Introduction to Literary Criticism and Theory II

This course builds on a foundational capacity to read, talk about, and write about critical and literary theory. It is recommended but not required for students to have taken the preceding course from the Fall Term, English 296, as we will employ lines of thinking that will have been established so far. In English 297, we will examine how theorists and literary critics question, revise, and even undermine methods of interpretation and theories of language that dominated the field until the second half of the 20th century. We will continue to examine the structures of language itself, how it mediates culture, and how it constitutes the subject, but from different kinds of subject positions and contexts of power. Students will also cultivate their literary analysis skills by devoting more time to put theory into dialogue with literary fiction.