21L.451 | Fall 2014 | Undergraduate

Introduction to Literary Theory

Readings

The readings need engagement and you need to be working with them, pen or pencil in hand, making notes, raising questions etc. In addition, you will be asked to read a part or all of the following required texts:

Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014. ISBN: 9781500376765.

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Tribeca Books, 2013. ISBN: 9781936594191. [Preview with Google Books]

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. ISBN: 9781506138855. [Preview with Google Books]

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698.

Topics

New Criticism and American Reader Response Criticism

Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Brooks, Cleanth. “Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History Without Footnotes.” In The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1975.

Wimsatt, W. K, and Monroe C. Beardsley. “The Intentional Fallacy.” In The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. University of Kentucky Press, 1967.

———. “The Affective Fallacy.” In The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. University of Kentucky Press, 1967.

Potter, Lois. “Lawrence of Virtuous Father” and “Avenge O Lord”. In A Preface to Milton. Routledge, 2014. ISBN: 9781138835870. [Preview with Google Books]

Fish, Stanley. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics.” In Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 22–37. ISBN: 9780674467255. [Preview with Google Books]

———. “Interpreting the Variorum.” Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 148–73. ISBN: 9780674467255. [Preview with Google Books]

Structuralism

Saussure, Ferdinand De. Course in General Linguistics. Columbia University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780231157278. [Preview with Google Books]

Brémond, Claude. “Morphology of the French Folktale.” Semiotica 2, no. 3 (1970): 247–76.

The Brothers Grimm. “Rapunzel.”

Greimas, A. J., and F. Rastier. “The Interaction of Semiotic Constraints.” Yale French Studies, no. 41 (1968): 86–105.   
Required Reading: pp 86–95. Remainder of article is optional.

Notes 4 (PDF)   
Overview of key points of Saussure

Levi-Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth.” In Structural Anthropology Vol. 2. University of Chicago Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780226474915.

Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014. ISBN: 9781500376765.

Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” In The Foucault Reader. Vintage Books, 2010.

Deconstruction

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” In Writing and Difference. Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780415255370.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Elementary Structures of Kinship. Beacon Press, 1971, pp. 3–12, 23–25, and 29–33. ISBN: 9780807046692.

———. “The Writing Lesson.” In Tristes Tropiques. Modern Library, 1997. ISBN: 9780679602460.

Notes 5 (PDF)   
Notes on extract from “Elementary Structures”

Notes 6 (PDF)   
Notes on Structure, Sign and Play

Derrida, Jaques. “Signature, Event, Context.” In Limited Inc. Northwestern University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780810107878. [Preview with Google Books]

Austin, John Langshaw. Lecture 1 in How To Do Things With Words. Harvard University Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780674411524. [Preview with Google Books]

Dinesen, Isak. “The Blank Page.” In Last Tales. Penguin Books Limited, 2001. ISBN: 9780141184951.

Optional Readings

Johnson, Barbara. “Nothing Fails Like Success.” In A World of Difference. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780801837456. [Preview with Google Books]

Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism. Cornell University Press, 2008, pp. 110–25 and 131–34. ISBN: 9780801474057.

Psychoanalysis: Freud

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. ISBN: 9781506138855. [Preview with Google Books]

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories. Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. vii–xv and 3–19. ISBN: 9780199538843.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Ecrits, A Selection (1949): 1–7.

Psychoanalysis and Lacan

Zizek, Slavoj. Chapter 1 in Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 9780415772594. [Preview with Google Books]

Chaplin, Charlie. “City Lights.”

Poe Edgar Allen. “The Purloined Letter.” 1845.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Seminar on The Purloined Letter.” Yale French Studies 48 (1972): 39–72.

Optional Reading

Johnson, Barbara. “The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida.” Yale French Studies, no. 55/56 (1977): 457-505.

Notes 9 (PDF)   
Notes on Zizek’s graphs

Zizek, Slavoj. Chapter 3 in The Sublime Object of Ideology. 2nd ed. Verso, 2009. ISBN: 9781844673001. [Preview with Google Books]

Vertigo. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Color, 129 min. 1958.

Michel Foucault

Foucault, Michel. Parts 3 and 4 in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 4th ed. Vintage Books, 2007, pp. 135–95. ISBN: 9780679752554.

Davidson, Arnold I. “Foucault Revolutionizes History.” In Foucault and His Interlocutors. University of Chicago Press Journals, 1998. ISBN: 9780226137148.

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Tribeca Books, 2013. ISBN: 9781936594191. [Preview with Google Books]

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698.

Latour and Kittler

Latour, Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 113–44. ISBN: 9780674653368. 

Kittler, Friedrich A. “The Mother’s Mouth.” Discourse Networks, 1800 / 1900. Stanford University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780804720991.

Course Info

Instructor
Departments
As Taught In
Fall 2014
Learning Resource Types
Written Assignments