Assignments
English 3900 Critical Approaches to Literature, Spring 2016
TR 2:00-3:15PM, Arts & Sciences 340B
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.
- Setting: When and where was the piece written and what was happening (for instance, economically) during the time period historically and geographical location, and how does that affect the social, political, economic landscape of the work?
- Author: Who is the author? does she have a typical topic or theme? Does the author's biography (race, class, gender, nationality, etc.) affect the work? Is the work autobiographical? Is the work dran from personal experience of fantasy? What was the author's inspiration? What overall message is the author trying to send? What literary devices does the author use to convey her meaning? How did society impact the author?
- Audience: Who is the intended audience?
- Character: Who is the protagonist? the antagoist? Are characters, setting, or plot metaphorical, or do they only add to the story at a simple level? How are the characters affect by the setting? What are their relationships and attitudes to one another? How do the characters grow?
- Conflict: What are the conflicts?
- Plot and Structure: What pattern the plot follow? How is the piece structured? What dype of ending does it have?
- Point of View: What is the point of view?
- Symbol: What symbols are present?
- Tone: What is the tone?
- Theme: How was the work received and how did the text impact society? Why is the work relevant now? Does it have aesthetic, cultural, or ideological significance? Is there a deeper purpose to the work beyond entertainment? What is the purpose, point, or meaning of the work? What is the universal theme?
- Literariness: How does the work compare to other works produced at the same time and/or in the same genre?
- Identity politics: How were women, gays and lesbians, and (economically) oppressed people portrayed in the piece?
Here are the questions the theorists we're reading would ask any work of literature:
- Formalisms (Liberal Humanism, 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
- 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.
- Overview: . . . how should the text be classified in terms of its genre?
- Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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)
- How does the context and content of the work relate to the social-class status of the author?
- How does the literary genre relate to the social period which produced it?
- How is the literary form determined by social, economic, and political circumstance?
(Peter Barry, Beginning Theory 161)
- 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
- Overview: Does the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist, or classist values?
In Class Activities
1. The New Critical and Russian Formalist Approaches to Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead"
Break into four groups and discuss the Interpretation Survey questions above for your group's assigned theorist.
- John Crowe Ransom
- Cleanth Brooks
- William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley
- Boris Eichenbaum
2. Reviewing the Theories with Kare Chopin's The Awakening
Today, we'll review for the exam by asking and answering the questions literary theorists would ask of The Awakening. Each of you will be assigned one theorist's set of queries.
- Formalisms Overview (Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, Russian Formalism)
- T. S. Eliot
- John Crowe Ransom
- Cleanth Brooks
- William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley
- Boris Eichenbaum
- Structuralism Overview: Narrative Operations
- Structuralism Overview: Codes of Interpretion
- Structuralism Overview: Cultural Semiotics
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Roman Jakobson
- Northrop Frye
- Tzvetan Todorov
- 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 2-3 pages long,
- be formatted in MLA style in Word or RTF format (I suggest using this template),
- summarize the article's argument for approaching literature (if there are multiple articles on the syllabus by a single author, summarize only one),
- 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 2-3 pages long,
- be formatted in MLA style in Word or RTF format (I suggest using this template),
- 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 (Chopin's The Awakening, Lowell's "For the Union Dead," or Shakespeare's Hamlet)
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
- Your written assignment will be due in both 1) GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Article Summaries and Critical Readings and 2) GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Article Summary and Critical Reading on the Sunday before we are scheduled to discuss an article. If you do not submit your written summary to GeorgiaVIEW at least one day before the article is discussed in class, you will fail the assignment. It is your responsibility to check the sign up schedule and complete the assignment on time.
- 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.
- I will return your graded assignment to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Article Summary and Critical Reading approximately one week after we discuss the article in class. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I am unable to return graded assignments to you unless and until you submit them to the Dropbox.
