Annotation
Recent and Contemporary Trends in Literary Studies
Martin Procházka
Summer semester, two units per week, 14:10-15:45 Room 111
The first class will take place on 20 February 2024. Time and venue remain the same (Tue, 14:10 - 15:45, Room 111).
MA in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures - mandatory
OBJECTIVES
To acquaint students with selected Post-structuralist trends by means of reading and discussing complex theoretical texts. To trace the position of literary studies in the changing structure of the humanities during the last three decades of the twentieth and at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
PROCEDURE
The sessions will start with the instructor’s comments introducing the topic of the class and discussed text(s). In the second part, student answers to a short quiz, sent to them via e-mail during the preceding week, will be discussed. The quiz will consist of several (up to 5) questions with multiple choice answers. In order to be admitted to the oral exam, students must complete all quizzes and send them via e-mail to the instructor. The third part of the session will include questions and answers concerning the topic of the class and individual texts.
MATERIAL
Butler, Bodies that Matter (Introduction)
Culler, On Deconstruction (a selection) de Man, "Resistance to Theory," Yale French Studies, 63 (1982):3-20
"Form and Intent in American New Criticism", in Blindness and Insight
"Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist's Über das Marionettentheater", in The Rhetoric of Romanticism
Deleuze, "Bartleby, or the Formula", in : Essays Critical and Clinical
Derrida, "Letter to a Japanese Friend" in Kamuf,, ed., A Derrida Reader
"Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences", in Writing and Difference
Greenblatt, "Towards a Poetics of Culture", in Veeser, ed., The New Historicism
Greenblatt, Gunn, Redrawing the Boundaries(Introduction)
Hawthorn, A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, Arnold
Har¬tman, Preface to Deconstruction and Criticism
Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Studies of Myth", in Structural Anthropology
Makaryk, ed., Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, Toronto
White, Metahistory (Introduction)
Procházka, Literary Theory. A Historical Introduction
NOTE 1. The course develops and expands some themes discussed in the four last chapters of the course-book Literary Theory. A Historical Introduction. 2. BA students and Erasmus Students will not be admitted. If they enrol, they will be deregistered by the instructor.
ASSESSMENT
Students of the MA in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures programme, Single Subject: Submission of answers to all quizzes (see above - PROCEDURE) via e-mail. Active participation in discussions based on detailed knowledge of assigned texts, submission of an essay (3000 wds. min.; one resubmission allowed) dealing with a selected theoretical or interpretive problem, passing an oral examination (themes: main trends in recent and contemporary literary studies, philosophical problems of recent approaches to literature, specific problems of texts discussed in the seminar). br>
COURSE SCHEDULE: see Moodle
