aSSIGNMENTS

English 3900 Critical Approaches to Literature, Spring 2013

TR 2:00-3:15PM, Arts & Sciences 353

Interpretation Survey

Spend a few moments writing all the questions you ask of every work of literature you read. We'll post your questions here, and throughout the semester we'll compare them to the questions the theorists we're reading would ask.

• What issues and conflicts are addressed in the text? How are the conflicts resolved, if they are resolved?
• What is the setting?
• What are the text's symbols?
• Who are the protagonist and antagonist?
• What is the work's point of view? Is the narrator reliable?
• What is the tone?
• Who are the characters? What do they want?
• What is the characters' psychological relationship with reality? existential relationship with the world?
• What is the purpose of the work of literature? Why are you reading it?
• When was the text written? published? Where does it fall in literary history? Does it rebel against or perpetuate the predominant cultural ideology? What was the situation in society at the time the work was written? What cultural statement, if any, is the work making?
• Whose voice or voices are conveyed in the text? Who speaks and who is silenced?
• Who is the audience for the work?
• Can you identify with the text? Is it relatable? Does it capture your attention?
• What feelings and ideas does the text generate in you?
• How does your contemporary values and personal bias affect your reading of the work?
• Is the work believable?
• What was the writer's intent for and interpretation of her work? What was the writer's background and (how) is it significant to the work? Is the work autobiographical or semiautobiographical?
• How does gender play a role in the work, if at all?

Here are the questions the theorists we're reading would ask any work of literature:

