Learning Outcomes:
On completion of this module students should be able to - demonstrate an understanding of a variety of theoretical approaches and their evolution - demonstrate an understanding of the methodologies these theories entail - discuss theoretical texts with reference to their historical and cultural contexts - discuss a theoretical text with reference to a literary work - produce an extended essay informed by theory.
Indicative Module Content:
Topics may vary but in last cycle included:
Russian Formalism
Structuralism
Marxism
Psychoanalysis
Feminism
Reader-Response Theory
Poststructuralism
Performance Theory
Postcolonialism
Ecocriticism
Indicative Reading:
Some General Works on Literary Theory:
Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).
Culler, Jonathan: Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction, new edn (1983; Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
Iser, Wolfgang, How to do Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
Jefferson. Ann and Tobey, David (eds), Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, 2nd edn (1982; London: Batsford, 1986).
Sources for Specific Readings:
Austin, J. L., ‘Performative Utterances’, in Philosophical Papers, ed. J, Urmson and G. J. Warnock, 3rd edn (1961; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 229–52.
Bakhtin, Mikhail, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 259–422.
Barthes, Roland, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp.142–48.
_____________, ‘From Work to Text’, in Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp.155–64.
Bate, Jonathan, The Song of the Earth (London: Picador, 2000).
Belsey, Catherine and Moore, Jane (eds), The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and The Politics of Literary Criticism, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
Butler, Judith, ‘Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions’, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 128–41.
Cixous, Hélène, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, in Elaine Marks and Isabelle Courtivron (eds), New French Feminisms (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1981), pp. 245–64.
Coupe, Laurence (ed.), The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2000).
Derrida, Jacques, ‘Signature, Event , Context’, in Glyph, 1 (1977), 172–97.
_____________, ‘Limited Inc a b c …’, in Glyph, 2 (1977), 162–254.
_____________, Limited Inc., ed. Gerald Graff, trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
Felman, Shoshana, ‘Turning the Screw of Interpretation’, in Yale French Studies, 55–56 (1977), 94–207.
Fish, Stanley, ‘Is There a Text in this Class?’, in Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 303–21.
Freud, Sigmund, ‘On Dreams’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), vol. 5, pp. 629–81.
Iser, Wolfgang, ‘Interaction between Text and Reader’, in Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (eds), The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 106–19.
Jakobson, Roman ‘Linguistics and Poetics’, in Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, MA,: Belknap Press, 1987), pp. 62–94.
Lemon, Lee T. and Reis, Marion J. (eds), Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965).
Lodge, David, ‘Analysis and Interpretation of the Realist Text: Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”’, in Working with Structuralism: Essays and Reviews on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 17–36.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).
Miller, J. Hillis, ‘Interpretation in Dickens’ Bleak House’, in Victorian Subjects (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 179–99.
Muraro, Luisa ‘The Passion of Feminine Difference beyond Equality’, in Graziella Parati and Rebecca West (eds), Italian Feminist Theory and Practice (London: Associated University Press, 2002), pp. 77–87.
Prendergast, Christopher (ed.), Debating World Literature (London: Verso, 2004).
Said, Edward W., Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994 [1993]).
Searle, John, ‘Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida’, in Glyph, 1 (1977), 198–208.
Shklovsky, Viktor, ‘The Resurrection of the Word’, in Stephen Bann and John Bowlt (eds), Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973), 41–47.
_______________,‘Art as Technique’, in Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (eds), Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), pp. 3–24.
______________ ,‘Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary’, in Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (eds), Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), pp. 25–57.
Suleiman, Susan R., ‘Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism’, in Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (eds), The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 3–45.
Williams, Raymond, ‘People of the City’, in The Country and the City (1973; London: Hogarth Press, 1983), pp. 153–64.
Young, Robert, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).