- For example, we are scheduled to discuss Frye on Thursday, 1-24. Therefore, someone's summary will be due in GeorgiaVIEW by Sunday, 1-24. 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 and Critical Reading. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I cannot return your graded paper unless and until you upload it to the Dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
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.
Sign Up
Sign up for two slots: one article summary (AS) and one critical reading (CR) at least three weeks apart.
| Written Due Date | Oral Due Date |
Reading | Student |
|---|---|---|---|
Jakobson |
AS |
||
CR |
|||
Frye |
AS |
||
CR Samantha Strickland |
|||
Todorov |
AS |
||
CR |
|||
Barthes |
AS Micah Parr |
||
CR |
|||
AS Samantha Strickland |
|||
CR Micah Parr |
|||
Derrida |
AS Michael Faulknor |
||
CR Hannah Sims |
|||
de Man |
AS Matt Dombrowski |
||
CR Abbie Killebrew |
|||
Butler |
AS Matthew Cornelison |
||
CR Sarah Rogers |
|||
Baudrillard |
AS Walter Rabon |
||
CR Michael Faulknor |
|||
Lacan |
|||
CR Matt Dombroswki |
|||
Kristeva |
AS Sarah Rogers |
||
CR Tiffany Bennett |
|||
Deleuze and Guattari |
AS Abbie Killebrew |
||
CR Christine Hammond |
|||
Mulvey |
AS Hannah Sims |
||
CR Walter Rabon |
|||
Trotsky |
AS Kristen Johnson |
||
CR Courtney Osborne |
|||
Lukács |
AS Tiffany Bennett |
||
CR Matthew Cornelison |
|||
Horkheimer and Adorno |
AS Christine Hammond |
||
CR Kristen Johnson |
Reading Journal or Blog
You will keep a private reading journal or public blog that interprets an outside work of literature from the range of positions held by the various theorists studied in class.
By Tuesday, January 19, select a work of literature (a long poem, a dense short story, a novel, a play, a film, or a television show) and submit the title to GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Reading Journal or Blog.
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. If you wish to keep a public blog, you can use a site like WordPress or Blogger. If you wish to keep a private reading journal, you should submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Reading Journal or Blog. Blogs will be read and journals will be collected a few times during the semester as noted below. 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 that are one week late will receive no credit.
Here are the entry weeks and potential theorists' works to respond to:
| Entry/Week | Works |
|---|---|
1 January 21 |
Ransom, Brooks, Wimsatt, and/or Eichenbaum |
2 January 28 |
Barry, Saussure, Jakobson, and/or Frye Entries 1-2 Due on January 28 |
3 February 4 |
Todorov and/or Barthes |
4 February 18 |
Foucault and/or Derrida Entries 3-4 Due on February 18 |
5 February 25 |
de Man, Austin, and/or Butler |
6 March 3 |
Baudrillard, Cixous, and/or Freud |
7 March 10 |
Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, and/or Deleuze Entries 5-7 Due on March 10 |
8 March 31 |
Mulvey, Žižek, and/or Marx |
9 April 7 |
Trotsky, Lukács, Benjamin, Horkheimer and Adorno, Althusser, and/or Jameson |
10 April 14 |
Jauss or Fish |
11 April 21 |
Anderson, Anzaldúa, Fanon, or Wă Thiong’o Entries 8-11 Due on April 21 |
Here are the student selections:
| Student | Work |
|---|---|
Tiffany Bennett |
Focus (film) |
Matthew Cornelison |
Hemingway, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (short story) |
Matthew Dombrowski |
Girls (television series) |
Michael Faulknor |
Prison Break (television series) |
Christine Hammond |
Lowry, The Giver (novel) |
Kristen Johnson |
Dexter (television series) |
Abby Killebrew |
Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (novel) |
Courtney Osborne |
Jackson, "The Lottery" (short story) |
Micah Parr |
Seven Pounds (film) |
Walter Rabon |
South Park (television series) |
Sarah Rogers |
Supernatural (television series) |
Hannah Sims |
True Detective, Season 1 (television series) |
| Samantha Strickland |
Austen, Pride and Prejudice (novel) |
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 and 2-3 theoretical articles it will teach as well as provide the professor with clean copies of the articles (if not in Barry's Beginning Theory and 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 Barry's) [see the professor if Barry doesn'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 The Awakening, "For the Union Dead," or Hamlet
Parameters
- Time: 30-40 minute presentation, 10 minute question and answer session
- Format: Use any audiovisuals you wish, like a Powerpoint, Prezi, or website
- Due: The presentation is due on the group's scheduled date. One group member should submit the presentation file (if applicable) to GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Group Presentation.
