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1 English 2903-YB: Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism Course Location: RB-3026 Class Times: 10 11:30am, Tuesday and Thursday Prerequisites: ENGL 1111 and ENGL 1112 Table of Contents Table of Contents... 1 Instructor Information...1 Course Description...1 Course Objectives and/or Learner Outcomes...2 Course Resources...2 Required Course Text)... 2 Course Website... 3 Assignments and Evaluation...3 Assignment Policies... 3 Details of Assignments... 3 Course Schedule...4 Marking Standards...9 Collaboration/Plagiarism Rules...9 Course Policies...9 University Policies...9 Instructor Information Instructor: Dr. Daniel Hannah Office: RB-3039 Telephone: dhannah@lakeheadu.ca Office Hours: Thursday 11:30am-12:30pm Course Description This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the current theoretical debates in English and Cultural Studies. While the course will be largely focused on theoretical approaches to literary texts, we will also be considering the place of theory with regards to wider cultural issues and day-to-day life. The primary object of this course, therefore, is to attempt to understand why and how theory matters, and what connection it bears to our studies and to our lives. 1

2 The course is divided into subsections ( Language, Interpretation and Meaning, Subjectivity, Materialisms and Ideologies, Gender and Sexuality, Nation, Race and the Postcolonial ). Each subsection will be structured around a set of introductory readings, a selection of primary theoretical texts, and a workshopped application of the theoretical approach to a specific text. Throughout the course, Mary Shelley s Frankenstein will serve as a key text for discussing examples of the theoretical approaches under discussion (other texts will be used for the purposes of workshops and assessment). Our inquiries in this course will be focused on a number of central questions: What is the place of literature or art in society? How is theory important to the study of literature? What does literature have to do with politics and/or social justice? What shapes our interpretative practices? Course Objectives and/or Learner Outcomes Students who have attended all classes, done all the readings, and completed all the assessments for this course should be able to: read texts of all kinds critically, and assess their rhetorical, ideological and aesthetic strategies. analyse specific literary devices and explain how those devices contribute to the meaning of a literary text. explain the role of literature in articulating and creating categories of identity. explain how a text is produced by, and produces, its historical and cultural context. use library resources to research a topic and use what they discover to illuminate a text. write grammatically correct, clear, and effective prose about literature, literary theory, and criticism, and communicate ideas effectively and coherently in both the persuasive essay and variety of other forms. Course Resources Required Course Text) Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell Books, (R&R) Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (C) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: the original 1818 text. Second edition. Peterborough: Broadview Press,

3 Course Pack. (cp) Course Website Desire2Learn Assignments and Evaluation Assignment Due date Value Length Participation* Throughout term 10% n/a Close Reading Assignment September 30 th 4% 3 pages 4 Critical Responses** Throughout term 16% 3 pages Mid-Term Exam TBA 15% 1 hour Essay Proposal January 29 th 10% 3 pages Essay March 3 rd 20% 6 10 pages Final Take-Home Exam TBA 25% 9 12 pages Assignment Policies All written work is due in class on the day indicated on the schedule and/or the assignment sheet. Faxed and ed papers are not acceptable. No late work will be accepted. Extensions will only be granted for extenuating medical circumstances. Students who are unable to attend tests or exams through no fault of their own documentation will be required may schedule rewrites with the instructor (tests) or the department (exams). All assignments are individual assignments and cannot be completed collaboratively. All assignments must be in MLA format, double spaced, with 1 margins, and in 12 point font. Details of Assignments Participation will be graded on careful preparation for and involvement in class discussion and workshops. Read carefully, make notes, and conduct yourself in a way that enables other students to learn. Attendance will be recorded and some in-class writing may be collected. For each class, you should prepare a question that would invite the class to reflect critically on the reading material for that day (i.e. it should be a question that prompts discussion, not a one-word answer). I may call on you to offer these questions during class. 3

4 I will take in these questions at random dates throughout the year and they will be used to assess your participation in the course. ** A Critical Response is a 2-3 page evaluation of an assigned theoretical reading. I will provide questions for the first few to help get you started. Critical responses are designed to aid you in clarifying issues, formulating questions, articulating your opinion and identifying areas of difficulty. Write them in a way that will help you to do these things. I recommend the following structure: (1) identify the essay s main thesis or theses; (2) if the structure of the essay seems important to the thesis being explored, briefly discuss the significance of the essay s structure; (3) analyze what you deem to be the two or three key passages of the essay are these passages convincing? what stylistic and rhetorical features are at work in the text (e.g. figurative language, manipulation of perspective, abrupt transitions between argumentative points, etc.)? (4) conclude with some of the following: questions that you feel have been left unanswered by the essay; reservations that you have about the essay s theses; reflections on the difficulties posed by the essay; thoughts about how the essay s ideas could be useful for literary criticism. Students should pay attention to feedback on their marked critical responses, and identify areas such as grammar, organization, and style that they need to work on. Exceptions to these policies are allowed only with a doctor s note or other appropriate documentation. Course Schedule (subject to change) FALL INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY THEORY Sept. 9. Introduction, syllabus, readings and assignments Sept. 11 Russian Formalism New Criticism (Culler ) Steps for close reading or explication de texte figurative language, rhetorical figures, alliteration, meter (cp) William Wordsworth, Surprised by Joy (cp) 4

