LITR306

In this course, students will survey a series of methodological approaches used, historically, to analyze literary representation. We will begin in the classical world, with Platonic (essentialist) and Sophistic (contextualist) theories of representation. From there, we move on to study the theories of language and narrative developed during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the 19th Century. Most the course, however, examines 20th and 21st literary theories (Saussurean semiotics, Russian Formalism, French structuralism, cultural materialism, along with feminist, queer, Marxist, psychoanalytic, ecocritical, ecofeminist, and deconstructive approaches to literary texts). The course surveys texts written by those for whom writing, narrative, and literature—or representation more broadly conceived—are always, already situated within (and therefore best understood within) political, historical, cultural, and ideological contexts. Students in the course will analyze the shifting values historically attached to literature, as well as the ethical dimensions of linguistic and narrative traditions and practices; in other words, students will examine the way in which heterogeneous bodies, cultures, nations and eras have used literature and language to negotiate power.

Vallario Sch of Arts, Hum, Edu