Scribd
Upload
33 views5 pages

Theory Lit Syllabus 1j1vdm2

This document provides the syllabus for an introductory graduate seminar on literary theory taught by Professor Pericles Lewis at Yale University in 2003. The course will cover major theorists and concepts in the fields of interpretation, semiotics, history, and representation. Required readings include works by Freud, Barthes, Foucault, Butler, and James. Students are expected to write three short papers and either a final paper or take a final exam. The course will include weekly lectures and section meetings led by the professor or guest lecturers.

Uploaded by

Palak
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
33 views5 pages

Theory Lit Syllabus 1j1vdm2

This document provides the syllabus for an introductory graduate seminar on literary theory taught by Professor Pericles Lewis at Yale University in 2003. The course will cover major theorists and concepts in the fields of interpretation, semiotics, history, and representation. Required readings include works by Freud, Barthes, Foucault, Butler, and James. Students are expected to write three short papers and either a final paper or take a final exam. The course will include weekly lectures and section meetings led by the professor or guest lecturers.

Uploaded by

Palak
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Pericles Lewis

January 13, 2003

Literature 300/English 300/Comparative Literature 511:


Introduction to the Theory of Literature

Texts
David Richter, ed. The Critical Tradition
Sigmund Freud, On Dreams
Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Henry James, “Daisy Miller”
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (recommended)

Texts are available at the Yale Bookstore (Barnes and Noble). A packet of additional readings is
available at Tyco. On the schedule below, readings from Richter’s textbook are designated by an
“R”; those from the Tyco packet are designated by a “T.”

Requirements
Mandatory attendance at lectures and sections, except in cases of emergency or religious
observance. Undergraduates: Three short papers (5-7 pages each). Final exam. Participation in
section will be factored into the final grade. Dean’s excuse required for late papers.
Graduate students: attendance at a special section led by the professor. Term paper of about 20
pages, incorporating materials from the course and outside research OR as for undergraduates.

Office Hours
I will be happy to meet students during my office hours in room 102b, 451 College St.,
Wednesdays 2-4 or at other times. Please make an appointment in advance by calling Mary Jane
Stevens, the undergraduate registrar for the Literature major. Tel.: 432-4750.

Sections
Undergraduate sections meet weekly, including both Friday, April 25 and Monday, April 28.
Comp. Lit. 511 (graduate) section will meet seven times during the semester for two hours each
(11:30-1:20): Fridays: January 24, February 7, February 21, February 28, March 7, and April 18;
and Monday, April 28.

Lectures, Readings, and Due Dates

I. Introductory
Jan. M13 What is literature? The quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
Hand-outs: Nietzsche text, excerpts from Wellek and Warren

W15 Truth and Lies


Required:
Friedrich Nietzsche, hand-out from “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”
Lewis Lit 300 Syllabus, p. 2

F17 The New Criticism


Required:
Cleanth Brooks, “The Heresy of Paraphrase” (T)
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy” (R 748-57)
Recommended:
Cleanth Brooks, “Irony as a Principle of Structure” (R 757-65)
Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” (R 716-726)

II. Interpretation
W22 The Hermeneutics of Suspicion
Required:
Karl Marx, excerpt from The German Ideology (R 385-391)
Hand-out: excerpts from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment
Recommended:
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” (R 889-900)

M27 Psychoanalysis
Guest lecture by Martina Kolb
Required:
Sigmund Freud, On Dreams

W29 The Hermeneutic Circle


Required:
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the
Status of Hermeneutical Principle” (R 668-88)

Feb M3 Validity in Interpretation


Required:
E. D. Hirsch, “Objective Interpretation” (T)

W5 Interpretive Communities
Stanley Fish, “Introduction, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love
Interpretation” from Is There a Text in this Class? (T)
Recommended:
Wolfgang Iser, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach” (R 955-68)

Feb. F7 First paper due: on interpretation.

III. Signs
Feb M10 The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign
Required:
Ferdinand de Saussure, “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” (R 832-5)
Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics” (T)
Recommended:
Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth” (R 835-44)
Lewis Lit 300 Syllabus, p. 3

W12 Semiotic analysis


Required:
Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text” (R 900-905)
Roland Barthes, Mythologies

M17 Deconstruction (I)


Required:
Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities”
(R 877-89)

W19 Deconstruction (II)


Required:
Jacques Derrida, “Differance” (T)

M24 Deconstruction and Rhetorical Criticism


Required:
Paul de Man, “The Resistance to Theory” (T)
Recommended:
Barbara Johnson, Introduction and “The Fate of Deconstruction”
from A World of Difference (T)

III. History
W26 Discourse Analysis
Required:
Michel Foucault, “The Discourse on Language” (T)
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (parts one and two)

Mar. M2 Foucault and Cultural Studies


Required:
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (parts three through five)

W4 Historical Interpretation
Required:
Hayden White, “The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and
De-Sublimation” (R 1297-1316)
Recommended:
Nancy Armstrong, “Some Call it Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity” (R 1316-30)

Mar. F6 Second paper due: on signs.

Spring break: read Henry James, “Daisy Miller”


Lewis Lit 300 Syllabus, p. 4

M24 Marxism and Modernism


Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller” (T)
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (R 1105-22)
Recommended:
Theodor Adorno, “Lyric Poetry and Society” (T)
Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (T)

W26 New Historicism


Guest lecture by Christopher van den Berg
Required:
Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher, Introduction to Practicing New Historicism (T)
Stephen Greenblatt, “Invisible Bullets” (T)

M31 Late Marxism


Required:
Fredric Jameson, from The Political Unconscious (R 1172-88)

Excursus: Lacan
Apr. W2 Structuralism and Psychoanalysis
Guest lecture by Tobias Boes
Required:
Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” (T)
Jane Gallop, from Reading Lacan (R 1065-74)
Recommended:
Jacques Lacan, “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since
Freud” (R 1044-65)

IV. Representation
M7 Feminism
Required:
Virginia Woolf, excerpts from A Room of One’s Own (R 548-59)
Helene Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (R 1453-66)
Recommended:
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, from “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer
and the Anxiety of Authorship” (R 1360-74)
Simone de Beauvoir, “Myths: Of Women in Five Authors” (R 635-640)

W9 Queer Theory
Guest lecture by Nicholas Salvato
Required:
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, part one, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,”
and conclusion (3-44, 181-190)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Epistemology of the Closet” (T)
Recommended:
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, part three
Lewis Lit 300 Syllabus, p. 5

M14 Post-Colonial Studies


Edward Said, Introduction to Orientalism (R 1278-92)
Homi K. Bhabha, “Dissemi-Nation” (T)
Recommended:
Anne McClintock, “Soft-soaping the Empire” (T)

W16 “Race”
Henry Louis Gates, “Writing, ‘Race,’ and the Difference it Makes” (R 1575-88)
Paul Gilroy, “Cultural Studies and Ethnic Absolutism” (T)

Apr. F18 Final paper due: a paper on history or representation, or a theoretically


informed reading of “Daisy Miller” or another work selected in consultation
with your teaching assistant.

M21 Canon Formation


Required:
John Guillory, from Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
(R 1588-1607)
Recommended:
Pierre Bourdieu, “The Market of Symbolic Goods” (R 1231-53)

W23 Applying Theory


Henry James, “Daisy Miller”

May Th8 2:00 p.m., Final Exam

You might also like