Topics: Literary Criticism and Theory: Ways of Approaching a Literary Text

3 units

What are some of the different ways of approaching a literary text? How do you choose among them? In this course we will begin by reading two important works from different genres (for instance, a novel such as Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' and a mid-length poem, perhaps "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" by William Stevens) together with a selection of critical essays about these works and their historical context. The bulk of the course will then consist of readings among various theoretical approaches to literature, including deconstructionist, new historicist, cultural, hermeneutic, psychoanalytic, and feminist approaches, which we will then apply to the texts at hand. The course is designed as a practical introduction to literary theory.