| Close Reading: New Criticism, Reader-Reponse Theory and Structuralism |
| 1 | Introduction | |
| 2 | New Criticism
Keats, John. "Ode on a Grecian Urn."
Brooks, Cleanth. "Keats' Sylvan Historian: History without Footnotes."
Wimsatt, W. K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. "The Intentional Fallacy."
Recommended Readings
Wimsatt, W. K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. "The Affective Fallacy." | |
| 3 | American Reader-Response Theory
Milton, John. Sonnets XVIII-XX.
Fish, Stanley. "Literature in the Reader" pp. 22-37, and "Interpreting the Variorum" pp. 148-173. In Is There a Text in This Class? | |
| 4 | Structuralism
Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. (Extracts)
Brémond, Claude. "Morphology of the French Folktale."
Greimas, A. J., and François Rastier. "The Interaction of Semiotic Constraints." | |
| 5 | Structuralism (cont.)
Levi-Strauss, Claude. "The Structural Study of Myth." from Structural Anthropology.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. | Response paper due |
| Post-Structuralist Thought (Derrida, Foucault, Lacan) |
| 6 | Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. (Extracts)
Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." | |
| 7 | Levi-Strauss. "The Writing Lesson." In Tristes Topiques. (Brief extracts)
Derrida, Jacques. "Interview with Julia Kristeva." In Positions. | |
| 8 | Derrida, Jacques. "Signature, Event, Context."
Austin, J. R. How to do Things with Words.
Dinesen, Isak. "The Blank Page." | |
| 9 | Derrida Wrap-up. (No new reading) | |
| 10 | Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams.
Gilman, Charlotte. "The Yellow Wallpaper." | |
| 11 | Chaplin, Charlie. City Lights. (Screening) | |
| 12 | Chaplin. City Lights.
Zizek, Slavoj. Enjoy your Symptom. Chapter 1. (In Reader)
———. (Other extracts from reader, to be specified)
Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage."
Recommended Additional Readings
Jameson, Fredric. "Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan." | |
| 13 | Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Purloined Letter."
Lacan, Jacques. "Seminar on the Purloined Letter."
Recommended Additional Readings
Johnson, Barbara. "The Frame of Reference." In Literature and Psychoanalysis. Edited by Shoshana Felman. | Midterm handed out |
| 14 | Hitchcock, Alfred. Vertigo. (Screening) | |
| 15 | Hitchcock, Alfred. Vertigo.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Ligeia.
Zizek, Slavoj. (Extracts from reader, to be specified) | |
| 16 | Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?"
Paul Veyne's article on Michel Foucault. In Foucault and His Interlocutors. Edited by A. Davidson. | |
| 17 | Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. | Midterm due back in class |
| 18 | Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. (cont.) | |
| 19 | Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. (cont.)
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. (cont.) | |
| Marxism |
| 20 | Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," and "Contradiction and Over Determination."
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. (cont.) | |
| 21 | Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. (cont.) | |
| New Historicism, Post colonialism |
| 22 | Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations. | |
| 23 | Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. (cont.)
Montrose, Louis. "A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture." | |
| 24 | Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea.
Spivak, Gayatri. "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism." | |
| 25 | Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. (cont.) | |
| Sociology and Institutional Structures |
| 26 | Pierre Bourdieu
John Guillory | Final paper due (4 days after session 26) |