20th-Century Literary Theory
Course Description
This course aims to help students understand 20th-century literary theory concerning some of the key issues explored and debated in the West. We will focus on such theories as psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, new historicism, post-colonialism, queer theory, and postmodern space. Related issues include self and other, man and woman, history and ideology, knowledge and power, speech and writing, nature and culture, experience and identity, trauma and history, disability and aging, etc.
Texts
(1) Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.
(2) Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-friendly Guide. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006. (Available in the Reading Room on the second floor of the university library)
(3) Papers and PDF documents:
Barzilai, Shuli. “Borders of Language: Kristeva’s Critique of Lacan.” PMLA 106.2 (1991):
294-305.
Burke, Carolyn. “Irigaray through the Looking Glass.” Feminist Studies 7.2 (1981): 288-306.
Butler, Judith. “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex.” Yale French Studies
72 (1986): 35-49.
Caruth, Cathy. “Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History.” Yale French
Studies 79, Literature and the Ethical Question (1991): 181-92.
Culler, Jonathan. Forum on “The Discipline of Deconstruction.” PMLA 108.3 (1993): 533-
40.
Decker, James M. Ideology. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.
(Chapter 2: “Ideology and the Paradox of Subjectivity”)
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Toward a Poetics of Culture.” The New Historicism. New York:
Routledge, 1989.1-14.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural
Change. Cambridge, MA & Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Reprinted 1992. (Chapter 3: “Postmodernism”)
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke
UP, 1991. (Chapter 1: “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”)
Kauppinen, Heta and Patrick McKee. “Old Age, Painting, and Gerontology.” Journal of
Aesthetic Education 22,2 (1988): 87-100.
LaCapra, Dominick. “Trauma, Absence, Loss.” Critical Inquiry 25.4 (1999): 696-727.
Laz, Cheryl. “Act Your Age.” Sociological Forum 13,1 (1998): 85-113.
McLellan, David. Ideology. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
(Chapters 2 &3: “Marx” “The Marxist Tradition”).
Nealon, Jeffrey T. “The Discipline of Deconstruction.” PMLA 107.5 (1992): 1266-79.
Shiner, Larry. “Reading Foucault: Anti-Method and the Genealogy of Power-Knowledge.”
History and Theory 21.3 (1982): 382-398.
Tiffin, Helen. “Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-Discourse.” Kunapipi 9.3 (1987): 17-
34.
Verges, Francoise. “Creole Skin, Black Mask: Fanon and Disavowal.” Critical Inquiry 23.3
(1997): 578-95.
Veeser, H. Aram. “Introduction.” The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989. ix-xvi.
Vincent, John A. “The Cultural Construction Old Age as a Biological Phenomenon: Science
and Anti-ageing Technologies.” Journal of Aging Studies 22,4 (2008):331-9.
Wilkerson, William S. “Is There Something You Need to Tell Me?: Coming out and the
Ambiguity of Experience.” Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of
Postmodernism. Paula M. L. Moya and Michael R. Hames-Garcia, eds. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000. 251-78.
Zerilli, Linda M. G. “A Process without a Subject: Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva on
Maternity.” Signs 18.1 (1982): 111-35.
(4) References available at the university library:
Blyth, Ian and Susan Sellers. Helene Cixous: Live Theory.
Butler, Christopher. Interpretation, Deconstruction and Ideology.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
---. The History of Sexuality.
Loomba, Ania. Colonialism / Postcolonialism.
Muller, John P. and Williams J. Richardson. Lacan and Language: A Reader’s Guide to
Ecrits.
Slaughter, Cliff. Marxism, Ideology and Literature.
Smith, Anne-Marie. Julia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable.
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe.
Whitford, Margaret. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine.
(5) Optional:
Zhang, Zaixin. “Voices of the Self in Fiction: An Alternative Marxist Approach.”
Neophilologus 78, 1 (1994): 3-19.
---. "'Postmodern' Space in the Heart of Beijing: From the National Theater to the Palace
Museum.” PMLA 122.1 (2007): 256-63
(6) Websites for Critical Theory
Beijing Foreign Studies University:
http://bfsutheory.blog.163.com
(Notes on psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism, postmodern space, etc.)
Brock University:
www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/index.html
(Professor John Lye’s English class: Reader-response, structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, etc.)
Colorado University:
www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/lecturelinks.html
(Professor Mary Klages’s English class: Psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, Marxism, etc.)
Purdue University:
www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory
(Professor Dino Felluga’s Introductory Guide to Critical Theory: Gender and sex, Marxism, new historicism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis)
University of Toronto
Glossary of Literary Theory
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/headerindex.html
Requirements and Grades
1. Presentation on an assigned paper (15 minutes), 15%.
2. Take-home essay exam (5 pages), 60% (e-version to be sent to the class mailbox by the due date).
3. Presentation on the essay exam (10 minutes), 15%.
4. Class participation, 10%.
Academic Honesty
To plagiarize is to use someone else’s work (words, ideas, etc, published or unpublished) as if it was one’s own. Any act of plagiarism in this class will be reported to the dean.
Tentative Schedule
Week 1 Introduction
Weeks 2-3 Psychoanalytic Criticism (Bressler, 142-66)
Barzilai, “Borders of Language: Kristeva’s Critique of Lacan.” (Week 3)
Weeks 4-5 Feminism (Bressler, 167-90)
Zerilli, “A Process without a Subject: Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva on Maternity.”
(Week 5)
Week 6 Marxism (Bressler, 191-211)
McLellan, Ideology. (Chapters 2 &3 on Marx and Marxists, 9-30).
Week 7 Knowledge and Power
Shiner, “Reading Foucault: Anti-Method and the Genealogy of Power-Knowledge.”
Weeks 8-9 Deconstruction (Bressler, 96-141)
Nealon, “The Discipline of Deconstruction.” (Week 9)
Week 10 New Historicism (Bressler, 212-32)
Greenblatt, “Toward a Poetics of Culture”
Week 11 Postcolonialism (Bressler, 233-52, 263-69)
Tiffin, “Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-Discourse.”
Week 12 Queer Theory (Bressler, 252-62)
Wilkerson, “Is There Something You Need to Tell Me?
Week 13 Postmodern Space
Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. (Chapter 1)
Week 14 Special Topics: Trauma and History, Disability and Aging
Caruth, “Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History.”
Laz, “Act Your Age.”
Week 15 Essay exam (take-home)
Week 16 Presentation on the essay exam
Week 17 Exam paper due today
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