Our texts will include work by Plato, de Rougemont, Irigaray, Barthes, Theweleit, Kluge, Silverman, and others. There will be several short papers and a take-home exam. You will need to be prepared every week for some serious reading, talking, and thinking. Sounds easy enough.
Attendance is required.
Grading will be based on class participation and several short papers and written exercises. This is the first course in a two-course sequence that provides an introduction to the history of literary theory in the West. The first course in the sequence will study literary theory from its beginnings to the end of the eighteenth century. Because it treats a broad chronology and a wide range of national cultures, the course must be vastly selective. Its aim is to study some of the great documents in intellectual history in order to gain a knowledge of the fundamental ideas that underlie our modern notion of literature.