Literary theory is an important pillar of literary analysis. When we study literary texts, theory provides tools that allow us to identify and explore more abstract or general properties of the narrative act and literary writing. There exists a bewildering variety of theoretical approaches and schools, literary theorists, so-called “turns” and “-isms” that students are likely to encounter during their studies. While this lecture cannot give a comprehensive overview of literary theory in its entirety, it will introduce students of English to an array of theoretical approaches that are particularly relevant and useful for our discipline. We will study some by now classical theoretical strands (e.g., deconstruction, Marxist literary criticism, feminism) as well as more recent developments (e.g., new materialism, ecocriticism), and we will pay attention to agents (e.g., the author, the reader) as well as the main object of our interest: the text as such. The putting theory into practice part will be especially important, as theoretical readings and explanations will be matched with literary examples coming from a various periods and corners of the anglophone world.

• Students are able to confidently engage with theoretical concepts when analyzing literary texts.
• Students can provide persuasive accounts of major theoretical approaches and debates, as relevant for the study of English literature, in writing.
• Students are enabled to relate theoretical concepts to their textual analysis.

Texts:

Most of the material will be made available on Moodle. The one longer text that we will study and that will inform several sessions is Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw. The recommended edition is the Norton edition (2020) by Jonathan Warren, ISBN: 978-0393420371.

A useful accompanying text book is Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory. Manchester UP, 2017. ISBN-13: 978-1-5261-2179-0.

Copies can be bought at Librophoros.