Course Resources Archive

The module will provide a survey of influential theoretical investigations into the nature of literature, and related issues of representation, culture, subjectivity, history, and value.

The course will use lectures to provide context and overview, and seminars to explore readings of important primary texts on the nature of literature by writers such as Nietzsche, Freud, Woolf, Saussure, Sartre, Valery, Cixous, Barthes, Foucault, de Man, de Beauvoir, Zisek, Hardt, Negri and many others.

The course will involve readings of/from primary texts up to the present day, and assessment will involve students making thematic or topical connections to secondary readings in the Course Anthology, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

A student passing this module should be able to:

1. demonstrate an advanced understanding of the nature and origins of the theoretical positions and problems that shape the current understanding and practice of literary criticism
2. offer sophisticated and confident critical expositions of primary texts, both in class and in written work
3. write descriptively, reflectively and analytically about theoretical texts
4. make well-argued investigative and evaluative connections to other texts in the anthology and outside

The Library Catalogue contains full details of the current reading list for this module. Further details may also be found in the Module Guide.