Overview:



In this first lecture on the theory of literature in social contexts, Professor Paul Fry examines the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Hans Robert Jauss. The relation of their writing to formalist theory and the work of Barthes and Foucault is articulated. The dimensions of Bakhtin's heteroglossia, along with the idea of common language, are explored in detail through a close reading of the first sentence of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. Jauss's study of the history of reception is explicated with reference to Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and the Broadway revival of Damn Yankees.



Reading assignment:



Jauss, Hans Robert. "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory." In The Critical Tradition, pp. 981-88



Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Heteroglossia in the Novel." In The Critical Tradition, pp. 588-93

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?