• New Criticism and Russian Formalism
  • Overview: What single interpretation of the text best establishes its organic unity from? In other words, how do the text's formal elements, and the multiple meanings those elements produce, all work together to support the theme, or overall meaning, of the work? Remember, a great work will have a theme of universal human significance. (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 150)
  • T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent": Describe the meaning of the work of literature in relation to its literary tradition. What new emotions does the work of literature create from the raw material of personality that the writer seeks to escape?
    • "The Metaphysical Poets": How does the work of literature amalgamate fragmentary and irregular experience?
  • John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc.": Without considering external factors like Marxist and New Humanist morality or reader emotion, what does the scientific, systematic business of criticism reveal about the work of literature?
  • Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase": Without paraphrasing the work, what is the essential and meaningful poetic/artistic structure of the literary text?
  • William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy": Disregarding external, private evidence, what internal structure and public evidence points to the meaning of the work?
  • "The Affective Fallacy": Without considering the author's intention or the emotional effect of the work on the reader, what does the work say (as opposed to do)?
  • Boris Eichenbaum, from The Theory of the "Formal Method": How is the literary language distinguished from practical language? What literary meaning does the poetic sound and/or narrative plot create?
• Structuralism and Semiotics
  • Overview: . . . how should the text be classified in terms of its genre?
    • ’Analyze the text's narrative operations. Can you speculate about the relationship between the text's "grammar" and that of similar texts?
    • ’What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to "make sense" of the text?
    • What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or “texts,” such as high school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume (or any other consumer product), or even media coverage of a historical event, such as Operation Desert Storm, an important legal case, or a presidential election campaign? In other words, analyze the nonverbal messages sent by the "texts: in question. . . . What is being communicated, and how exactly is it being communicated? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 233)
  • Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics: Describe the ways in which the literary work's differential, arbitrary language or sign systems (the unification of signifying sound-images and signified concepts) construct its characters' and readers' reality.
  • Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics": Describe how the structure of the work depends on its predominant poetic function, and analyze how the other five functions (referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalingual) form the text.
    • from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances": What literary devices (such as metaphor and metonymy) does the literary work or literary genre tend to foreground and how so?
  • Northrop Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature": How should the literary work be categorized in terms of season and genre (spring romance, summer comedy, autumn tragedy, winter satire)?
  • Tzvetan Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative": What repeated narrative patterns undergird the literary text?
  • Roland Barthes, from Mythologies: Describe the sign system of a large group of texts, like campaign photos or soap ads.
    • "The Death of the Author": Describe the codes and conventions of literary discourse that work through the writer and express themselves in the current literary text.
• Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction
  • Overview: How can we use the various conflicting interpretations a text produces (the "play of meanings") or find the various ways in which the text doesn't answer the questions it seems to answer, to demonstrate the instability of language and the undecidability of meaning?
    • What ideology does the text seem to promote—what is its main theme—and how does conflicting evidence in the text show the limitations of that ideology? We can usually discover a text's overt ideological project by finding the binary opposition(s) that structure the text's main theme(s). (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 265)
  • Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text": Describe how the literary text is not just a finished product wrought from codes and conventions of literary discourse but also in process and in play.
  • Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?": What is the meaning of the author and her work, and how are those meanings tied to the literary discourse surrounding the author?
    • from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison: What is the main character's subject position with regard to various institutions and discourses? How is the identity of the main character created by the institution(s) that discipline her?
    • from The History of Sexuality: How is the main character's interiority (her subjectivity, her sexuality) regulated by her discourse communities?
  • Jacques Derrida, from Of Grammatology: How does the literary text produce excessive or exorbitant meaning? In what ways is the meaning of the literary text undecidable?
  • Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric": What valid yet mutually exclusive readings of the text make interpretation undecidable? How does the reading of the text end up in indetermination (suspended uncertainty) or negative certainty? How does the literary text simultaneously assert and deny the authority of its own rhetorical mode?
  • J. L. Austin, "Performative Utterances": Rather than the true/false dichotomy of literary reference, describe the ambiguity, meaning, and force of the literary statement.
  • Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble: How is a character's body (and therefore interiority) culturally inscribed? How does the character performatively fabricate and construct her (gender) identity?
  • Jean Baudrillard, from "The Precession of Simulacra": In what ways does the cultural setting within and of the literary text simulate reality without original reference; in other words, how does the text substitute signs of the real for the real itself and thereby create a hyperreal play of illusions, phantasms, and imaginary?
  • Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa": How does the text challenge the phallogocentric stereotype of the woman as Dark Continent; deconstruct both the masculine/feminine, mind/body, whole/lack, self/other dichotomies; and write possibilities of self?
• Psychoanalysis
  • Overview: How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work? That is, what unconscious motives are operating in the main character(s); what core issues are thereby illustrated; and how do these core issues structure or inform the piece?
    • Are there any oedipal dynamics—or any other family dynamics—at work here? That is, is it possible to relate a character's patterns of adult behaviour to early experiences in the family as represented in the story? How do these patterns of behavior and family dynamics operate and what do they reveal?
    • How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, regression, crisis, projection, fear of or fascination with death, sexuality—which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior—as a primary indicator of psychological identity, or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
    • In what ways can we view a literary work as analogous to a dream? That is, how might recurrent or striking dream symbols reveal the ways in which the narrator or speaker is projecting his or her unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts onto other characters, onto the setting, or onto the events portrayed?
    • What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author? Psychoanalyzing an author in this [psychobiographical] manner is a difficult undertaking, and our analysis must be carefully derived by examining the author's entire corpus as well as letters, diaries, and any other biographical material available. Certainly, a single literary work can provide but a very incomplete picture.
    • What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader? Or what might a critical trend suggest about the psychological motives of a group of readers?
    • In what ways does the text seem to reveal characters' emotion investments in the Symbolic Order, the Imaginary Order, the Mirror Stage, or what Lacan calls objet petit a? Does any part of the text seem to represent Lacan's notion of the Real? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 38-9)
  • Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams: What unconscious Oedipal guilt and castration anxiety might a character (like Hamlet) have? What unconscious fears and desires do the character's dreams symbolize?
    • from "The Uncanny": Does the work have an object that seems familiar yet alien? From that object, what repressed knowledge returns despite and because of the character's anxiety regarding unconscious fears or desires?
    • "Fetishism": Does a character disavow the reality of loss and the symbolics of castration by imbuing an object or idea with sexual potency?
  • Harold Bloom, from The Anxiety of Influence: How does the author unconsciously misread her literary rivals, i.e., predecessors in order to create her own original work?
  • Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage": What mirror or image establishes and provides a character her sense of self? With whom or what does she identify?
    • "The Signification of the Phallus": How do characters feign possession of phallic power?
  • Julia Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language: How do the underlying drives of the text and character break through and transform the conventional symbolic order of the work?
  • Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Does the book shatter linear unity? Does the work deterritorialize (unbind and unbound) traditional Freudian circuits of desire?
  • Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Leitch 2081-95): Describe which character the audience is supposed to identify with. When looking through the eyes of this character, do women function as femme fatales, in other words, as desirable yet castrating sex objects?
  • Slavoj Žižek, "Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing": Describe the psychological structure of the romantic relationship (the nature of love and/or desire) in the literary work. Who holds the position of power? why? how? Who is the subject and who the object? why? how?
• Marxism
  • Overview: Does the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist, or classist values?
    • How might the work be seen as a critique of capitalism, imperialism, or classism?
    • Does the work in some ways support a Marxist agenda but in other ways (perhaps unintentionally) support a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda? In other words, is the work ideologically conflicted?
    • How does the literary work reflect (intentionally or not) the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written and/or the time in which it is set, and what do those condtions reveal about the history of class struggle?
    • How might the work be seen as a critique of organized religion? That is, how does religion function in the text to keep a character or characters from realizing and resisting socioeconomic oppression? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 68)
  • Leon Trotsky, from Literature and Revolution: In what ways is the literary text's imagination economical; in other words, how is the text imagined, influenced, and derived from social and economic conditions?
  • György (Georg) Lukács, from The Historical Novel (Leitch 905-21): What is the essence or totality of the work in terms of the dialectic between immediate subjective experience and objective reality of historical, economic living conditions?
  • Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility": Does the literary work have an authenticity or aura, a ritualistic or cultic quality surrounding its experience? Is the work exhibited to the masses (the cineplex of mass reproducibility and mass consumption) or the individual (museum of the sacred experience of art)?
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, from "The Culture Industry": What does the literary work suggest, either intrinsically in terms of ideological theme, or extrinsically in terms of the relationship between the work and reality, about the relationship between pleasure and labor (or, more classically, from Marlowe, profit and delight)? What does the literary work do to the thinking individual, the viewer or reader (or, more classically, from Socrates, the contemplative life)?
  • Louis Althusser, from "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses": What ideological state apparatuses (religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade-union, media, cultural) in or of the literary work cause an imaginary relationship of the characters or readers to their real conditions of existence?
  • Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society": Does the work include pastiche over against parody, terminate the bourgeois individual subject, function as nostalgia to the detriment of history, dissociate mind and body through the creation of hyperspace, and/or commodify artistic experimentation?

