ENGL 217 - Literary Theory and Interpretation

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

 

Topic for 2021/22b: Literary Theory as Equipment for Living. This class takes its title from Kenneth Burke’s essay “Literature as Equipment for Living.” Following Burke’s lead, we  adopt a pragmatic approach to the reading and discussion of a wide range of ongoing theoretical debates. In each instance we ask how does this theory applies to life? – although (spoiler alert), life itself might turn out to be a social text. A primary learning goal of the class is to master a durable set of critical terms, not as esoteric knowledge, but as strategies for, in Burke’s words, the “naming of situations.” The thinkers we tackle cluster around topics like language and identity (Peirce, Saussure, Jakobson), mimesis and critical fabulation (Aristotle, Oscar Wilde, Benjamin, Saidiya Hartman), ideology and false consciousness (Lukács, Barthes, Althusser, Butler), the beautiful and the sublime (Burke, Kant, Scarry, Nietzsche), and trauma and narrative (Freud, Butler, Anne Cheng). Heesok Chang.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS