ENG 463: Seminar in Literature - Theory & Criticism
Introduction to Literary Theory - January 30
Why Literary Theory? Overview & Syllabus
Predatory Reading & Notetaking
Stanley Fish, How to Recognize a Poem When You See One
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text In This Class?
Presentations Sign-Up
New Criticism & Reader Response
Cleanth Brooks, The Heresy of Paraphrase, from The Well-Wrought Urn
Wimsatt and Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy
Cleanth Brooks, Irony as a Principle of Structure
*I.A. Richards, Practical Criticism 1 and 2
John Crowe Ransom, Criticism, Inc.
Practical Criticism experiment
Canon formation & canon shattering - FEBruary 6
T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence and Summary
Deleuze and Guattari, What is a Minor Literature?
New Criticism & Reader response Cont'd
Cleanth Brooks, The Heresy of Paraphrase, from The Well-Wrought Urn
Wimsatt and Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy
Cleanth Brooks, Irony as a Principle of Structure
*I.A. Richards, Practical Criticism 1 and 2 (explore both websites)
John Crowe Ransom, Criticism, Inc.
Practical Criticism experiment
close reading, Surface reading, distant reading - February 13
Rapporteur: Calandra
Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot
Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best, Surface Reading
Franco Morretti, Maps, Graphs and Trees
DECONSTRUCTION, Struturalism, Post-structuralism
Rapporteur: Ashley Davis
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author
Useful link: Oxford Reference Dictionary for critical terms
Read M Butterfly over the break
February 20: No class (Monday schedule)
* Special Event: Friday, February 23
marxism - February 27
Rapporteur: Penelope
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Jonathan Wolff, from Class, History, and Capital
George Orwell, Bookshop Memories
*Slavoj Zizek, from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Short quiz on Feb 13's material
Psychoanalytic theory - March 6
Rapporteur: Amberly
Freud, Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming
Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Some Analyses of Sample Dreams
Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter
feminist theory - March 13
Rapporteur: Javiera
Sarah Gilbert & Sandra Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa
Check out these online archives: Equality Archive, Brown's Feminist Theory Archive, and Barnard's Feminist Collections.
Queer theory - March 20
Rapporteur: Hardik
Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet
New Historicism- March 27
Rapporteur: Jennifer
Catherine Gallagher & Stephen Greenblatt, The Mousetrap
Refamiliarize yourself with Hamlet; bring an old copy to class if you have.
Cultural Studies
Rapporteur: Amy
happy spring break!
Critical Race Theory - april 10
Rapporteur: Ana & Erica
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times
W.E. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Richard Rodriguez, The Third Man
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth: Black Skin, White Mask
Postcolonial Theory - April 17
Rapporteur: Sharon
Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?
Chinua Achebe, The African Writer and the English Language
Ngugi wa Thiongo, The Language of African Literature
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth: Black Skin, White Mask (reprise)
HW: Paper topic abstract & Annotated bibliography: Type out a brief paragraph explaining your proposed paper topic. Perform a database search (like we did in class) and browse through ~10 sources using variations of keywords relating to your topic. Note which journals articles seem to be coming from. Ask professors in your area of interest about the top 3 journals in their respective field. From your search, choose 3-5 sources, provide the bibliographic information for each, and underneath, briefly explain how this source helps inform your research and contributes to your thinking for the paper. Turn in your topic proposal and annotated big in hard copy.
Bring all your theory readings from earlier in the semester (with your annotations) for a short writing exercise at the beginning of next class.
COMParative & World Literatures - April 24
Rapporteur: Melissa
Gayatri Spivak & David Damrosch interview, Comparative Literature/World Literature
Caroline Levine, How to Make Worlds
Wai Chee Dimock, Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time
Translation
Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English: Japan Times article
Gregory Rabassa, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Possibilities
(Dis)abilitY Studies - May 1
Rapporteur: Alia
Berger, Introducing Disability Studies (read quickly and in predatory fashion!)
Lenard Davis, Construing Normalcy
Julie Avril Minich, Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now
English department awards ceremony - May 2
Ecocriticism - May 8
Rapporteur: Adora
Jay Parini, "The Greening of the Humanities"
Cheryl Glotfelty, The Ecocriticism Reader introduction
William Howarth, Some Principles of Ecocriticism or William Rueckert, Literature and Ecology (reader's choice)
16 Position Papers answering "What is Ecocriticism?" (skim quickly and in predatory fashion!)
*Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, "Nutting," and The Lucy Poems