In Class Activities

1. The New Critical and Russian Formalist Approaches to T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Break into four groups and discuss the Interpretation Survey questions above for your group's assigned theorist.

1. John Crowe Ransom
2. Cleanth Brooks
3. William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley
4. Boris Eichenbaum

2. The Semiological, Structuralist, and Archetypal Approaches to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Break into three groups and discuss the Interpretation Survey questions above for your group's assigned theorist.

1. Ferdinand de Saussure
2. Roman Jakobson
3. Northrop Frye

3. Reviewing the Theories with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

Today, we'll review for the exam by asking and answering the questions literary theorists would ask of Jane Eyre. Each of the fourteen students will be assigned one theorist's set of queries.

1. Lois Tyson, New Criticism
2. T. S. Eliot
3. John Crowe Ransom
4. Cleanth Brooks
5. William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley
6. Boris Eichenbaum
7. Lois Tyson, Structuralism: Narrative Operations
8. Lois Tyson, Structuralism: Codes of Interpretion
9. Lois Tyson, Structuralism: Cultural Semiotics
10. Ferdinand de Saussure
11. Roman Jakobson
12. Northrop Frye
13. Tzvetan Todorov
14. Roland Barthes

Article Summary and Critical Reading

GeorgiaVIEW Post

During the semester you will write two informal papers, an article summary and a critical reading, and post them to our course discussion board at GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Article Summaries and Critical Readings.

