Contemporary Literary Theory and American Culture

MCT means Modern Theory and Criticism, edited by David Lodge. R means on Reserve. While everything is available in a hard copy, it is also on ERes. The ERes password is "Theory" (case sensitive).

1) I assume valuable things happen in class sessions. I take attendance; I expect you to keep track of your attendance too, because "I didn't realize I'd missed that many classes" is not an excuse. You get two unexcused absences, absences other than illness or family emergency. "I had a paper due for another course, my fish was depressed, I don't do Tuesdays, I'm in a production of The Sunshine Boys and we had rehearsal" are not excusable absences.
We only have 39 classes, less than 39 hours over the semester. More than 2 unexcused absences and your grade goes down; after 6 unexcused absences, you've no-entry-ed the course.

2) You have to participate in the class. Participation doesn't mean talking a lot, it means being engaged in the interchange among the members of the class: asking good questions, responding to other people's questions, thinking before you talk. Talking in groups such as a class is a skill, every bit as much as writing is. Its a skill worth having, because in fact a lot of work in all institutions gets done in that way. Being able to talk effectively in a group is, as they say, an important "self-empowerment." I know that a number of people have trouble speaking up in class. You should feel as free to consult me on strategies and methods for doing that as you'd to consult me about your writing.

3) You have to form, with other members of the course, a discussion group that meets outside of class once a week. Some groups prefer to meet before discussions and/or lectures, other prefer to meet after. That's up to each group to decide. Groups should be 4 people, 5 maximum.

Academic or emergency incompletes are yours to take if you want, as long as you are in good standing in the course. You don't need to tell me the story, unless you want to; I trust that you wouldn't take an incomplete without a good reason. "Good Standing" means that you have completed all the work assigned for the first module and at least some of the work for the second.

* Written work must be handed in on time.

* Late essays will be accepted at the discretion of the instructor

* All work must be handed in order to get credit for the course.

* Essays must be typed, double spaced, stapled together, pages numbered.

* Backs of previously used paper is fine for drafts; final version should be printed on both sides of the sheet.

* Essays must have a title, though they don't have to have a cover sheet.

* References should be in the following form: (Wordsworth, "Preface" p. 2) with full citation in end notes.

The class will be divided into writing 5 groups. Each week one group will write a short essay due by 6 PM on Monday, another will write a short essay due by 6 PM on Wednesday Essays should be about 900 words. These essays will be posted to a listserve and go to all members of the class.

A 3000+ word essay on a topic of your choice. The essay will be developed over the course of the semester in five stages. I am open to proposals for different kinds of final projects, though they will require a proposal, a progress report, and a final report/reflection on the project. The assignments are on line on this course's web pages.

#1. A 750--900 word essay explaining why you're taking the course and what specifically you want to get out of it.

 

#2. Midterm essay, 1000 words. This essay will take the form of a

reflection on what we have done in the first half of the semester. You may

revise or reflect back upon your first essay, or you can write something

totally new. Due the week before Fall Break

 

#3 Proposal. A brief 500 word explanation of what you think you want to

write about and why you think this is important. Due the week of Nov. 20^th.

 

#4 First Draft. Due. I'll read and comment on this draft. It should be as complete as possible, but I don't expect a "finished" product. Due the week of Nov. 27^th.

 

#5 Final Draft. Due at the end of Reading Period.

The comments on your writing will be, as one former student put it, "ambiguous." I don't do much "this is good, that's bad" commenting. The comments I make will be directed to making you think about what you're writing about, raising issues you may want to consider in revising, or writing about in the next prep essay. For specific advice on how to revise, what to do with a particular argument, etc., we should set up a conference.

