ENG 231 Literary Criticism: Theory and Practice
In this course, we learn how to use literary theory to see more in the works we study and love. We begin with classic statements by authors from Plato to Susan Sontag, because so much of the conversation begins with them. Then we turn to twentieth and twenty-first century critical methods, from the New Criticism, beginning in the 1930s, to such contemporary theory-based approaches as gender studies, queer theory, postcolonialism, race and ethnic studies, the new historicism, and ecocriticism. Each student adopts a literary work they already know well as a test case for the theories we encounter. (The choice of work is entirely open.) The course has two aims: first, to help us become more aware of what we do, and why we do it, when we study literature; and, second, to help us write better criticism ourselves, as we apply a range of methods to the works we study.