Literary Theory and Practice

Course Description

Literary texts remain integrally woven within the socio-political substratum; therefore, literary theory and its philosophical sub-text is used as the primary tool to decode the meanings both within texts and without them. Since literary theory contextualizes both meanings as well as the practices of decoding these meanings, it operates as a viable tool in enabling students to independently comprehend literary texts. Keeping this in mind, this course has been designed to introduce the students to key literary theories, their major concepts and basic jargon. This is so that they are initiated into the process of understanding the usage of these elements in their assignments and discourses. It also generates critical thinking that integrates the readers, texts and contexts in all their interactive paradigms.

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This premium course is underconstruction... new topics are being added regularly

1. Defining Literary Criticism, Theory and Literature

• a. What is a text?
• b. Who is a critic and what is literary criticism?
• c. What is literary theory?
• d. How to read and interpret texts
• e. The purpose of literary theory
• f. How to extract multiple, but cogent meanings, from a single text

2.Tracing the Evolution of Literary Theory and Criticism

• a. Plato to Plotinus
• b. Dante Alighieri to Boccaccio
• c. Sidney to Henry James
• d. Bakhtin and modern literary criticism

3.Russian Formalism and New Criticism

• a. Russian Formalism: Development and Key terms
• b. The application of Russian Formalism on a literary text
• c. Differences between Russian Formalism and New Criticism
• d. Major tenets and methods
• e. Critiques of Russian Formalism and New Criticism

4.Reader-Oriented Criticism

• a. Development
• b. Major ideas and methods (The steps involved)
• c. Critiques of Reader-Oriented Criticism

5.Structuralism

• a. Understanding Modernity and Modernism
• b. The Development of Structuralism
• c. Assumptions
  • The structure of language
  • Langue and parole
  • Saussure’s definition of a word
  • Narratology and its types
  • Mythemes
  • Binary opposition
  • Narrative functions as propounded by Propp, Campbell, etc.
• d. Methodologies of Structuralism
• e. Applications on different literary texts
• f. Critiques of Structuralism

6.Deconstruction

• a. Movement from Structuralism to Post-Structuralism
• b. The development of Deconstruction
• c. Major assumptions
  • Transcendental signified
  • Logocentrism
  • Opening up binary oppositions
  • The Derridean argument of phonocentrism as propounded in Of Grammatology
  • Metaphysics of Presence
  • Arché Writing
  • Supplemtation and Différance
• d. Application of deconstructive theory on literary texts
• e. Developments in Deconstructive theory: Deleuze and Guattari and the concept of the rhizome
• f. Critiques of deconstruction

7.Psychoanalysis

• a. The development of psychoanalytic criticism
• b. Sigmund Freud and his basic terminology
  • Id, ego, superego
  • Models of the human psyche
  • Neurosis
  • Cathexes
  • Freudian slips
  • Oedipus and Electra complexes
  • Infantile stage
  • Phallic stage
  • Castration complex
  • Pleasure principle
• c. Northrop Frye and archetypal criticism
• d. Lacan and the major concepts
  • The imaginary order
  • The mirror stage
  • The Ideal-I
  • Objet petit á
  • The symbolic order
  • The real order
• e. Methodologies

8.Feminism

• a. Historical development
• b. The First, Second, and Third Waves of Feminism
  • Virginia Woolf
  • Simone de Beauvoir
  • Elaine Showalter
  • Kate Millett
  • Betty Friedan
  • Judith Butler
• c. French Feminism
  • Luce Irigaray
  • Julia Kristeva
  • Helene Cixous
• d. Third World Feminism
  • Gayatri Spivak
  • Sara Suleri
  • Chandra Talpade Mohanty
• e. Its relation with the contemporary socio-political scenario

9.Marxism

• a. Development of Marxism
• b. Major Marxist theorists
  • Karl Marx
  • Friedrich Engels
  • George Lukács
  • Antonio Gramsci
  • Louis Althusser
  • Frederic Jameson
  • Terry Eagleton
• c. Key terms
  • Dialectical materialism
  • Base
  • Superstructure
  • Interpellation
  • False consciousness
  • Proletariat
  • Relations with the market
  • Hegemony
  • Ideological State Apparatus
  • Political unconscious
• d. Assumptions
• e. Methods

