Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism
Course Description
This writing-intensive course is designed to introduce students to modern literary theory and criticism and to cultivate the skills associated with learning to think and write analytically, critically, and theoretically about literature. Perhaps the most basic yet important insight gleaned from “theory” is that there is no such thing as a non-theoretical interpretation of literature. Human beings are always-already theorizing machines, and acknowledged or not, every interpretation has a viewpoint. By disentangling different, contradictory (and sometimes confusing and intimidating) ways of reading, the course aims to help students become comfortable thinking and writing with theory, to position themselves within that complex world, and to cultivate their own voices and perspectives. We will read representative material from New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism and Semiotics, Marxist criticism, Deconstruction / Poststructuralism, Reader Response, Feminist, Queer, African American, and Postcolonial criticism. Literature for analysis will include the work of Tillie Olsen, Langston Hughes, Herman Melville, and Kate Chopin; movies include "Hotel Rwanda" and "Do the Right Thing."
Required Texts
This writing-intensive course is designed to introduce students to modern literary theory and criticism and to cultivate the skills associated with learning to think and write analytically, critically, and theoretically about literature. Perhaps the most basic yet important insight gleaned from “theory” is that there is no such thing as a non-theoretical interpretation of literature. Human beings are always-already theorizing machines, and acknowledged or not, every interpretation has a viewpoint. By disentangling different, contradictory (and sometimes confusing and intimidating) ways of reading, the course aims to help students become comfortable thinking and writing with theory, to position themselves within that complex world, and to cultivate their own voices and perspectives. We will read representative material from New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism and Semiotics, Marxist criticism, Deconstruction / Poststructuralism, Reader Response, Feminist, Queer, African American, and Postcolonial criticism. Literature for analysis will include the work of Tillie Olsen, Langston Hughes, Herman Melville, and Kate Chopin; movies include "Hotel Rwanda" and "Do the Right Thing."
Required Texts
- Roland Barthes, Mythologies 978-0374521506
- Robert Dale Parker, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies 978-0-19-933116-1
