Introduction to Literary Theory

Introduction to Literary Theory E 300 01 / Fall 2011

"In our era, criticism is not merely a library of secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but also a rapidly expanding body of knowledge in its own right." -David Lodge “The unexamined life is not worth living”-Socrates

ENLT #300 01 T/R 11:10-12:30 Instructor: Katie Kane LA 233 Email: [email protected]

Fall 2011 Office: LA 111 Phone #: 243-5284 O. Hours: T 12:30-1:30 R: 12:30-2:00 & By Appointment

Course Description In this introductory course in literary and cultural theory, we will attempt to explore representative schools of and issues in contemporary criticism. We will be working, therefore, to build an analytic and critical vocabulary for the activity of reading a variety of texts from the canons of literary criticism. However, in addition to this “first-principles” objective, we will also attempt to engage with such complexities of current theoretical debate as “the question of the author,” the reconciliation of form and content, the agon of canon formation and canon busting, and, finally, with the crucial issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Throughout the course we will be moving toward our current early twenty-first century moment in which the range and scope of the labor of the literary critic seems—in light of the rise of a host of non-traditional representational and narrative forms—to be both expanding and contracting.

1

Policy Statement Required Texts: Richter, David. Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. ( a.k.a. FiT) Waugh, Patricia. Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide. (a.k.a. LTC) N.B. Your texts are currently available in the Bookstore. You MUST bring the requisite text with you to class. Coursework: Final grades will be determined by your performance in three separate categories of coursework: 1. Daily Essays 40% 2. Midterm 20% 3. Final Essay 20% 4. Final 20% 100% Daily Response Essays: Each day students will turn in a two-page response to the reading/s for a day. PLEASE BRING TWO COPIES OF THESE RESPONSES WITH YOU TO CLASS. These writing assignments will be graded on a 1 to 5 scale for their engagement with the topic and on their demonstration of writing skills (spelling, grammar, etc.) PLEASE SEE PAGE THREE FOR THOSE SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF WRITING THAT WILL BE PART OF YOUR FOCUS. If writing is an issue for you—as it is for many of us—please do take your journal to the writing center. Do NOT go under two pages. 1) Summarize either one or more important or interesting issue or problem that the text explores or a purpose that it serves in a way that explains what precisely what it is that you find important or interesting about the issue, problem, or purpose. In other words, what did you learn from this text about the topic 2) Identify a specific passage of the text (from a phrase to a paragraph in length) that especially piqued, delighted, irritated, challenged, or troubled you and explain in an engaged fashion what it is about the paragraph that effected you in this way. Class Structure: Most classes will proceed the following way 1. 11:10 Submit One Copy of Two Page Reading Journal (Hang on to the other.) 2. 11:10-11:40 Group Discussion of Reading(s) 3. 11:40 Lecture and Full Group Discussion. . Midterm and Final: You will take your Midterm exam on Thursday October 22 and your

2

final on Wednesday December 16, 11:10-3:10 (same room). Both exams will consist of questions from the following categories: 1. identification of terms, characters, history, etc (multiple choice and fill in the blank) 2. identification of passages Prior to the exam, we will spend class time discussing the precise nature of these categories. Final Research Essay with Abstracts and Drafts: You will turn in an abstract and draft of your essay before submitting the final version. This 8 to 10 page analytic and scholarly essay with attached bibliography represents the principal writing exercise of the semester. The essay will argue for the relevance of a distinctive, personal analysis of a text/set of texts and/or issues and will likely emerge out of one of the two page reading journals. You will both be free to and responsible for accessing and harnessing the larger debates surrounding the literary school, author, historical phenomenon, and/or interpretive issue with which you wish to engage in your work. To that end you will use library resources to familiarize yourself with the reading histories of the text(s) you have chosen and you will incorporate those materials in the argument of your essay. Here you must use at least two outside research sources. (If you do not have the MLA Handbook, fifth edition, now is the time to consider making the investment. Proper MLA documentation—both internal and external—will be an important part of your grade.) Production Schedule: 1. We will meet Tuesday November 5th in the Mansfield Library with Sue Sampson for a very valuable seminar on research in English Studies and on the use of the Mansfield Library’s research databases. Students who fail to attend will not, in all likelihood do well in their work or with the final submission. 2. On Monday the 24th of November, and on Tuesday the 25th of November (depending upon when you schedule your conference) your Rough Draft will be due. You will meet with me in consultation over the rough draft in LA 111 in conference. The Rough Draft must be a minimum of four pages long. Please bring two copies to the office: one for me to read, to assess, and to hand back to you later. 3. The Final Draft of the essay is due on Thursday December 10, by 5:00 in my office. Final Paper: ***DUE TUESDAY NOVEMBER 24. This eight to ten page analytic and scholarly essay represents the principal writing exercise of the semester. The essay will summarize and argue for the relevance of a distinctive, personal analysis of a text/set of texts and/or issues surrounding the theoretical issue, school, or concern that you chose to explore. This will likely be a revision of one of two page critiques you have submitted. If you do not have the MLA Handbook, fifth edition, now is the time to consider making the investment, since proper MLA citation and works cited list will be a significant part of the grade. You will need to locate two outside sources, at least, to support your claims and research. Attendance: Attendance is required and will be recorded: three unexcused absences are grounds for failure of the course itself. Late arrivals and early departures will, if they occur frequently, count as absences. If you do arrive late you will be responsible for letting me know after class that you were present for the day. Brief absences due to medical and family emergencies will be excused, provided you come and discuss the situation (ASAP)