10.Anarchism

• a. Development of Anarchism
• b. Major Anarchist theorists
  • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
  • Mikhail Bakunin
  • Emma Goldman
  • Peter Kropotkin
  • David Graeber
• c. Key concepts in Anarchism
  • Anti-authoritarianism
  • Self-governance
  • Mutual aid
  • Decentralization
  • Direct action
  • Libertarian socialism
• d. Anarchist critiques of the state and capitalism
• e. Methods of Anarchist theory and practice
  • Direct action
  • Non-hierarchical organization
  • Worker self-management
  • Revolutionary praxis
• f. Critiques of Anarchism

11.Cultural Poetics or New Historicism

• a. Differences between Old Historicism and New Historicism
• b. The development of New Historicism
• c. Cultural Materialism
• d. Major assumptions
• e. Major theorists
  • Michel Foucault
  • Clifford Geertz
• f. Major terminology
  • Discourse
  • Poetics of culture
  • Interdiscursivity
  • Irruption

12.Postcolonialism

• a. Colonialism and Postcolonialism: Historical Development
• b. Major assumptions
• c. Major theorists
  • Homi Bhabha
  • Gayatri Spivak
  • Frantz Fanon
  • Edward Said
  • Aijaz Ahmed
  • Sarah Ahmed
  • Talal Asad
  • Any other theorists of the teacher’s choice
• d. Key concepts and binaries
  • Hegemony
  • Center/Periphery
  • Us/Other
  • Marginalization
  • Double voicedness
  • Third Space
  • Liminality
  • Hybridity
  • Assimilation
  • Ecological mimeticism
  • Minoritization of the English language through code-switching and code-mixing
• e. Postcolonial theory and the diasporic experience
• f. Critiques of postcolonialism

13.Social Ecology

• a. Introduction to Social Ecology
• b. Murray Bookchin and his contribution to Social Ecology
• c. Key concepts of Social Ecology
  • Ecological crisis and its connection with social issues
  • Human domination and nature exploitation
  • Hierarchy and its role in ecological degradation
  • Environmental sustainability through social equality
• d. Major assumptions of Social Ecology
• e. Social Ecology's approach to environmentalism and society
• f. Critiques and challenges of Social Ecology

Psychoanalytical Criticism & Theory

Quiz & Flashcards

Course Objectives

This course is pivoted on the following major objectives:

1. To introduce the students to the history and evolution of literary theory
2. To enable them to develop a deeper understanding of how different theories may be blended to create different theoretical frameworks for analyzing different texts
3. To be able to offer critiques, not only of the literary texts but also of the theories under discussion
4. To provide preliminary training to students so that they may be able to engage in independent theorizations, should they pursue higher degrees in the field

Suggested Readings

• Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, Eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. NY: Routledge, 1995.
• Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies. NY: Routledge, 1998.
• Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 1949. Trans. Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. NY: Random House, 2009.
• Bloom, Harold et al. Deconstruction and Criticism. (1979) NY: The Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.
• Bhabha, Homi K.. The Location of Culture. London & New York: Routledge, 1994. Pdf.
• Brannigan, John. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. NY: 1998.
• Brooks, Cleanth. Understanding Fiction. New Jersey: Pearson, 1998.
• Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Thought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. NY: Harcourt, 1956.
• Castle, Gregory. The Blackwell Guide to Literary Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
• Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”. Writing and Différance. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
• Eagleton, Mary, Ed. A Concise Companion to Feminist Theory (Concise Companions to Literature and Culture). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
• Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
• Eagleton, Terry. Making Meanings with Texts: Selected Essays. NY: Reed-Elsevier, 2005.
• Hamilton, Paul. Historicism. NY: Routledge, 1996.
• Rosenblatt, Louise M.. Literature as Exploration. NY: Noble, 1996.
• Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman, Eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. NY: Columbia University Press, 1994.

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