Lit 400 Introduction to Literary Theory
Jan Mieszkowski
T/Th 1:10PM-2:30PM
Eliot 314
Overview
This course offers an introduction to the major topics in twentieth-century literary theory and criticism. We will be interested in the unique challenges literature presents as an object of systematic inquiry: What are the differences between literary and non-literary discourses? How does the exposition of an individual literary work raise larger questions about the nature of art or language? Is there something inherently inadequate about a purely affective or aesthetic response to a text?
We will be concerned with why the study of literature has played and continues to play a crucial role in a wide range of academic disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, history, political theory, and philosophy. We will also consider how best to assess the strengths and weaknesses of different critical methods.
The only required text is The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (ed. Vincent B. Leitch), which is available in the bookstore. Nine copies of it are on 2-hour reserve in the library. All page numbers on the syllabus refer to this volume or, where indicated, to the e-reserve materials on the library web page.
Requirements
Each conference member is responsible for delivering a 7-8 minute presentation to the class on one of our readings. Your task is to open our discussion in whatever way you see fit. You may choose to summarize the main points of the argument, highlight crucial difficulties, and/or raise questions or offer a critique. Within a week of your presentation, you must turn in a short (2- or 3-page) summary of the class session in which you reflect on how you tried to direct our discussion, what issues (expected or unexpected) proved central to the conversation, and what you might do differently if you were to introduce the same material again.
There will be a take-home midterm (due Friday, October 17) and a take-home final. There will also be 3-4 in-class pop quizzes. (These cannot be made up.)
Evaluation
| Midterm and Final | 45% |
| Presentation and Write-up | 25% |
| Class participation & Quizzes | 30% |
Reading Schedule
Week 1
9/2 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition" (742-750)
9/4 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
(960-977; e-reserves 6-14, 71-81, 140-143)
Week 2
9/9 Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth" (e-reserves)
9/11 Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play" (e-reserves)
Week 3
9/16 Roman Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language" (1265-1269)
Jakobson & Lévi-Strauss, "Baudelaire's 'Les Chats'" (e-reserves)
9/18 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells" (e-reserves)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Minister's Black Veil" (e-reserves)
Week 4
9/23 William K. Wimsatt Jr. & Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" (1374-1387)
Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn (1353-1365)
John Donne, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (e-reserves)
9/25 Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric" and "The Return to Philology" (1514-1531)
Week 5
9/30 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel" (1190-1220)
10/2 Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text" (1466-1475)
Michel Foucault, "What is an Author? (1622-1636)
Week 6
10/7 Karl Marx, Capital (776-783)
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1567-1575)
10/9 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1937-1960)
Week 7
10/14 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art" (1166-1186)
10/16 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1461-5; e-reserves 15-25, 56-7, 84-7)
Fall Break
Week 8
10/28 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (919-929), "Fetishism" (952-956)
10/30 Jacques Lacan, "The Agency of the Letter" (1290-1302)
Week 9
11/4 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (1648-1666), Truth and Power (1667-1670)
11/6 Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa" (2039-2056)
Week 10
11/11 J.L. Austin, "Performative Utterances" (1430-1442)
11/13 Jacques Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context" (e-reserves)
Week 11
11/18 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (2488-2501)
11/20 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (2197-2208)
Week 12
11/25 Franz Kafka, "In the Penal Colony" (e-reserves)
Thanksgiving
Week 13
12/2 Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (2181-2192)
12/4 Rear Window continued
George E. Toles, "Hitchcock's Rear Window as Critical Allegory" (e-reserves)
Juhani Pallasmaa, "The Geometry of Terror" (e-reserves)
Week 14
12/9 TBA