ENGL 370 | History of Literary and Critical Theory

Ranging in breadth from antiquity to the present, this course familiarizes students with a tradition of writing about art and literature and debates about the meaning and meaningfulness of literature. Core concerns may include historically changing definitions of the literary, arguments about the value of art and literature, methodological approaches to the study or interpretation of texts, the relationship between art and culture or society, theories of language and representation, and the relationship between representation and identity. These works address such fundamental questions as how and why do we read literature? How does literature work and what might it mean? And what is the connection between literature and the extant world? Because the field of criticism and theory is so broad and varied, particular emphases vary by instructor. Areas covered may include Classicism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Hermeneutics, New Criticism, Reader-Response, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Cultural Criticism, New Historicism, Cognitive Theory, Speculative Realism, and Narrative Theory.