Introduction to Literary Theory (200-0-1)

Instructors

Wenhan Zhang

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-325: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

This course offers an introduction to key works of criticism and major theories of the study of literature. We will ask questions at the very heart of literary studies: what is literature and what are its uses? How do human beings exist in language and imagine different worlds through it? How does literature employ form to address matters of experience, subjecthood, and society? And how are the literatures of the world related across their differences? We will survey debates about these questions in the criticism of the past as well as in recent, cutting-edge theory, emphasizing modes of reading critically in relation to dynamics of race, class, gender, and sexuality. While the readings in this class will mostly consist of theoretical texts as opposed to literature, we will read the theory itself as a "literary" object, blurring the lines between literature and its criticism as we compare larger patterns of cultural representation across time and space.

This course serves as an introduction to the major in Comparative Literary Studies, but it is open to all students who are serious in their curiosity about the nature of literary expression.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area