Course Description
Representative texts from Aristotle to Derrida and beyond, exemplifying a range of contemporary critical approaches and providing a historical context for current theoretical debates.
Athena Title
Literary Theory
Prerequisite
Two 2000-level ENGL courses or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 3000-level ENGL course) or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 2000-level CMLT course)
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course introduces undergraduate students to a range of critical approaches to literature by studying some of the important historical texts of literary theory as well as a variety of contemporary theoretical methodologies. This course will introduce students to the practice of literary criticism, develop their interpretive skills, and contextualize current theoretical debates within literary studies. Students will be expected to demonstrate an oral command of these skills and specialized vocabularies in class discussion and to incorporate an acquaintance with theoretical issues into critical writing throughout the semester. As are all English courses, this course is writing-intensive, which means that the students should expect to compose at least 20 pages of written work and to revise this work in consultation with the instructor. Such revised work may count toward the overall page requirement.
Topical Outline
The course syllabus is a general plan for the course; deviations announced to the class by the instructor may be necessary. The focus and coverage will vary from semester to semester and instructor to instructor, but topics of examination to be treated in oral presentations and in written work will include: - New Criticism/Formalism - Reader-response Criticism - Deconstructive Criticism - Marxist Criticism - Psychoanalytic Criticism - Feminist/Gender Criticism - New Historicist Criticism - Post-colonial Criticism - Ethnic/Race Criticism Particular writing assignments are dependent on the instructor, but such assignments might include: three-page"summary- application" papers, in which students summarize the major tenets of critical approach and apply it to a literary work; short reports summarizing scholarly articles that apply a particular theoretical approach; book reviews of theoretically informed scholarship or biographies of key theoretical figures; five-to-seven page argumentative essays that interpret a literary text, using a theoretical model; a longer, twelve-to- fifteen page argumentative essay that engages a theoretical model.