You won't receive any grades over the course of the semester. This isn't because the grade is unimportant (if it was unimportant we wouldn't give it, would we?) but because the work in the course is part of a process, rather than a sequence of discrete units. If I am trying to encourage you to use your writing to be experimental and speculative, leading to your final essay, it makes little sense to grade it along the way. But if you want a sense of how you're doing, you should feel free to come and speak to me about your work. I will be able to tell you if you are making what I see as reasonable progress, what things you may want to work on, what things you seem to be doing best. I won't be able to be extremely precise about a grade equivalent, however. On a rough scale, though, I would say that if you are doing intelligent analysis of the works we consider and are able to state your own views clearly, that is C- to C+ work. If you are able to interpret the material we are working with, discuss not only what is "said" but what its significance might be, you would be in the B- to B range. If in addition you can demonstrate a capacity for self-reflective critical work (thinking about your own way of thinking and what it means to think as you do) you would be in the B+ to A range. So these are the kinds of mental activity you will be doing in the course: analysis & response, interpretation, and self-reflection.

It's useful for people in the course to get an idea of why other folks are here. It's also useful for you to clarify for yourself why you're taking a particular course and what you expectations are. It's also important for this course to get used to the idea of writing as public communication rather than either private reflection or an address exclusively to the instructor.

In this essay of about 750-900 words (around 3 pages in hard copy) try to explain what you think "theory" is about and why you want to spend a semester studying it. You may want to think about how you imagine this course fitting into the other courses you've taken here. This account will by necessity be intimate but need not be personal; that is, rather than an autobiographical narrative, you're communicating the ideas you've arrived at on this subject more than the route by which you got there.

Theoretical Works On Reserve for English 372 Fall, 2000

Ron Silliman, The New Sentence

The Political Economy of Poetry

Mark Schorer, Fiction and The Analogical Matrix

Technique as Discovery

Hans Robert Jauss, from Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory

Claude Levi-Strauss, The Structural Study of Myth

Gregory Ulmer, The Miranda Warnings: An Experiment in Hyperrhetoric

I. A. Richards, Communication and the Artist

Georg Lukacs, The Ideology of Modernism

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, selections from The Biographia Literaria

William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

V. N. Voloshinov, Social Interaction and the Bridge of Words

Jacques Derrida, from Of Grammantology, part I

Gerard Genntte, Structuralism and literary criticism

Ferdinand de Saussure, Nature of the Linguistic Sign

Michel Foucault Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History

Northrop Frye, Polemic Introduction from The Anatomy of Criticism

Jean Piaget, Introduction and Location of Problems from Structuralism

Joseph Campbell, Myth and Dream from The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Catherine Belsey, Literature, History, Politics

Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny

The Dreamwork

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. & Monroe C. Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy

Michael Awkward, Race, Gender, and the Politics of reading

Roland Barthes, The Pleasures of the Text

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation

Donna Harraway, Manifesto for Cyborgs

Frederic Jamison, Post-Modernism: or The Cultural Logic of late Capitalism

Ortega Y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art

Cleanth Brooks, The Heresy of Paraphrase

T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent

Helene Cixous, The laugh of the medusa

Tzvetan Todorov, Literary Genres

Marilyn Butler, Towards a Particularized Theory of Literary History

Jean Baudrillard ,Simulation and Simulacrum

Secondary Readings on Reserve

Structuralism and Since, edit by John Sturrock. Bio-critical essays on the "Big Five" Structuralism & Post-Structuralism -- Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault.

Three Short (@100 pages) on major influences on contemporary theory

Heidegger by Michael Inwood

Freud by Anthony Storr

Nietzsche by Michael Tanner

Primary Works by these writers.

Heidegger Basic Writings

Freud Civilization and its Discontents

Nietzsche The Genealogy of Morals

Critical essays applying "theory" to a particular work

Frederick Karl, "Introduction to Danse Macabre: Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (biographical/historical)

Adena Rosmarin, "Darkening the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness"

Johanna Smith, "Too Beautiful Altogether: Patriarchal Ideology in Heart of Darkness" (feminism)

J. Hillis Miller, "Heart of Darkness Revisited" (deconstruction)

Brook Thomas, "Preserving and Keeping Order by Killing Time in Heart of Darkness

Warren Montag, "The Workshop of Filthy Creation: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein"

Lee Heller, "Frankenstein and the Uses of Cultural Criticism"