|
|
Fall 1998
English 775
Literary Theory
|
|
This course works with western dynamics in the 20th century debates over how to understand what goes into the production of meaning in literary texts. We read samples of several theoretical traditions to see what focus each contributes, what criticisms they make of each other, and what methods they find useful. Departing from the traditional American modernist basis in New Criticism, myth/archtypal, and psychoanalytic criticism, we turn to Russian formalism, Prague Structuralism, linguistics and semiotics for background to the postmodern turn. We see how Marxist and neo-Marxist and feminist criticism intersected, how new-historicist, reader-response, queer and post-colonial theories developed, and study the recently translated Bahktinian dialogics. Students become conversant with the basics of deconstructive and poststructuralist theory and debates around social practice, power, identity and discourse in relation to textual practices of reading and writing. The course provides an arena for studying, discussing and writing about the exciting and provocative moves in recent theory; students become participants in ongoing theoretical and critical conversations and do a project of relevance to them.
|
|
