"Literature" and the Ideology of the Aesthetic

Theoretical and historical analysis of the idea of "literature" as writing that has the status of art, in relation to the emergence and elaboration of discourses of the "aesthetic." Readings in 18th- and 19th-century German and British sources (Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Nietzsche; Coleridge, Shelley, Arnold, Wilde) and in 20th-century literary and aesthetic theory (Benjamin, Adorno, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Williams, Eagleton). Enrollment limited to 20. Priority given to English concentrators. All other students must obtain instructor's permission.