Diegesis in Modern Fiction.” Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, 2nd edition, Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Durham: Duke UP, 1996, 348-371.
Wolfgang Iser, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” David H. Richter, ed. The Critical Tradition 1219-1232.
Stanley Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum.” The Critical Tradition 1240-1253.
Pierre Bourdieu, from Disctinction. A Critique of the Judgment of Taste. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Vincent B. Leitch, et al., eds. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001, 1809-1814.
Terry Eagleton, from “The Rise of English.” The Norton… 2243-2249.
Louis Althusser, from “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (The Norton… 1483-1509)
Umberto Eco, “Myth of the Superman.” The Critical Tradition 929-941.
Sigmund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny’.” The Norton… 929-952.
Northrop Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature.” The Norton…1445-1457.
Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth.” The Critical Tradition 869-877.
Roman Jakobson, from Linguistics and Poetics, The Norton… 1258-1269.
Sigmund Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” The Freud Reader, Peter Gay, ed., New York: Norton, 1989, 594-626.
Peter Brooks, “Freud's Masterplot: A Model for Narrative,” Reading for the Plot. Design and Intention in Narrative, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984, 90-112.
T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The Norton… 1092-1098.
Harold Bloom, from The Anxiety of Influence. The Norton… 1797-1805.
Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” The Norton… 1622-1636.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter.” The Complete Tales... 593-606.
Jacques Lacan, “Seminar on The Purloined Letter.” The Critical Tradition 686-704. http://chaucer.library.emory.edu/carroll/lacan_pages/lacan_text.html
Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” and “The Purloined Letter” (from The Purveyor of Truth). The Critical Tradition 959-978.
Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text.” The Critical Tradition 1006-1010.
Edward Said, “Introduction” to Orientalism, The Norton… 1991-2012.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” The Norton… 2197-2208.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “The Blackness of Blackness,” Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, 301-325.
Linda Hutcheon, “'The Pastime of Past Time” (from Fiction, History, Historiographical Metafiction), Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, 473-495.
Annette Kolodny, “A Map of Rereading.” The Critical Tradition 1126-1137.
Nina Baym, “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors.” The Critical Tradition 1146-1157.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from “Introduction” to Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, and from “Introduction: Axiomatic” to Epistemology of the Closet, The Norton... 2434-2445.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Preface” to The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. TO BE SUPPLIED.