Lectures (Video)
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Introduction (cont)
- 3. Ways In and Out of the Hermeneutic Circle
- 4. Configurative Reading
- 5. The Idea of the Autonomous Artwork
- 6. The New Criticism and Other Western Formalisms
- 7. Russian Formalism
- 8. Semiotics and Structuralism
- 9. Linguistics and Literature
- 10. Deconstruction I
- 11. Deconstruction II
- 12. Freud and Fiction
- 13. Jacques Lacan in Theory
- 14. Influence
- 15. The Postmodern Psyche
- 16. The Social Permeability of Reader and Text
- 17. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
- 18. The Political Unconscious
- 19. The New Historicism
- 20. The Classical Feminist Tradition
- 21. African-American Criticism
- 22. Post-Colonial Criticism
- 23. Queer Theory and Gender Performativity
- 24. The Institutional Construction of Literary Study
- 25. Neo-Pragmatism
- 26. Reflections - Who Doesn't Hate Theory Now?
Introduction to Theory of Literature
Course Summary
This course is based on Introduction to Theory of Literature, Spring 2009 made available by Yale University: Open Yale under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?
The course is taught by Prof. Paul H. Fry who is the William Lampson Professor of English at Yale and specializes in British Romanticism, literary theory, and literature and the visual arts.
Reading Material
1. The Critical TraditionRichter, David, ed. The Critical Tradition, 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin's, 2006, ISBN: 9780312415204
