ENGLISH 285: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY

AMBREEN HAI

MW 1:10-2:30 P.M.

In a way we might say that this is a course on different philosophies of literature and reading. Unlike most English courses where we usually read poetry, drama or fiction, in this course we will be reading mostly essays that are about literature and the process of reading and interpreting. Often they argue with each other, offer different theories, and throw our implicitly held ideas into crisis, challenging us to think through and justify those ideas. They range around some pretty major and basic issues, such as: what do we DO when we read? What assumptions do we not even know that we have--about texts, about authors, about language, about "meaning"? Is the author's "intention" the only determinant of meaning or can readers draw conclusions about an author's unconscious or cultural beliefs or about a text's implications regardless of "intention"? Is there one "right" meaning for a text or are there several possible interpretations and ways to "read"--if so, which are more "valid" than others and how do we determine validity? How does a text change if we ask different kinds of questions of it--e.g. what ideologies of gender, sexuality, race, work, class, nationhood, etc. does it reveal? How do we determine what is "good" or "bad" literature--how does some literature become "canonized"? What are the links between literature and society--what role does literature have in shaping values, beliefs, "culture" or community? And, to borrow a phrase from Matthew Arnold, what is the function of criticism in our present?

This course is an introduction to some of the questions and debates that are shaping literary studies today. We will become familiar with such 20th century movements as the New Criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, psychoanalysis, New Historicism, feminism, postcolonialism, race, queer and cultural studies. We will focus on some central questions that many of these different approaches ask, and to which they offer different, sometimes related answers. While poets and philosophers from Plato onwards have written some very important things about literature, we will focus on twentieth-century theories, since (after Saussure, Freud and Marx) they begin with radically different realizations about language, consciousness, and society. Reading these theories will force us to question, reformulate, and perhaps painfully give up some of our deeply held beliefs. We will also read some critical essays about a literary text (this year “The Ancient Mariner”) to see how a single text can generate different critical interpretations that depend on the theoretical approaches we take. We will end (I hope) with a sense of what choices we have as readers, and what is at stake in some of the battles being fought these days about what literature is and how it may be studied.

Some of our readings are quite difficult, and might not be a good idea for first-year students--but sophomores on are very welcome--and I hope this course will be a help in other literature classes too. For those considering graduate work in English (or any) literature in the future, this course would provide very useful preparation, but it is meant for all who are interested in becoming more self-conscious about what we do as students of literature.  

Readings : The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism , Peter Barry, Beginning Theory , Paul Fry (ed.) The Ancient Mariner , and a photocopy packet.

Classes will vary between lectures, discussions, and group presentations.

Course requirements : two-take home exams, one paper (6-8 pages), informal reading responses, and active class participation.