LECTURES IN THE HISTORY OF LITERARY THOUGHT (Spring 2019)
David VICHNAR, PhD
(Consultations: Mon & Wed 3-3.45, Room 219b)
Tuesday 3.50-5.20 pm, Room 104
Week 1 Introduction: What is “literature”? What is “theory”?
19 Feb Syllabus; Course procedures; Assessment
Week 2 Antiquity: Plato, Aristotle
26 Feb Reading: Plato, Republic– “Book X,” Ion, From Phaedrus
Aristotle, From Poetics
Week 3 The Middle Ages: Dante Alighieri, Thomas Aquinas
5 Mar Renaissance: Sir Philip Sidney
Reading: Philip Sidney, From Apologie of Poetrie
Week 4 Classicism: John Dryden, Alexander Pope
12 Mar TheEnlightenment: John Locke, David Hume, Edmund Burke
Reading: John Dryden, From An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
Week 5 Romanticism: W. Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, R.W. Emerson, E.A. Poe
19 Mar Reading: William Wordsworth, Preface toLyrical Ballads
Samuel T. Coleridge, From Biographia Literaria
Week 6 Formalism: Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson
26 Mar Reading: Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique”
Roman Jakobson, From Linguistics and Poetics
Week 7 New Criticism: T.S. Eliot, John Crowe Ransom, I.A. Richards
2 Apr Reading: T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
I.A. Richards, from Principles of Literary Criticism
Week 8 Structuralism: Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes
9 Apr Reading: Ferdinand de Saussure, “Nature of the Linguistic Sign”
R. Barthes, “The Structuralist Activity,” “The Death of the Author”
Week 9 Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida
16 Apr Reading: Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play”
Jacques Derrida, “Différance”
Week 10 Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan
23 Apr Reading: Sigmund Freud, “The Dream-Work,” “The Uncanny”
Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage”
Week 11 Feminist Criticism: V. Woolf, Gilbert & Gubar, S. de Beauvoir, J. Kristeva
30 Apr Reading: Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, fromInfection in the Sentence
& Dialogue with Toril Moi
Week 12 Postcolonial Criticism: F. Fanon, E. Said, G. Spivak, H. Bhabha
7 May Reading: G. Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”
H. Bhabha, from The Location of Culture
Week 13 Miscellanea: Deleuze & Guattari, Franco Moretti
14 May Reading: Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, “What is a Minor Literature?”
Franco Moretti, from Atlas of the European Novel
PRIMARY READINGS
As specified in the syllabus available from Moodle in pdf format.
SECONDARY READING
David H. Richter (ed.), The Critical Tradition(Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007)
Dorothy J. Hale (ed.), The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory(2005).
M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, Norton
René Wellek & Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, Cape
The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton
Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, Toronto
Jeremy Hawthorn, A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, Arnold
Gert Ronberg, A Way With Words, Arnold
N.B.
- The lecture is compulsory for SSE students in the third year and highly recommended for TSS students in the same year, since it helps them to prepare for THE TEST CONCLUDING THE COURSE.
- A most useful and advisable complement to the lecture series is the course book Martin Procházka, Literary Theory – A Historical Introduction (3rdedition, Charles University, 1998)– particularly as concerns rhetoric (figures & tropes) and metrics (rhythm & rhyme).
- Students in the new BA programme (2nd year) write the test after the lecture as a graded written exam (details of grading under Theory of Literature).
ASSESSMENT
- ØTo obtain credit all students are expected to follow the weekly lecture topics by reading the assigned texts and be mentallypresent at the lectures.
- ØAfter the conclusion of the lecture series, they will sit an examination test covering all of the key authors & concepts discussed.
- ØGRADING: the test will have a maximum score of 50 POINTS and will be graded as follows:50-44: excellent;43-37: very good; 36-30: good; 30-below: fail
- Teacher: David Vichnar