This class has as its objective to make students understand how and why we use critical theory. We will go over the history of literary critical theory from the 19th century to the present day, and in each class, students will learn how to manipulate the technical language of each critical approach. Using a number of prose and poetry texts belonging to the canon, we will successively study traditional approaches (historical, autobiographical and moral-philosophical) as well as other approaches which have shaped the way we read and understand texts: formalism, structuralism, narratology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, decolonialism, ecocriticism and posthumanism. The texts with which we will be working with will be posted on the platform throughout the semester.
Further Reading:
Barry, Peter. An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 4th ed., Manchester University Press, 2017
Objectives
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Understand why and how academics, students and critics use critical theory
- Know about the history of literary theory from the 19th century to the present
- Be familiar with the tools that each critical approach tends to favour
- Choose pertinent critical approaches and tools to analyse texts
Libraries
Practical information
