Year: Second
Part of the year: Half Year 2
Module Leader: Philip Leonard
Assessments:
Keywords:
Literary criticism and theory; literary value; taste; literary distinction; the function of literature; literature and philosophy; imitation and representation; literary experimentation; poetics; emotion and expression; art and morality; language; culture and Context
Description:
‘Reading Theory' surveys the history of critical and theoretical responses to literature in British, European, and US culture. It will explore the various ways in which writing has been conceived and understood, beginning with some of the earliest philosophical arguments about the production, function, and interpretation of literary fiction and moving towards the more recent rethinking of textuality in literary and cultural studies. This module will consider the emphasis on aesthetic and evaluative assessments of literary significance in earlier literary critical traditions, and it will look at how Continental thought has reshaped Anglo-American criticism by turning it towards social, cultural, and historical issues.
Prerequisites: N/A
Useful Information:
Classical Greece to the contemporary period; literary criticism and theory.
Primary Texts
Please note: the following texts are all available in the Vincent Leitch et al. (eds), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edn (New York: Norton, 2010)
Aristotle, from Poetics
Hélène Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’
Sigmund Freud,from The Interpretation of Dreams and‘The “Uncanny”’
Immanuel Kant, from Critique of Judgment
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; from The German Ideology: from The Communist Manifesto; from Grundrisse; from Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; from Capital, from ‘Letter from Friedrich Engels to Joseph Bloch’
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’ and from The Birth of Tragedy
Plato, Republic, books II-X
Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics
Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry
William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Teaching methods/structure:
Lectures with interactive elements; seminars; workshops; independent reading and thinking; training in relevant skills including using research resources to locate relevant secondary materials.
Please view the module specification for the learning outcomes for this module.
Contact details for further queries (module leader):
Email: philip.leonard@ntu.ac.uk
Phone: 0115 848 3074