 

The article summary, which will summarize a particular theorist's essay, should

• be 700-1000 words long,
• summarize the article's argument for approaching literature,
• quote and explain at least two significant passage(s),
• define key terms,
• and include questions that the theorist would ask of the work of literature

The critical reading, which will interpret a work of literature, should

• be 700-1000 words long,
• explicitly pose questions that the theorist would ask a work of literature
• respond to those questions for a work of literature we're reading as a class this semester (Brontë's Jane Eyre, Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," or Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby)

Informal Presentation

You will also be responsible for a brief, informal presentation. The article summary presentation should introduce the essay by defining key points and terms (without simply reading your written summary) and broaching issues for class discussion. The critical reading presentation should poses the theorist's questions and interpret the work in response to those questions (without simply reading your written response).

Due Dates

1. Your written assignment will be due in both 1) GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Article Summaries and Critical Readings and 2) GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Article Summary or Critical Reading three days before we are scheduled to discuss an article. If you do not submit your written summary to GeorgiaVIEW before the article is discussed in class, you will fail the assignment.
2. Your brief, informal presentation will be due on the day we discuss the essay in class. This date is approximate for we will sometimes fall a day behind.
3. I will return your graded assignment to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Article Summary or Critical Reading approximately one week after we discuss the article in class.
4. For example, we are scheduled to discuss Frye on Thursday, 1-24. Therefore, someone's summary will be due in GeorgiaVIEW by Monday, 1-21. In class on Thursday, 1-24, that student will informally present the main ideas of Frye's essay. I will return the graded article summary to her the following week in GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Article Summary.

Note: As I wrote on the syllabus course schedule, we may have to slow down for certain theorists and theories. We will not be able to discuss each and every article in class. Thus, some articles may only be summarized on GeorgiaVIEW's Article Summaries discussion board and presented to the class by the person assigned to the article. Therefore, it is extremely important for each person to turn in the summaries on time and attend class for the presentation component. Summaries will be penalized one letter grade for each day, not class period, that they are turned in late. Failing to present the article to the class without providing a valid absence excuse will result in a one letter grade penalty.

 

AS stands for Article Summary and CR stands for Critical Reading

 

GAV Due Date	Presentation Due Date	Reading	Student
M, 1-21	R, 1-24	Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics" and/or from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances"	1/AS 1/CR
		Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature"	2/AS Jaimee Yearwood 2/CR
S, 1-26	T, 1-29	Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative"	3/AS Megan Dent 3/CR Hillary Chance
		Barthes, "The Death of the Author"	4/AS Erica Jones 4/CR Daniel Von Waldner
S, 2-9	T, 2-12	Foucault, "What Is an Author?"	5/AS David Porter 5/CR Kristin Karschner
M, 2-11	R, 2-14	Derrida, from Of Grammatology or from Dissemination	6/AS Taylor Green 6/CR Emily Frazier
S, 2-16	T, 2-19	de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric"	7/AS Hillary Chance 7/CR Colin Pennington
M, 2-18	R, 2-21	Butler, from Gender Trouble	8/AS Kristin Karschner 8/CR Erica Jones
S, 2-23	T, 2-26	Baudrillard, from "The Precession of Simulacra"	9/AS Jessica Jackson 9/CR Danielle Bechtold
S, 3-2	T, 3-5	Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" or "The Signification of the Phallus"	10/AS Daniel Von Waldner 10/CR Taylor Green
M, 3-4	R, 3-7	Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language	11/AS 11/CR Jaimee Yearwood
		Deleuze and Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus	12/AS Tess Lyle 12/CR Jessica Jackson
S, 3-9	T, 3-12	Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"	13/AS Danielle Bechtold 13/CR Catherine Ziemann
S, 3-16	T, 3-19	Trotsky, from Literature and Revolution	14/AS 14/CR Megan Dent
		Lukács, from The Historical Novel	15/AS Catherine Ziemann 15/CR Tess Lyle
M, 3-18	R, 3-21	Horkheimer and Adorno, from "The Culture Industry"	16/AS Emily Frazier 16/CR David Porter

Reading Journal or Blog

You will keep a reading journal or blog that interprets an outside work of literature from the range of positions held by the various theorists studied in class.

