What makes a given text “literary”, and what does “literature” mean? What kind of “work” can literary and other cultural representations (in films or the visual arts), which we encounter on a daily basis, accomplish? What definitions of culture exist that illuminate our study of literature? Does something like good literature exist, and if so, what defines its value? This lecture seeks to test some of our underlying assumptions when we read, categorize and evaluate literary texts. Thus, this lecture will address topics such as canon formation, the figure of the reader, defamiliarization, ideology and interpellation, popular vs. high culture and postmodernism – just to give a few examples.

This lecture has a strong theoretical focus. The theoretical reading will include texts  by Wolfgang Iser, Viktor Shklovsky,  Raymond Williams, Susan Sontag, and Frederic Jameson, among several others. However, students can rest assured that these theoretical observations will be matched by a variety of illustrative literary examples from modern literature in English. In fact, one of the central aims of this lecture is to show students how theory can be applied to literary texts.

• Students can give accounts of the relationship between literature and broader contexts of cultural production.
• Students can relate the specific features of literary communication to other signifying practices.
• Students can identify and describe central theoretical concepts and approaches and apply these to literary texts.

Texts:

All texts will be made available on Moodle. Regarding literary texts, we will mainly work with excerpts (e.g., from Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca or Henry James, The Turn of the Screw) or shorter texts each week. There are no set long texts to be read in advance. Students curious to know which primary texts will be discussed can request a list early in February.