Instructor: Dr.
Victor Taylor Spring
2008
Office:
Office Hrs: See Course Handout
Email:
vetaylor@ycp.edu
Site:
http://faculty.ycp.edu/~vetaylor
Mark Tansey
Close Reading, 1990
Oil on canvas
121 1/2 x 46 1/8 inches (308.6 x 117.2 cm)
Collection of the Modern Art
Museum of Fort Worth,
Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundations Endowment Fund
Acquired in 1990
Course Description:
Studies in Criticism and Theory
is a focused study of key figures,
themes, and issues in the field of text interpretation. Major
movements may include New Criticism, Reader-Reception Theory, New
Historicism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Feminism,
and Postmodernism. Prerequisites: WRT101 and WRT200.
Course Introduction:
The end of literature is at hand. Literature's
time is almost up. It is about time. It is about, that is, the
different epochs of different media. Literature, in spite of its
approaching end, is nevertheless perennial and universal. It will survive
all historical and technological changes. Literature is a feature of any
human culture at any time and place. These two contradictory premises
must govern all serious reflection "on literature" these days.
--J. Hillis Miller, On
Literature
What is literature?; literature as
historical institution with its conventions, rules, etc., but also this
institution of fiction which gives in principle the power to say
everything, to break free of the rules, to displace them, and thereby to
institute, to invent and even to suspect the traditional difference between
nature and institution, nature and conventional law, nature and history.
Here we should ask juridical and political questions. The institution of
literature in the West, in its relatively modern form, is linked to an
authorization to say everything, and doubtless too to the coming about of the
modern idea of democracy. Not that it depends on a democracy in place, in
the most open (and doubtless itself to come) sense of democracy.
--Jacques Derrida, "This Strange Institution Called
Literature"
The past three decades or more of literary studies
have been dominated by THEORY. In this course we will survey a
wide range of critical approaches to literary texts and investigate the
changing nature of the "institution" of literature that gives rise to
and resists theoretical inquiry. While it will be important to understand the
ways in which these critical approaches have been deployed in the process of
forming interpretations of literary texts, our primary focus will be on the
"analytics" of criticism and theory, examining the claims,
presuppositions, and rules surrounding a theoretical reading praxis. In
addition to surveying the field of criticism and theory and examining the
"analytics of reading," we will be exploring the "institution"
of literature and the future of theoretical inquiry. Since the mid 1980s,
a naive time of applied theory, "studies" in criticism and theory
have centered on the response to and refusal of theory as a discipline within
the discipline. One of our goals will be to understand
"criticism" and "theory" as having disciplinary structures,
methods and objects of study that are not determined by or limited to a
literary text's "demand" for explication.
The first part of the course will review/critique
the ways in which "criticism" and "theory" have been viewed
as "reading-tools" in the "institution" of
literature. Our textbook, Critical Theory, provides concise
summaries of key critical and theoretical approaches to literary texts,
offering sample "interpretations" of literary
texts. In the process of forming "theoretical" readings of
literary texts, we will become familiar with figures, concepts, and concerns in
the area of "literary" theory.
As we become more familar with the names and ideas
associated with literary theory, we will turn in the second part of the course
to some of the "primary" texts of theory, Ecrits,
Of Grammatology and Allergories
of
The final portion of the course will explore
current issues in literary theory, with readings from the works of Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Zizek, and Gayatri Spivak. We will find that these figures bring
together the major modes of literary theory, application, institutional
critique, and intellectual expansion. By the end of the course, we will
be able to identify various theoretical approaches to literary texts,
understand the "analytics" of these approaches, and form responses to
and critiques of issues in contemporary theory.
Texts:
Literary Theory,
Gregory Castle
Selected readings from Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek, Julia Kristeva, Gayatri Spivak, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de Man.
Goals:
- Develop an understanding
of complex theoretical arguments.
- Enhance critical
reading, thinking, and writing skills.
- Enhance an appreciation
of literary and theoretical texts.
- Develop an understanding
of the major issues in contemporary critical theory.
Modes of Instruction:
- Lecture
- Discussion
- Conferences
Grading:
Research Exam
I
25 points
Research Exam
II
25 points
Research Exam
Project
25 points > 100 Points Total
*SECTION 504 OF THE REHABILITATION ACT OF
1973: Any student in need of special consideration should make an
appointment to see me during office hours.
*All assignments must meet the requirements of
effective communication set forth in the Handbook.
*See guidelines addendum.
*This syllabus is augmented by and in compliance with the College catalog.
The Classroom Without
Condition:
“We will read your paper first or the
lecture is cancelled.”
--Communist Party official to the late Charles E. Winquist at the gates of Beijing University, summer 2001
In the last decade many scholars
have turned their attention to the "university." Titles include
The University in Ruins (Bill Readings), The Division of Literature Or The University in Deconstruction (Peggy Kamuf), Report to the Academy (Gregg Lambert), and Legitimation Crisis (Jürgen
Habermas). In 2002, Jacques Derrida published Without
Alibi, a book that includes the text of his talk "The University Without Condition." The point made in the piece
is rather simple considering Derrida's more elaborate analyzes:
"This university (modern university) demands and ought to be granted in
principle, besides what is called academic freedom, an unconditional freedom to
question and to assert, or even, going still further, the right to say publicly
all that is required by research, knowledge, and thought concerning the truth .
. . .The university professes the truth, and that is
its profession. It declares and promises an unlimited commitment to the
truth" (202).
Speak, engage, learn . . . .
Schedule
1/23 Introduction
1/25 Terms and Topics and Castle,
1-14
1/28 Discussion and reports
1/30 Criticism and Theory
Timeline and Castle, 15-57
2/1 Discussion and reports
2/4 Characteristics
of Literary Theory
2/6 “New Criticism,” 122
2/8 Discussion and
reports
2/11 “Reader-Response,”
174
2/13 John Keats, “Ode
. . .,” 256
2/15 W.B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan,”
281
2/18
Discussion
2/20 “Psychoanalysis,” 163 and “Žižek,”
248
2/22 “Jacques
Lacan,” 236
3/3 “Joseph
Conrad,” 267
3/5
Discussion
3/7 “Marxist
Theory,” 108
3/10 “Louis Althusser,”
194 and “Terry Eagleton,” 214
3/12 “Herman Melville,”
264
3/14
Discussion
3/17 “Feminist Theory,” 94 and “Gilbert
and Gubar,” 222
3/26 “Virginia
Woolf,” 275
3/28 Discussion
3/31 “Gender and Sexuality,” 102
4/2 Discussion
4/4 “New
Historicism,” 129 and Stephen Greenblatt, 223
4/7 Discussion and “Foucault,” 219
4/9 “Charlotte Brontë,” 259
4/11 Discussion
4/14 “Postcolonial Studies,” 135 and “Salman
Rushdie,” 287
4/16
Discussion and “Frantz Fanon,” 216
4/18 Discussion and “Edward Said,” 241
4/21
Discussion and “Gayatri Spivak,”
245
4/23 “Structuralism
and Formalism,” 181
4/25 Discussion
4/28 “Deconstruction,” 72
4/30 Discussion and “Paul de Man,” 211
4/25 “Jacques
Derrida,” 213 and “Poststructuralism,”
154
4/27 “Postmodernism,” 144 and “J.F. Lyotard,”
237
4/30 Discussion
5/2 Closing