English 113MI: Class 1 (Jan. 7) — Introduction
- Course enrollment policy: Attendance will be taken of registered students and of students on the course wait list. A sign-up sheet will be passed out for other students wishing to take the course. Students must come to first three class meetings to hold their place in the course.
1. The Formalist Heritage
Class 2 (Jan. 9) — Background: The Defense of Literature
- Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy (written c. 1579; pub. 1595)
- Percy Shelley, A Defense of Poetry (1821)
Class 3 (Jan. 14) — New Criticism (1): Major Statements
- Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (1926)
- John Crowe Ransom, from "Wanted: An Ontological Critic" [PDF] (pp. 279-316 only) from his New Criticism (1941)
- Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" [PDF] from his The Well Wrought Urn (1947)
- Special Early Assignment: Because so many of the readings in this course are online, students are required by this class to demonstrate that they have the means to annotate and save copies of online materials according to one of the methods described here. Bring to class on your laptop or other digital device at least one copy of an assigned reading that you have highlighted or otherwise annotated in some way. (If you do not own a laptop, tablet, or other digital device, then bring a printed copy of one assigned reading.)
Class 4 (Jan. 16) — New Criticism (2): Major Statements
- W. K. Wimsatt, "The Concrete Universal" [PDF] (1947), rpt. in his The Verbal Icon (1954)
- Cleanth Brooks, excerpt from "Irony as a Principle of Structure" [PDF] (1949)
Class 5 (Jan. 21) — New Criticism (3): Practical Examples
- John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
- Cleanth Brooks, "Keats's Sylvan Historian" from his Well Wrought Urn (1947)
- W. K. Wimsatt, "The Structure of Romantic Nature Imagery" [PDF] (1949), rpt. in his The Verbal Icon
Class 6 (Jan. 23) — New Criticism (4): The Cultural Background
- From I'll Take My Stand by "Twelve Southerners" (1930):
- John Crowe Ransom, excerpt from "Reconstructed But Unregenerate" [PDF] (pp. 17-22 only)
- Andrew Nelson Lytle, excerpt from "The Hind Tit" [PDF] (pp. 216-234 only)
Class 7 (Jan. 28) — Russian Formalism (1)
- Early Representative Statement:
- Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" (1917)
(in required book: Lemon & Reis, ed., Russian Formalist Criticism) - Attack, Defense, Retrospect:
- Boris Eichenbaum, "The Theory of the 'Formal Method'" (1926)
(in required book: Lemon & Reis, ed., Russian Formalist Criticism)
Class 8 (Jan. 30) — Russian Formalism (2)
- Boris Tomashevsky, from "Thematics" (1925): read only pp. 66-87, 92-95
(in required book: Lemon & Reis, ed., Russian Formalist Criticism)
4-page paper due (see Assignments)
2. From Formalism to Poststructuralism
Class 9 (Feb. 4) — Structuralism (1): The Language Paradigm
- Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics (1915) [PDF & other formats available], read only Part I, Chapters 1-2 (pp. 65-78), and Part II, Chapters 4-5 (pp. 111-127) -- [Note: page numbers of this PDF and the original book's pagination are the same]
- Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth" (1951) [PDF] (paywalled; UCSB students have free access from UCSB campus or Library Proxy server)
Class 10 (Feb. 6) — Structuralism (2): The Anthropological Paradigm
- Claude Lévi-Strauss, from Savage Mind (1962):
- "The Science of the Concrete" [PDF 1]: read only pp. 1-14 of PDF 1 (up until "The problem of art has been touched on several times . . .")
- "The Logic of Totemic Classification" [PDF 2]: read only pp. 23-44 of PDF 2 (pp. 35- 74 in original book's pagination) --Note: read this chapter for the main idea; you can skim parts of it. PDF 1 is a different, poorer scan of Lévi-Strauss than PDF 1 above.
- Diagram of "the totemic operator" from "Categories, Elements, Species, Numbers," p. 86 of PDF 2 (p. 152 in original book's pagination): look at this diagram and read its explanation in the text.
Class 11 (Feb. 11) — [No Class]
Class 12 (Feb. 13) — Structuralism into Deconstruction
- Honoré de Balzac, "Sarrasine" (1830), in required book: Roland Barthes, S/Z, pp. 221-54
- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970) -- Note: the reading assignment for S/Z, the major text for this class, is open-ended. The book is probably too long for you to finish. Read at least pp. 3-33 plus as much of it as you wish to (no one is expected to finish)
Class 13 (Feb. 18) — Deconstruction (1): Derrida
Class 14 (Feb. 20) — Deconstruction (2): Derrida
- Jacques Derrida, "The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing" (1967), from his Of Grammatology [PDF]: pp. 77-94 of this PDF (pp. 6-26 in original book's pagination)
Class 15 (Feb. 25) — Deconstruction (3): Paul de Man and "The Yale School"
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Triumph of Life [PDF] (1822): pp. 5-28 in this PDF
- Paul de Man, "Shelley Disfigured" [PDF] (1979)
Class 16 (Feb. 27) — Poststructuralism and Feminist Theory
- Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa" [PDF] (1975)
- Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which Is Not One" [PDF] (1977), from This Sex Which Is Not One: pp. 11-16 in this PDF (pp. 23-33 in original book's pagination)
2. After Poststructuralism
(Focusing on Cultural Criticism)
Class 17 (Mar. 4) — Foucault (1)
- Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1961), pp. ix-116, 198, 241-89 (required book)
Class 18 (Mar. 6) — Foucault (2)
- Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (continued)
- Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" [PDF] (1969)
- Michel Foucault, "Preface" from The Order of Things (1966) [PDF]
Class 19 (Mar. 11) — Cultural Anthropology & New Historicism
- Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" from The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
- Stephen Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion" [PDF] (1985; original version 1981)
- Louis Montrose, "Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History" [PDF] (1986) (paywalled; UCSB students have free access from UCSB campus or Library Proxy server)
Class 20 (Mar. 13) — Literary Theory Today and the Digital Age
- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, "Rhizome" [PDF], from A Thousand Plateaus (1980): pp. 24-46 of this PDF (pp. 3-25 in original book's pagination)
- George P. Landow, "Hypertext and Critical Theory (excerpt, pp. 1-11)" [PDF], from Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (1992)
- Alan Liu, "From Reading to Social Computing" (2013)
8 page paper due on March 14th (see Assignments, Examples of possible topics)