- Grade: Your assignment will be assessed in terms of understanding and presentatio of the theoretical overview, primary theories, and critical reading. Retrieve your graded assignment in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Group Presentation approximately one week after you submit. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I cannot return your graded assignment unless and until you upload a file to the Dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
- Group Policy: Each group member is responsible for staying connected with the group, attending meetings, actively participating in meetings, doing her delegated work, i.e., contributing her fair share to the project. In order to hold singular members accountable in a team project, each group member should individually compose and submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Group Presentation - Individual Evaluation a paragraph that assesses their own performance and their peer's service to the assignment. If it becomes apparent that a group member did not participate (skipped meetings, didn't complete her assigned work, etc.), that member will be assessed individually rather than receive the group grade.
Sign Up
You will sign up for 3 groups of 4-5 on Thursday, March 3.
| Date | Theory | Students |
|---|---|---|
Group 1 Reader-Response Criticism |
Matthew Cornelison |
|
Michael Faulknor |
||
Walter Rabon |
||
Hannah Sims |
||
Group 2 Postcolonial Criticism |
Matthew Dombrowski |
|
Kristen Johnson |
||
Abbie Killebrew |
||
Courtney Osbourne |
||
Group 3 Feminism and Gender Studies |
Tiffany Bennett |
|
Christine Hammond |
||
Micah Parr |
||
Sarah Rogers |
||
Samantha Strickland |
Theory Selection
Groups will report their first and second choices of critical approach from the list above on Thursday, March 10.
Exam 1
Exam 1 will cover formalism (Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, and Russian Formalism) and structuralism (structuralist linguistics, semiotics, archetypal criticism, narrative theory) and will be taken in class on Tuesday, February 9. 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: Ai's "Fairy Tale," Anne Sexton's "Red Riding Hood," or Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves." 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 formalism 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.
- Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, Russian Formalism
- Barry, "Liberal Humanism" (general overview)
- ten tenets of liberal humanism (timelessness of literature, the text itself, close reading, literary continuity, individuality, literature as moral enhancement, form and content, sincerity, show don't tell, interpretation as mediation between text and reader)
- Blazer, "New Criticism" lecture (overview)
- practical criticism
- intrinsic, objective, and formalist criticism (as opposed to philological, biographical, and historical criticism)
- close reading
- "the text itself"
- organic unity
- ambiguity, irony, and paradox
- Blazer, "Russian Formalism" lecture (overview)
- text as autonomous object
- revolution of literary language vs conventional language
- 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
- Barry, "Structuralism" (overview)
- structure
- surface phenomenom vs underlying structure
- structural linguistics
- diachrony/synchrony
- langue/parole
- difference
- arbitrary
- binary opposition
- signifier/signified/sign
- structural anthropology
- myth and mythemes
- three practices of structuralist literary analysis
- semiotics
- Barthes' analysis of sign systems
- genre criticism
- Frye's theory of myths, archetypal criticism
- narratology/narrative theory
(you don't need to know all of these! just be able to discuss/apply one or two)
- Aristotle's hamartia, anagorisis, and peripeteia
- Propp's morphology of fairy tale functions and spheres of action
- Genette's story/narrative/narration, tense (order/duration/frequency), mood (distance/perspective), voice
- interpretive conventions
- Culler's literary conventions, competence, and interpretive communities
- 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
- a general overview of poststructuralist theory
- a specific understanding of a particular poststructuralist theorist (Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous)
- a general understanding of psychoanalytic theory
- a specific understanding of a particular psychoanalytic theorist (Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek)
