Overview:



In this final lecture on literary theory, Professor Paul Fry revisits the relationship between language and speech, language and intention, and language and communication. Over the course of this discussion, he retrospectively defines theory as a means of establishing the extent to which "it is legitimate to be suspicious of communication." Along the way, he reconnects with New Criticism, Jakobson, Bakhtin, Saussure, de Man, Fish, and Knapp and Michaels. Through an analysis of epitaphs and a final tour through Tony the Tow Truck, he underscores the central role of language in the variety of literary theories presented in the course.

1. Introduction
2. Introduction (cont.)
3. Ways In and Out of the Hermeneutic Circle
4. Configurative Reading
5. The Idea of the Autonomous Artwork
6. The New Criticism and Other Western Formalisms
7. Russian Formalism
8. Semiotics and Structuralism
9. Linguistics and Literature
10. Deconstruction I
11. Deconstruction II
12. Freud and Fiction
13. Jacques Lacan in Theory
14. Influence
15. The Postmodern Psyche
16. The Social Permeability of Reader and Text
17. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
18. The Political Unconscious
19. The New Historicism
20. The Classical Feminist Tradition
21. African-American Criticism
22. Post-Colonial Criticism
23. Queer Theory and Gender Performativity
24. The Institutional Construction of Literary Study
25. The End of Theory?; Neo-Pragmatism
26. Reflections; Who Doesn't Hate Theory Now?

In this course, Prof. Paul H. Fry gives 26 video lectures on Theory of Literature. This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?