Contemporary Literary Theory

September 10: Introduction 

Lecture Outline:

  -  The History of Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction

An introduction to the main themes of the course. The two roots of literary theory in the traditions of Biblical Hermeneutics and in Philosophical Poetics (the traditions of Revelation and Reason) are explored. The fundamental questions that each literary theory must address in some way are enumerated: 

• The nature of language

• The status of the author and the author's "intention"

• The nature of the "work" of art, its relation to the world

• The role of the reader 

• The question of the historical situatedness of author and of reader, the question of tradition, of influence

• The question of value: what makes a work great? And the status of the "canon" of great works

September 17: T.S. Eliot (New Criticism)

Required Reading:

  -  T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  On T.S. Eliot's Concept of Tradition

September 24: Cleanth Brooks (New Criticism)

Required Reading:

  -  Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994), The Well Wrought Urn (1947), Chapter 11: The Heresy of Paraphrase

Lecture Outline:

  -  On Cleanth Brooks and the New Criticism

October 1: Ferdinand de Saussure (Structuralism)

Required Reading:

  -  Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Course in General Linguistics (1906-13)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Saussure's Structuralist Linguistics: An Introduction

October 8: Roland Barthes (Structuralism)

Required Reading:

  -  Roland Barthes (1915-80), Mythologies (1957); "The Death of the Author" (1968)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Roland Barthes: An Introduction

October 15: Sigmund Freud (Psychoanalysis)

Required Reading:

  -  Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

Lecture Outline:

  - Sigmund Freud: An Introduction

October 22: Northrop Frye (Archetypal Criticism)

Required Reading:

  -  Northrop Frye (1912-91), The Archetypes of Literature (1951)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Northrop Frye and Archetypal Criticism: An Introduction

November 5: Jacques Lacan (Structuralist Psychoanalysis)

Required Reading:

  -  Jacques Lacan (1901-81), The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious (1957)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Jacques Lacan and Literary Theory: An Introduction

November 12: Karl Marx (Marxism)

Required Reading:

  -  Karl Marx (1818-83), The German Ideology (1845-46) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Karl Marx: An Introduction

November 19: Adorno and Horkheimer (Frankfurt School Marxism)

Required Reading:

  -  Theodor Adorno (1903-69) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Frankfurt School Marxism: An Introduction

November 26: Louis Althusser (Structuralist Marxism)

Required Reading:

  -  Louis Althusser (1918-90), Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (1969) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Louis Althusser: An Introduction

December 3: Martin Heidegger (Radical Hermeneutics)

Required Reading:

  -  Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Being and Time (1927) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Heidegger's Being and Time: An Introduction

December 10: Martin Heidegger (Radical Hermeneutics)

Required Reading:

  -  Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), On the Origin of the Work of Art (1936) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Heidegger's On the Origin of the Work of Art: An Introduction

January 7: Hans-Georg Gadamer (Radical Hermeneutics)

Required Reading:

  -  Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), Truth and Method (1960), pp 299-306

Lecture Outline:

  -  Gadamer and Literary Theory: An Introduction

January 14: Leo Strauss (Political Phenomenology)

Required Reading:

  -  Leo Strauss (1899-1973), What is Political Philosophy? (1957) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Leo Strauss's Political Phenomenology: An Introduction

January 21: Wolfgang Iser (Reader-Response Theory)

Required Reading:

  -  Wolfgang Iser (1926-2007), Interaction between Text and Reader (1980) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Wolfgang Iser and Reader-Response Theory: An Introduction

January 28: Friedrich Nietzsche (Roots of Post-structuralism)

Required Reading:

  -  Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Excerpts 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Friedrich Nietzsche: An Introduction

February 4: Gilles Deleuze (Roots of Post-structuralism)

Required Reading:

  -  Gilles Deleuze (1925-95), Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), "Active and Reactive" (p 39-72)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Deleuze's Interpretation of Nietzsche: An Introduction

February 11: Jacques Derrida (Deconstruction)

Required Reading:

  -  Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Différance (1968)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Deconstruction: An Introduction

February 18: Jacques Derrida (Deconstruction)

Required Reading:

  -  Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Dissemination (1968), "Plato's Pharmacy" (p 61-170)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Derrida's Deconstruction of Plato: An Introduction

March 4: Michel Foucault (New Historicism)

Required Reading:

  -  Michel Foucault (1926-1984), What is an Author (1969) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Foucault's Genealogy: An Introduction

March 11: Michel Foucault (New Historicism)

Required Reading:

  -  Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Discipline and Punish (1975) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Foucault's Genealogy: An Introduction

March 18: Edward Said (Post-Colonialism)

Required Reading:

  -  Edward Said (1935-2003), Orientalism (1978), Introduction

Lecture Outline:

  -  Edward Said's Orientalism: An Introduction

March 25: Virginia Woolf (Feminism)

Required Reading:

  -  Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), A Room of One's Own (1923)

Lecture Outline:

  -  Varieties of Feminism: An Introduction

April 1: Franco Moretti (Digital Humanities)

Required Reading:

  -  Franco Moretti (1950 - ), "Graphs, Maps, Trees" (2003) 

Lecture Outline:

  -  Literary Theory in the Digital Age: An Introduction