Pro seminar in Poetics & Theory: The Origins of Lit Theory

Catalog description

Introduces students to the most important developments in the Western history of theorizing literature, its production, and its interpretation. Since many courses at NYU survey 20th-century literary theory, this course offers some historical background: it brings into conjunction pre- and post-18th-century traditions that rarely come into contact in the curriculum and are unlikely to be taught in one course. Issues include the definition of literary genres, differences in registers of style, the relation of pleasure to morality, of the practical to the aesthetic, and the transformation of these issues in post-Kantian theories of interpretation.