 

By Tuesday, January 15, select a work of literature (a long poem, a dense short story, a novel, a play, a film, or a television show).

 

Each week (except for weeks when exams are due), you will use your journal or blog to reflect upon the ideas of the week's theorists (focusing on one is preferred, but no more than two theorists) and explore how those critical methodologies would interpret your selected text.

 

Each entry should be approximately a couple of pages or 500 words. Journals will be collected randomly a few times during the semester. If you wish to keep a private paper reading journal, you should bring it to each class. Or, preferrably, keep a public blog at a site like WordPress or Blogger (part of your GMail account).

 

Because there have been significant problems with entries being written and submitted in a timely fashion, from February 12 on, there will be a late penalty for entries submitted 1-6 days after the due date (checks will become check-minuses, check-minuses will become zeros); entries one week late will receive no credit.

 

Here are the entry weeks and potential theorists' works to respond to:

 

Entry/Week	Works
1 January 15	Ransom, Brooks, Wimsatt, and/or Eichenbaum
2 January 22	Tyson, Saussure, Jakobson, and/or Frye Entries 1-2 Due on January 24
3 January 29	Todorov and/or Barthes
4 February 12	Foucault and/or Derrida Entries 3-4 Due on February 14
5 February 19	de Man, Austin, and/or Butler
6 February 26	Baudrillard, Cixous, Tyson, and/or Freud
7 March 5	Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, and/or Deleuze Entries 5-7 Due on March 7
8 March 12	Mulvey, Žižek, Tyson, and/or Marx
9 April 2	Althusser and/or Jameson
10 April 9	Tyson, Gilbert and Gubar, Rich, Woolf, Smith, and/or Bordo
11 April 16	Solomon, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Dufrenne, and/or Kahn Entries 8-11 Due on April 18

 

Here are the student selections:

 

Student	Work
Danielle Bechtold	Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Hillary Chance	Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
Megan Dent	Orwell, Animal Farm
Emily Frazier	Once upon a Time (ABC, 2011-present)
Taylor Green	Girls (HBO, 2012-present)
Jessica Jackson	The Green Mile (Darabont, 1999)
Erica Jones	Django Unchained (Tarantino, 2012)
Kristin Karschner	Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Tess Lyle	The O.C. (Fox, 2003-2007)
Colin Pennington	Huxley, Brave New World
David Porter	Wallace, Infinite Jest
Daniel Von Waldner	The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008)
Jaimee Yearwood	Davidson, The Gargoyle
Catherine Ziemann	Revenge (ABC, 2011-present)

Group Presentation

In the formal presentation, three groups of four to five students will collaborate to teach three of the following eight critical approaches to the class:

 

cognitive criticism

existentialism and phenomenology

reader-response criticism

feminism and gender studies

queer theory

African-American criticism

postcolonial criticism

ecocriticism

 

One week before the presentation, the group should inform the class of what 1 overview article (if not in Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today) and 2-3 theoretical articles it will teach as well as provide the professor with clean copies of the articles (if not in Leitch's Norton Anthology).

 

During the 30-40 minute presentation followed by 10 minute question and answer session, the group should

• provide an overview of the method (based on an overview article like Tyson's) [see the professor if Tyson and Murfin don't provide overviews of your method]
• that compares and contrasts the method with at least 2-3 critical approaches previously studied, and also
• that defines both the theory of the method and describes the practice of the method
• teach two or three theoretical articles by specific theorists (two if the group has four members, three if the group has five members) [articles can be found in The Norton Anthology; see the professor if your method is not represented in the Norton]
• demonstrate the method with an interpretation of either Jane Eyre or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and explain Lois Tyson's interpretation of The Great Gatsby

I expect each group member to respect the group, communicate with the group, attend group meetings, and do her fair share of the work. If there is a major problem that the group cannot manage, let me know (anonymously if warranted) and I will decide if the project should be graded individually.