3

with me. Lengthy crises that require multiple absences will require you to drop out and enroll in 301 during another semester. Scholastic Dishonesty: Plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty—in as much as they keep the individual student as well as the collective community from learning—will result in an automatic F and may entail a variety of other sanctions up to and including expulsion from the University. FOR A DEFINITION OF PLAGIARISM SEE http://www.lib.umt.edu/services/plagiarism/index.htm. IF YOU ARE UNSURE ABOUT YOUR RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES, PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO CONSULT THE STUDENT CONDUCT CODE ON THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA’S WEB SITE. NOTA BENE: This is a rigorous course; much will be expected of you in the way of reading, preparation. and participation. Do not take this course if you are unprepared for a good deal of reading, underlining, and vigorous questioning. If you are not enthusiastic about doing this kind work, this is not the course for you. Goals for the study and use of models of Literary Interpretation:  familiarity with the vocabulary of contemporary literary interpretation;  working knowledge of schools of literary interpretation;  overview of recent debates;  development of skills of logical argument and interpretation; Aspects of student writing that will be assessed in writing assignment:.  voice that is consistent & appropriate to the audience & purpose;  correct diction & sentence structure;  sound judgments unified by a clear message;  evidence or reasons supporting all judgments;  logical linkage of judgments and evidence;  transitions that connect a series of ideas and evidence;  correct spelling and punctuation.  proper MLA style documentation The Intellectual Goals of 301 ν To acquaint students with the ways in which works in literary theory (from Arnold to Foucault) have succeeded in challenging and reorienting thinking in the area of literary interpretation and in other scholarly fields (e. g. Hayden White, Michel Foucault) ν To cultivate in students a habit of mind that probes “common sense notions” about language, meaning, and interpretation in literary and cultural contexts (cf. Jonathan Culler’s notion of the general goals of contemporary theory). To familiarize students with the current multidisciplinary nature of literary theory, and to, furthermore, help students to theorize that new epistemic dispensation. ν

4

The Historical Goals of 301 ν To provide students with a foundational chronology of the major debates in literary history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Russian formalism to the canon wars of the 1990s, to Cultural Studies. ν To provide students with an understanding of the major issues and working terms of the discourse(s) entailed in that chronology: Who or what shapes the canon? What constitutes an author? To familiarize students with the various issues and schools of literary criticism: psychoanalytic criticism, feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, reader response, New Criticism, and etc.. ν To allow students to familiarize themselves with some of the most widely read articles and texts (in excerpt form) from the canon of literary theory (e.g. Roland Barthes, “Death of an Author,” Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish,” Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” and etc.) ν

The Practical Goals of 301: ν To reinforce the values of rhetoric and composition in which claims, evidence, and research are utilized in the writing process. To train students to perform research in the archives of literary criticism and to incorporate literary criticism in their own work. This goal is achieved through a process of abstract and annotated bibliography presentation, rough draft meeting with the instructor, and final draft of an 10 page research paper. ν

ν The course also incorporates a tutorial in the library concerning the identification of research archives (both textual and electronic), as well as a tutorial in conference with the instructor regarding the incorporation of those sources in a research paper.

Course Calendar January Week One:

Introduction and Beginnings

T

26:

Introduction to the course. What is Literature? Oprah and Franzen Debate.

