CLT 300: Contemporary Literary Theory

CLT 300: Contemporary Literary Theory
Janie Vanpée
T Th 3-4:50

The purpose of this course is to clarify the theories of language, culture and subjectivity underlying four modern approaches to literary texts and other symbolic forms: structuralism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and Marxism. During the second half of the course, we'll look at post-modernism, feminism, and postcolonial and queer theory as they build on, challenge and transform this earlier work. Whenever possible we will apply and demonstrate in class these critical approaches to a text. We'll end with group presentations on Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea from different critical perspectives. Students are expected to develop a sense of how theory enables readings of specific texts and to defend their own assessments of the value of such interpretations.

Coursework includes close in-class analysis of critical articles, usually dense enough to require more than one reading; four response papers to readings (1 to 2 pages); two short papers (5 pages ) applying a theoretical focus to a text you choose or analyzing one or two critics' readings of a text you know; a team presentation either of a Barthes “mythologie” or an article on post-colonial criticism; a group presentation on Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea; and, at the end of the term, the choice between a critical review of Catherine Belsey’s essay, Critical Practice or an exam. Books for the course are at the Grécourt Bookstore on Green Street. The reader is available at Paradise Copies.

Books for the course:

Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Manchester University Press, 1995)
Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, editors; Literary Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell Publishers, 2000)
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1957)
Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Miller; S/Z an Essay (New York, Hill and Wang, 1974)
Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (University of California Press, 1976)
Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (Methuen, 1980)
Jean Rhys, ed. Judith Raiskin; Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Critical Editions, 1998)
Course reader of articles and literary texts, available at Paradise Copies