 

Sign Up

 

Date	Theory	Students
T, 4-9	Group 1 Feminism	1 Hillary Chance
		2 Emily Frazier
		3 Taylor Green
		4 Kristin Karschner
		5 Jaimee Yearwood
T, 4-16	Group 2 Existentialism	6 Jessica Jackson
		7 Erica Jones
		8 David Porter
		9 Daniel Von Waldner
T, 4-23	Group 3 Reader-Response Criticism	10 Danielle Bechtold
		11 Megan Dent
		12 Tess Lyle
		13 Catherine Ziemann

 

Theory Selection

 

By Tuesday, March 19, groups will report their first and second choices of critical approach from the list above.

Exam 1

Exam 1 will cover formalism (New Criticism and Russian Formalism) and structuralism (structuralist linguistics, semiotics, archetypal criticism, narrative theory) and will be taken in class on Tuesday, February 5. There will be two essay questions. In the first essay, you will be asked to compare and contrast the formalist and structuralist methodologies. The second essay question will ask you to demonstrate and practice the formalist and structuralist critical approaches to literature on your choice of one text from the following, available in GeorgiaVIEW > Content > Electronic Course Reserves or online: A. E. Stallings' "Fairy-tale Logic," Monica Ferrell's "Myths of the Disappearance," Monica Ferrell's "Harmless, Recalled as a Fairy Tale," or Margarett Atwood's "Fiction: Happy Endings." You may bring printouts of the literary works to the exam; but you may not use your textbooks.

 

Your theory essay will be graded on 1) your ability to balance a broad understanding of the general theory with a healthy amount of specific terms from particular theorists as well as on 2) your ability to assess similarities and differences between the two general theories.

 

Your application essay grade will be based on how you interpret the text; in other words, illustrate your understanding of the critical methodologies by making apparent the questions a New Critic and structuralist ask of a text.

 

If I were to study for this exam, I would 1) create an outline of key terms and compose their definitions, 2) write practice essays comparing and contrasting New Criticism and structuralism using those keys terms, and 3) write practice essays interpreting the one literary work from formalist and structuralist perspectives using those key terms.

 

Note: It is impossible to illustrate your knowledge of all of these terms in a 75 minute exam. Prioritize the ones that are fundamental for an understanding of the general theory and distinguish particular theorists within that theory.