- a comparison and contrast of the two theories
- Essay 2: Interpretation
- Choose either 1) a poem or poems by Emily Dickinson (available on PoetryFoundation.org), 2) William H. Gass's "Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop's" (available in the GeorgiaVIEW course packet) or 3) Denis Villeneuve's film Enemy (available on Amazon Prime and iTunes), 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
- 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)
- 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)
- a comparison and contrast of the two readings
- Due: GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Exam 2 on Tuesday, March 29
- Length: 5-7 pages per essay, 10-14 pages total, submitted in a single file
- Format: MLA style in Word or RTF format (I suggest using this template)
- 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 > Course Work > Dropbox > Exam 2 approximately one week after you submit it. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I cannot return your graded paper unless and until you upload it to the Dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
Exam 3
- Essay 1: Theory
- Compare and contrast Marxism and your choice of either Reader-Response Criticism, Feminist Criticism, or Postcolonial Criticism. Be sure to address both the critical theory and the interpretive practice. Your essay should cover
- a general overview of Marxism
- a specific understanding of a particular Marxist theorist
- a general understanding of the second theory
- a specific understanding of a particular theorist from the second theory
- a comparison and contrast of the two theories
- Compare and contrast Marxism and your choice of either Reader-Response Criticism, Feminist Criticism, or Postcolonial Criticism. Be sure to address both the critical theory and the interpretive practice. Your essay should cover
- Essay 2: Interpretation
- Select any work of literature (play, poetry, fiction, graphic novel, film, or television program; approved by your professor by Thursday, April 21) 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 The Awakening and Hamlet as model essays that seamlessly apply and integrate the critical theory into their interpretive arguments.
- Your essay should provide
- a focused thesis that makes an overarching interpretive claim, controls your argument, and structures your paper
- textual evidence from the literary work
- literary analysis of textual evidence adhering to the critical approach of two particular theorists that we've read (not the general overviews by Barry, Murfin, and Tyson; not the critics in The Awakening and Hamlet)
- sufficient explanation of the particular theorists so that the reader understands how and why you're applying them
- Due: GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Exam 3 on Wednesday, May 4
- 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: 5-7 pages per essay, 10-14 pages total, submitted in a single file
- Format: MLA style in Word or RTF format (I suggest using this template)
- 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.
- You can access your final grade in the course via PAWS after May 11.
- 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 projects this semester. I am glad to put your exam grade in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > 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. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
| Student | Work of Literature | Theorists |
|---|---|---|
Tiffany Bennett |
Pleasantville (Ross, 1998) |
Freud, Lacan |
Matthew Cornelison |
Melville, poetry |
Wimsatt and Beardsley, Jauss |
Matthew Dombrowski |
The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012) |
Jameson, Mulvey |
Michael Faulknor |
Titanic (Cameron, 1997) |
Althusser, Wimsatt and Beardsley |
Christine Hammond |
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet |
Wittig, Žižek |
Kristen Johnson |
Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions |
Butler, Anzaldúa |
Abbie Killebrew |
O'Connor, "The River" |
Derrida, Lacan |
Courtney Osborne |
Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" |
Freud, Gilbert and Gubar |
Micah Parr |
My Sister's Keeper (Cassavetes, 2009) |
Derrida, de Man |
Walter Rabon |
Ultimate Spider-Man (2000-2011) |
Brooks, Frye |
Sarah Rogers |
The Princess Bride (Reiner, 1987) |
Frye, Mulvey |
Hannah Sims |
Avatar (Cameron, 2009) |
Marx, Trotsky |
Samantha Strickland |
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004) |
Cixous, Žižek |