Literatures of Theory

THE SEMINAR

The focus of this seminar is on the relationship of criticism to theory and their connection to literature. The work of the seminar consists in tracing the genesis of key critical formations and theoretical dicourses with exemplary works of literature that illustrate, underwrite, or contest the theoretical forms that would be imputed, applied, or affiliated to them. Theories, therefore, will be read in concert and/or in counterpoint to the literary texts in which those theoretical constructs purportedly have their genesis, sanction, or instantiation. The chronological scope of the seminar must extend from 1800 forward; the seminar will touch on the most significant theoretical paradigms during this period. The work of this seminar forms part of the project of the International Comparative Literature Association's Committee on Theory that endeavors to examine and re-connect critical and theoretical discourses to concrete texts of the literary tradition. One, possibly two, members of the seminar will be selected to attend the annual colloquium of the ICLA Committee on Theory in May, 1999 in Pecs, Hungary, to report on the work of the seminar.

REQUIREMENTS

Weekly oral report on readings (10-12 minutes. Abstract of report submitted in writing)
One midterm paper (15 pages), due at seminar session the week following Spring Break
One term paper (20 pages), due 3 May 1999 by 12:00 noon

PROGRAM OF READINGS (ALL READINGS FROM CRITICAL THEORY SINCE PLATO, HAZARD ADAMS, ED.  HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH, REV. EDITION, 1992, EXCEPT ASTERISKED ITEMS. THESE ITEMS ON FILE IN CMLIT DEPARTMENT FOR COPYING. LITERARY TEXTS ARE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STUDENT-ANY EDITION, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE. LITERARY READINGS MAY BE SUPPLEMENTED, AS APPROPRIATE, PER STUDENTS' LINGUISTIC PROFICIENCIES AND AREAS OF CONCENTRATION)

1.Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"

2.Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist: A Dialogue. Part I"*

3.T.S. Eliot, "The Function of Criticism"*; "The Frontiers of Criticism"*
LITERARY TEXTS: Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" & "In Harmony with Nature"; Oscar Wilde, "Hélas"; T.S. Eliot, from The Four Quartets: II. Little Gidding, poems IV & V

1.George Steiner, "The Uncommon Reader"*

2.Paul de Man, "Resistance to Theory"*

3.Djelal Kadir,"Surviving Theory"*

1.Georg Lukács, "Ideal of the Harmoniuos Man in Bourgeois Aesthetics"

2.Paul Valéry, "Poetry and Abstract Thought"

3.Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel: Toward  Methodology for the Study of the Novel"

4.Geoffrey H. Hartman, "Literary Commentary as Literature"*

LITERARY TEXTS: Friedrich von Schiller, "The Ideal of Life"; Honoré de Balzac, Peau de chagrin (The Fatal Skin); Paul Valéry, "Le Cimitiere marin," "La Pythie."

1.Friedrich Schlegel, "Critical Fragments," "Atheneum Fragments," "On Incomprehensibility"

2.Friedrich von Schiller, from  Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letters 6, 12, 15

3.Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music

LITERARY TEXTS: "Friedrich" Plato, from Ion,  from the Republic,  from Cratylus  [In  Adams]

1.William Blake, from "Annotations to Reynolds' Discourses."

2.Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter XII

3.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from Conversations with Ackerman, "Maxim No.279" 

LITERARY TEXTS: William Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan," "To Nature."

1.Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet"

2.Charles Baudelaire, from The Salon of 1859,  Parts III and IV

3.José Ortega y Gasset, "In Search of Goethe from Within"*

LITERARY TEXTS: Charles Baudelaire, Fleurs du Mal, "Correspondences"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," "Merlin I." Stéphane Mallarmé, "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire."

1.Charles-Augustin Saint-Beuve, "What Is a Classic?"

2.Edgar Allan Poe, "The Poetic Principle"; "The Philosophy of Composition"*

3.Walter Pater, from Preface and Conclusion to Studies in the History of the Renaissance 

LITERARY TEXTS: Edgar Allan Poe, "The Black Cat"; Stéphane Mallarmé, "Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe."

WEEK IX: SUGGESTIVE ALCHEMIES

1.Stéphane Mallarmé, "The Evolution of Literature," "The Book: A Spiritual Mystery,"

2.Benedetto Croce, from Aesthetic, Chapters 1 & 2

3.T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

4.Walter Benjamin, "On Language as Such and On the Language of Man"

LITERARY TEXTS: Stéphan Mallarmé, Un Coup de dés; Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "Nueva Refutación del tiempo," "Kafka y sus precursores.

1.Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique"

2.Leon Trotsky, "The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism"

3.Boris Eichenbaum, "The Theory of the 'Formal Method'"

4.Roman Jakobson, "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles"

LITERARY TEXTS: Innokenty Annensky, "Violin Bow and Strings," "Petersburg"; Vladimir Mayakovsky, "For a Violin, Somewhat Nervously," "Can't Stand It," "At the Top of My Voice"; Octavio Paz, "Decir:Hacer, a Roman Jakobson," Arbol Adentro. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1987

1.R. P. Blackmur, "A Critic's Job of Work"

2.William K. Wimsatt & Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," "The Affective Fallacy"

3.Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase," "Irony as a Principle of Structure" 

LITERARY TEXTS: William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimation of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"; John Keats, "Ode on A Grecian Urn"; Wallace Stevens, "Of Modern Poetry"; Marianne Moore, "Poetry"; William
Carlos Williams,"The Red Wheelbarrow".

1.Martin Heidegger, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry,"* from "Language in the Poem"

2.Gaston Bachelard, "The Poetics of Space"

3.George Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading"

LITERARY TEXTS: Hölderlin, "Brot und Wein," "Friedensfeir"
READING DEMONSTRATION: Dj. Kadir, "Heidegger and the Essence of Philosophy."*

1.Sigmund Freud, "Creative Writers and Daydreaming"

2.Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage..."

3.Julia Kristeva, "From One Identity to Another"

4.Harold Bloom, "The Dialectics of Poetic Tradition"

LITERARY TEXTS: Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One's Owns, Chapt. 4; Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, autor del Quixote"

1.Theodor Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society"

2.Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power"

3.Raymond Williams, from The Country and the City, Chapter IV "Golden Ages"

4.Edward Said, "The World, the Text, and the Critic"

LITERARY TEXTS:  Elective

1.Roland Barthes, "The Structuralist Activity," "The Death of the Author"

2.Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences"

3.Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric"

4.Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar, from "Infection in the Sentence

5.Chinua Achebe, "Colonialist Criticism"

LITERARY TEXTS: Honoré de Balzac, Sarrasine;  David Dabydeen,
Disappearence  (London: Seckert & Warburg, 1993)

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Page last modified on November 05, 2003.