• New Criticism and Russian Formalism
• Lois Tyson, "New Criticism" (general overview)
• literary criticism
• literary/critical theory
• biographical criticism
• intrinsic/objective/formalist criticism
• intentional fallacy
• affective fallacy
• close reading
• "the text itself"
• timeless, autonomous (self-sufficient) verbal object
• heresy of paraphrase
• literary language
• organic unity
• paradox
• irony
• ambiguity
• tension
• figurative language
• metaphor/simile
• symbol
• T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "The Metaphysical Poets" (particular theorist)
• tradition
• depersonalization/impersonality
• dissociation of sensibility
• John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc." (particular theorist)
• the artist, philosopher, and English professor
• the six things to exclude from criticism
• aesthetic distance
• Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (particular theorist)
• the heresy of paraphrase
• irony and paradox
• unity and harmony
• William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy" (particular theorist)
• the intentional fallacy
• internal evidence, external evidence, intermediate evidence
• the affective fallacy
• objective emotions
• Boris Eichenbaum, from The Theory of the "Formal Method" (particular theorist)
• poetic vs practical language
• form and function
• sound and sense
• plot vs story
• evolution of literary form
• Structuralism and Semiotics
• Robert Dale Parker, "Structuralist Criticism" and Alex E. Blazer, lecture (general overview)
• structure
  • surface phenomenom vs underlying structure
  • wholeness, transformation, self-regulation
• structural linguistics
  • diachrony/synchrony
  • langue/parole
  • difference
  • arbitrary
  • binary opposition
  • signifier/signified/sign
• structural anthropology
  • mythemes
• semiotics
  • sign system
  • index/icon/symbol
• three practices of structuralist literary analysis
• literary genre
  • Frye's theory of myths/mythoi, archetypal criticism
• narratology/narrative theory (you don't need to know all of these! just be able to discuss/apply one or two)
  • Greimas' actants and contractual/performative/disjunctive structures
  • Todorov's proposition and sequence
  • Genette's story/narrative/narration, tense (order/duration/frequency), mood (distance/perspective), voice
• literary interpretation
  • Culler's literary conventions (convention distance and impersonality, naturalization, rule of significance, rule of metaphorical coherence, rule of thematic unity)
• Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics (particular theorist)
• signifier, signified, and sign
• arbitrary/conventional, linear, and differential
• synchronic and diachronic
• langue and parole
• syntagmatic and associative
• Roman Jakobson, from "Linguistics and Poetics" and from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances" (particular theorist)
• the poetic function
• metaphor and metonymy
• Northrop Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature" (particular theorist)
• archetype
• representational fallacy
• seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter) and genres (romance, comedy, tragedy, satire)
• tragedy and comedy and the world (human, animal, vegetable, mineral, unformed)
• Tzvetan Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative" (particular theorist)
• structure and grammar
• internal criticism, external criticism, structural criticism
• narrative analysis
• Roland Barth, from Mythologies, "The Death of the Author," "From Work to Text" (particular theorist)
• the death of the author and the birth of the scriptor and the reader

Exam 2

• Essay 1: Theory
• Compare and contrast 1) how two generic theorists (a generic poststructuralist theorist and a generic psychoanalytic theorist) approach art and literature in terms of meaning and 2) how two specific theorists (a specific poststructuralist theorist such as Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous and a specific psychoanalytic theorist such as Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek) approach art and literature in terms of meaning. What is meaningful and what constitutes meaning inside or outside of a text? Use and define key terms that have significance and meaning for the general theory and key terms particular to a specific theorist.
• Your essay should cover
  1. a general overview of poststructuralist theory
  2. a specific understanding of a particular poststructuralist theorist (Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous)
  3. a general understanding of psychoanalytic theory
  4. a specific understanding of a particular psychoanalytic theorist (Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek)
  5. a comparison and contrast of the two theories
• Essay 2: Interpretation
  • Choose either 1) a poem or poems by Robert Lowell, 2) Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", or 3) Rian Johnson's film Brick, and then write an essay that compares and contrasts a poststructuralist reading with a psychoanalytic reading. 1) Discuss a specific poststructuralist theorist's method for analyzing literature and then interpret your selected work based on that approach. 2) Discuss a specific psychoanalytic theorist's method for analyzing literature and then interpret your selected work based on that approach. 3) Compare and contrast your two readings of the work of literature. How would the particular theorists (both of your choosing, but not repeating an author used in the first essay) interpret the work with their particular versions of the general method, and how might the readings be similar and different? Unlike a traditional literature essay exam which would only require you to elucidate the meaning of the work of literature, your answer in this exam should explicitly exemplify the methods that guide interpretation of meaning. In other words, your essay should illustrate the differing interpretive theories that underlie the practice of criticism.
  • Note: Do not discuss a particular theorist more than once on your exam. For example, if you analyze Cixous in Essay 1, you cannot apply her theory in Essay 2 and vice versa.
  • Your essay should cover
    1. a specific reading of the work of literature by defining and applying a particular poststructuralist theorist's methodology (Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous)
    2. a specific reading of the work of literature by defining and applying a particular psychoanalytic theorist's methodology (Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek)
    3. a comparison and contrast of the two readings
• Due: Tuesday, March 19 via GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Exam 2
• Length: Your single document submission should be 10-14 pages long, 5-7 pages per essay. Exams not meeting the length requirement will be penalized per syllabus policy.
• Format: MLA style in Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, or Rich-Text Format.
• The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers contains complete information on MLA style.
• Per syllabus policy, conform your take-home exam to MLA style, or one-third of a letter grade will be penalized for improprieties in each of the following categories: 1) heading, running header, and margins, 2) font and line-spacing, and 3) in-text quoting, block quoting, and citing (your exam only needs a Works Cited page if you quote outside sources, which are not required).
• Grade: You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four specific theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists. Your graded exam will be returned to GeorgiaView > Dropbox > Exam 2 approximately two weeks after you submit it.

