Literary Theory

Catalog description

The course examines the major theoretical approaches to the study of literature that developed in relation to important political and intellectual movements of the twentieth century. Despite highly significant differences, we presuppose that all literary theories pose similar questions: What is literature? Why does literature matter, and how do critics assign aesthetic value? This course studies the way various schools of theories have answered these questions. Included in our study are Formalism/New Criticism, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalytic criticism, Feminist theory, Gender and Queer Studies, Post-colonialism, and others. Course readings range broadly from Kant to Derrida, Freud to Spivak.