5 Sept. 16 What is Theory? What is Literature and does it matter (C 1-42) LANGUAGE, MEANING AND INTERPRETATION Sept. 18 Language, meaning, and interpretation (C 56-69) The Implied Order: Structuralism (R&R 53-55) Sept. 23 Jonathan Culler, The Linguistic Foundation (R&R 56-59) Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (R&R 59-71). Sept. 25 NO CLASS Sept. 30 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (R&R 81-89) Close reading assignment due. Oct. 2 Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry (C 70-82) Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind (cp) Oct. 7 Narrative (C 83-94) Narrative theory and Frankenstein Oct. 9 Reader-Response Criticism (cp) Stanley Fish, Interpretive Communities (R&R ) Look at John Milton s Lycidas Oct. 14 Workshop: A Rose for Emily (cp) Preparation: make a list of the main events in the story in the order that the narrator gives them; make an alternate list of these events in the chronological order in which they happen. Oct. 16 Barthes, The Death of the Author (cp) Critical Response #1 on Barthes s The Death of an Author due. Oct. 21 Introductory Deconstruction (R&R ) Jacques Derrida, Différance (R&R ) Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (cp) 5

6 Oct. 23 Derrida, Différance (R&R ) Oct. 28 Barbara Johnson, Writing (R&R ) Oct. 30 N. Katherine Hayles, Speech, Writing, Code: Three Worldviews from My Mother Was a Computer (will be made available through Desire2Learn) Nov. 4 Workshop: William Blake, Little Black Boy (cp) Preparation: List the binary oppositions at play in Blake s poem. SUBJECTIVITY Nov. 6 Identity, identification, and the subject (C ) Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis (R&R ) Psychoanalytic reading of Frankenstein Nov. 11 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (R&R ) Nov. 13 Freud, The Uncanny (R&R ) Critical Response #2 on Freud s The Uncanny due. Nov. 18 Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage (R&R ) Nov. 20 Franz Fanon, The Negro and Psychopathology (R&R ) Nov. 25 Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (cp) clips from Hitchcock s Vertigo will be screened in class. Nov. 27 Review and Workshop: Emily Dickinson, I Started Early Took My Dog (cp) Preparation: From a psychoanalytic perspective, how might Dickinson s poem suggest a contest between conscious and unconscious levels of the self? MID-TERM EXAM WINTER CULTURE, MATERIALISMS, IDEOLOGY 6

7 Jan. 6 Literature and Cultural Studies (C 43-55) James Kavanagh, Ideology (cp) Jan. 8 Starting with Zero (R&R ) Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, Capital (R&R ) Jan. 13 Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony (R&R 673-4) Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (R&R ) Jan. 15 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (R&R ) Discipline and Frankenstein Jan. 20 Fiske, Culture, Ideology, Interpellation (R&R ) Jan. 22 Workshop: Langston Hughes, On the Road (cp) Preparation: List the key images in Hughes s story. What might these images have to do with ideology? Jan. 27 Ursula K. Heise, The Hitchhiker s Guide to Ecocriticism (to be made available on WebCT) Ecocritical reading of Frankenstein GENDER AND SEXUALITY Jan. 29 Feminist Paradigms (R&R ) Performative Language (C ) Essay Proposal Due Feb. 3 Gayle Rubin, The Traffic in Women (R&R ) Luce Irigaray, The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine (R&R ) Feb. 5 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Three Women s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism (R&R ) Feminist postcolonial reading of Frankenstein Feb. 10 Workshop: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (cp) 7

8 Preparation: How is Gilman s story a story about reading? What does it suggest about the relationship between gender and reading? Feb. 12 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (R&R ) Feb STUDY WEEK BREAK Feb. 24 Judith Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (R&R ) Critical Response #4 on Butler s essay due. Feb. 26 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (R&R ) NATION, RACE AND THE POSTCOLONIAL Mar. 3 Situating Race (R&R ) Ian F. Haney Lopez, The Social Construction of Race (R&R ) ESSAY ASSIGNMENT DUE Mar. 5 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (R&R ) Mar. 10 Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/ La Frontera Mar. 12 English Without Shadows (R&R ) Ania Loomba, Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (R&R ) Mar. 17 Homi K. Bhabha, Signs Taken for Wonders (R&R ) Mar. 19 Alan Lawson, The Anxious Proximities of Settler (Post)colonial Relations (R&R ) Critical Response #5 on Lawson s essay due. Mar. 24 These final three workshops are designed to give you practice at approaching new texts through a variety of theoretical frameworks before the exam. Workshop: Flannery O Connor s Judgment Day (cp) Mar. 26 Workshop: Jamaica Kincaid s A Small Place (R&R ) 8

9 Mar. 31 Workshop: Turned and Desirée s Baby (cp) April 2 Review and Exam Preparation Marking Standards All assignments will be marked in accordance with the English Department Marking Standards: If any of your assignments have different marking standards, they should also be indicated here. Collaboration/Plagiarism Rules Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of someone else's words and/or ideas. Not acknowledging your debt to the ideas of a secondary source, failing to use quotation marks when you are quoting directly, buying essays from essay banks, copying another student's work, or working together on an individual assignment, all constitute plagiarism. Resubmitting material you've submitted to another course is also academic dishonesty. All plagiarized work (in whole or in part) and other forms of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean, who is responsible for judging academic misconduct and imposing penalties. The minimum penalty for academic misconduct is a 0 on the assignment in question. It might also be subject to more severe academic penalties. See the Code of Student Behaviour. Course Policies Behavioral standards, attendance, group work/collaboration, etc. Unless such policies are spelled out on the syllabus, they are difficult to enforce. University Policies Students in this course are expected to conform to the Code of Student Behaviour: Lakehead University provides academic accommodations for students with disabilities in accordance with the terms of the Ontario Human Rights Code. This occurs through a collaborative process that acknowledges a collective obligation to develop an accessible learning environment that both meets the needs of students and preserves the essential academic requirements of the course. This course outline is available online through the English Department homepage and the Desire2Learn site for the course. 9