Exam 3

• Essay 1: Theory
• Compare and contrast Marxism and your choice of either Feminis, Existentialism, or Reader-Response Criticism. Be sure to address both the critical theory and the interpretive practice. Your essay should cover
1. a general overview of Marxism
2. a specific understanding of a particular Marxist theorist
3. a general understanding of the second theory
4. a specific understanding of a particular theorist from the second theory
5. a comparison and contrast of the two theories
• Essay 2: Interpretation
• Select any work of literature (play, poetry, fiction, graphic novel, film, or television program; approved by your professor by Thursday, April 18) and read it through the lens of any two theorists in the course (articles marked theory, not articles marked overview, on the syllabus). While previous interpretive essays required you to "show your work" by demonstrating your knowledge of the theorists, use the Bedford edition criticisms on Jane Eyre and Lois Tyson's reading of The Great Gatsby as model essays that seamlessly apply and integrate the critical theory into their interpretive arguments.
• Your essay should provide
1. a focused thesis that makes an overarching interpretive claim, controls your argument, and structures your paper
2. textual evidence from the literary work
3. literary analysis of textual evidence adhering to the critical approach of two particular theorists that we've read (not Tyson and not the critics in Jane Eyre)
4. sufficient explanation of the particular theorists so that the reader understands how and why you're applying them
• Due: Wednesday, May 1 in GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Exam 3
• If I do not receive or cannot open your paper, I will email you the day after your paper is due. If I do not receive or cannot open your paper within two days of its due date, you will fail the paper and the class.
• Length: Each essay should be 5-7 pages long, for a total of 10-14 pages, not including the Works Cited page. Exams not meeting the length requirement will be penalized per syllabus policy.
• Format: MLA style in Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, or Rich-Text Format.
• Per syllabus policy, conform your take-home exam to MLA style, or one-third of a letter grade will be penalized for improprieties in each of the following categories: 1) heading, running header, and margins, 2) font and line-spacing, and 3) in-text quoting and block quoting.
• Grades, Comments, and Paper Return:
• You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four specific theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists in a thesis-driven interpretive essay.
• You can access your final grade in the course via PAWS after May 9.
• In order to read and assess all the exams and papers in my four classes by the final grade deadline, I will not be giving feedback on final project this semester. I am glad to put your exam grade in GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Exam 3 if you ask me to do so on your paper. I am happy to provide exam feedback at the beginning of fall semester if you email me to set up a conference.

Student	Work of Literature	Theorists
Danielle Bechtold	Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz	Woolf Althusser
Hillary Chance	El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero	Foucault Woolf
Megan Dent	Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	Lacan Woolf
Emily Frazier	Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil	Horkheimer and Adorno Rich
Taylor Green	Chopin, The Awakening
Jessica Jackson	Mishima, Confessions of a Mask	Foucault Freud
Erica Jones	Lee, Crooklyn
Kristin Karschner	Chopin, The Awakening or	Gilbert and Gubar Woolf
Tess Lyle	Addonizio, poem	Mulvey de Beauvoir
David Porter	Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle	Freud Sartre
Jaimee Yearwood	Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds	Foucault Kristeva
Catherine Ziemann	Du Maurier, Rebecca	Iser Gilbert and Gubar Mulvey