Course overview
This upper-level course in English Literature explores some of the dominant ideas and critical traditions that have shaped the understanding and practice of literature. It provokes students to answer the difficult questions: what is literature?, how does it work?, what does it make?, and what does it do? Drawing on over two millennia of theoretical speculation and critical analysis, the course modules provide a platform for addressing many of the persistent paradigms in the discipline of literary studies: matter, medium, mimesis, representation, subjectivity, rhetoric, and politics. Students will leave the course equipped with a mature and sophisticated awareness of the complexities and contradictions of literary practice.
Course learning outcomes
- Read and analyse a range of literary texts in English from various theoretical perspectives
- Generate critical analyses and essays about a range of literary texts in English, using internationally recognised conventions of expository and critical prose from various theoretical perspectives in literary criticism
- Identify, discuss and apply appropriate concepts and formal literary techniques of writing in English literatures to a range of literary texts
- Evaluate, interpret and apply major literary theoretical perspectives including: Formalist, Deconstructive, Marxist, Feminist , Psychoanalytic, Post Colonialist, Rhetorical and Symbolic Action, Post humanist
- Present a substantiated argument for the critical use of a range of literary theories to evaluate major texts, debates and issues in English literature
Degree list
The following degrees include this course