This course will focus on several varieties of critical texts relevant to literary study, from Aristotle's Poetics to post-modern and other contemporary selections. Among the points of view represented in the authors we read will be blends of formalism, structuralism, Marxism, feminism, gender studies, cultural studies, psychological and psychoanalytic approaches, reader-response theory, poetics, narratology, and ethics and literature. Many of our selections will be from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, which I will supplement with several handouts (on ecocriticism, ethics and other topics).
Students will be asked to post brief responses to the course texts on our ICON discussion board, to bring in questions and "applications" for class discussion, and to write two critical essays evaluating course material and related readings.