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Literary Criticism and Critical Theory
Course Objectives:
The course will enable the students to:
- Recognise the principles of critical theory in the shaping of literature
- Trace the historical development of literary theory and its role in English studies
- Develop an enhanced ability to read, contextualize, and compare primary material by different literary theorists
Course Outcomes -
The students will:
- Formulate the history of criticism and literary theories
- Identify the textual application of critical theories
- Construct application-based knowledge of key ideas and debates in modern literary theory Compare and contrast diverse literary criticisms, theories in application.
Aristotle
Poetics
T. S. Eliot
Tradition and the Individual Talent
Poststructuralism: Roland Barthes
(pp. 72-76 from M.A.R. Habib)
Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida
Extract from
“Derrida, Deconstruction and Literary Interpretation” (from lib.kshs.kh.edu.tw/lib/journals/journals-94/P145.pdf)
Western Feminism: Feminisms
(pp.82-90, 94-108 from Pramod K. Nayar)
Indian Feminism: A People Without a History?
(pp. 1-10 & 23 from Jasbir Jain)
Psychoanalytic Criticism (pp. 63-73 from Pramod K. Nayar)
Postcolonial Theory (pp.153-72 & 175-78 from Pramod K. Nayar)
Source Books:
Enright and Chickera eds. English Critical Texts.OUP, 1997.
Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism. Pearson, 2010.
Suggested Readings:
Das, Bijoy and J.M. Mohanty. Literary Criticism: A Reading. OUP, 1989.
Olsen, Flemming. Eliot’s Objective Correlative: Tradition or Individual Talent: Contributions to the History of a Topos.Susan Academic Press, 2014.
Wilfred L. Guerin, etal: A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. OUP, 1999.