R

28:

Eagleton: What is Literature? Handout.

February Week Two:

Theories of Readings and Readers

T

“Falling into Theory,”1-13. Vendler, “What We Have Loved, Others Will Love,” FiT, 31-40.

2:

5

R

4:

Graff, “Disliking Books at an Early Age, FiT, 40-48.

Week Three: The History of English Studies M

9:

Richter, “English Literature as an Object of Study,” FiT, 16-20. Eagleton, “The Rise of English,” FiT, 49-59.

T

11:

Visvanathan, “Introduction to Masks of Conquest,” FiT, 60-67.

Week Four:

Death of an Author and The Banking Model of Education

T

16:

Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” FiT, 253-257.

R

18:

Friere, Paulo, FiT, 68-78.

Week Five:

Keats, Gilman, and Melville

T

23:

Keats, “A Text of ‘An Ode on a Grecian Urn’,” CC 485-487. Perkins-Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” 531-538.

R

25:

Melville, “Benito Cereno,” 489-529.

March Week Six:

Historical Criticism I: Author as Context

T

2:

Keesey, “Historical Criticism I: Author as Context,” 9-16, “Objective Interpretation,” E.D. Hirsch, Jr, 19-28, and “Are Poems Historical Acts?”, Watson, 30-33. All in CC.

R

4:

Austin, “Toward Resolving Keats’s Grecian Urn Ode?” 47-57, Kaplan, “Herman Melville and the American National Sin: The Meaning of ‘Benito Cerino’,” 58-65, and Knight, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” 66-73. All in CC.

Week Seven: Mimetic Criticism T

9:

R

11:

Keesey, “Mimetic Criticism, Reality as Context,” 205-213, Donovan, “Beyond the Net: Feminist Criticism as Moral Criticism,” 224-234. All in CC. Brann, “Pictures in Poetry: Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’” Gilbert and Gubar, “’The Yellow Wallpaper’,” 259-264. All in CC.

Week Eight: T

16:

Mandatory Library Research Seminar, MLiB 283 / Student Learning Center.

6

R

18:

MIDTERM.

Week Nine: Intertextual Criticism: Literature as Context T

23:

Keesey, Intertextual Criticism: Literature as Context,” 265-277 and Frye, “The Critical Path,” 279-287. All in CC.

R

25:

Metzger, “Silence and Slow Time’: Pastoral Topoi in Keats’s Ode,” 306-309, Kennard, “Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life,” 328-339. All in CC.

Week Ten: Spring Break T

30:

No Class: Spring Break.

1:

No Class: Spring Break.

April R

Week Eleven: Poststructural Criticism: Language as Context T

6:

KeeseyDerrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” 353, and deMan, “Semiology and Rhetoric,” 364-373. All in CC.

R

8:

Guetti, “Resisting the Aesthetic,” 384-391, Wright, “The New Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism,” Feldstein, “Reader, Text, and Ambiguous Referentiality in “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” All in CC.

Week Twelve: Historical Criticism II: Culture as Context T

13:

R

15:

Eagleton, “Literature and History,” 419-426, Belsey, “Literature, History, Politics,” 427-436, and Greenblatt, “436-441. All in CC. Garson, “Bodily Harm: Keats’s Figures in the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’,” 452461, Thomas, “The Legal Fiction of Herman Melville and Lemuel Shaw,” 462469, and Dock “’But One Expects That’: “The Yellow Wallpaper’ and the Shifting Light of Scholarship,” 470-483. All in CC.

Week Thirteen: Canon Formation: Canon Formation and African-American Literature, Theory, and Culture T

20:

No Class: Rough Draft Due in Conference on Monday and Tuesday.

R

22:

Richter, “What We Read: The Literary Canon and the Curriculum After the Culture Wars,” FiT, 121-136, Gates, “Canon-Formation, Literary History and the Afro-American Tradition,” FiT, 174-182.

7

Week Fourteen: Canon Formation: Africanism, Imperialism and Worldliness. School of Literary Interpretation: Gender T

27:

Morrison, “Black Matters,” FiT, 310-322.

R

29:

Said, “The Politics of Knowledge,” FiT, 188-198.

May Week Fifteen: Closets and Canons. Final Essay Due T

4:

R

6:

Sedgewick, “Epistemology of the Closet,” FiT, 182-189. No Class: FINAL ESSAY DUE.

Week Sixteen: Finals Week T

11:

8:00-10:00: Final Examination.

8