Text:
David H. Richter, ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 2nd ed. Boston: St. Martins, 1998.
Requirements and Grading:
1. Each member of the class will be responsible for providing orally one brief (10-15 minute) introduction to the readings being discussed that day. In addition to the specific concepts found in the readings, we will be interested in those historical events, cultural practices, institutional structures, prevalent beliefs, etc. that affected the theory and practice of rhetoric at that time. (With #2 below, this counts as 10% of your final grade.)
2. On the day that you give your introduction, you will be responsible for providing a 10-entry bibliography of the most recent and important articles and books about the authors or period we are discussing during one class period. You should post these on the Blackboard class site at least one full day prior to the class meeting.
3. Each member of the class will be responsible for locating and reading, then summarizing and discussing in class, one significant critical or historical article or book chapter about a reading for one week. You must provide an outline of your summary, posting it on Blackboard at least one full day prior to the class meeting. (10%)
4. Each member of the class will be responsible for providing five typed questions about the week's reading every week. These should be placed in the instructor's departmental mailbox by noon the preceding Monday. Students must be prepared to discuss their questions in class. (part of class participation grade)
5. Papers and exams. Papers should be intensive analyses of one aspect of one of the theories discussed in class. Exams will be two-hour essays, written in class. You may choose from the following alternatives:
a. Two brief, 7-10 page research papers, due on Oct. 29 and Dec. 3. Both should be typed and documented in MLA style. (25% each)
b. Two exams, a mid-term to be given on Oct. 15, and a final to be given on Dec. 17. (25% each)
c. One exam and one paper, your choice. (25% each)
5. Class participation. (20%)
Class Schedule
Week 1, Aug. 15
Introduction to Course
Week 2, Aug. 22
Plato, Republic, Book X
Week 3, Aug. 29
Aristotle, Poetics
Week 4, Sept. 5
David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 4
Sept. 5—LABOR DAY HOLIDAY
Week 5, Sept. 12
Immanuel Kant, excerpts from Critique of Judgment
Week 6, Sept. 19
G. W. F. Hegel, "Introduction" to the Philosophy of Art
Week 7, Sept. 26
Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"
Friedrich Nietzsche, excerpt from The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music
Karl Marx, "Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions"
Week 8, Oct.3
--Mid-Semester Examination--
(Oct. 10—Fall Break)
Week 9, Oct. 17
T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
Mikhail Bakhtin, excerpts from Discourse in the Novel
Kenneth Burke, "Literature as Equipment for Living"
Week 10, Oct. 24
--First Paper Due--
Georg Lukacs, "The Ideology of Modernism"
Raymond Williams, excerpts from Marxism and Literature
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding
to the Status of Hermeneutic Principle”
Week 11, Oct. 31
Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique”
I. A. Richards, excerpt from Principles of Literary Criticism
Cleanth Brooks, "Irony as a Principle of Structure"
Week 12, Nov. 7
Northrop Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature"
Harold Bloom, "A Meditation upon Priority"
Peter Brooks, “Freud’s Masterplot”
Week 13, Nov. 14
Jan Mukarovsky, "Standard Language and Poetic Language"
Jonathan Culler, "Literary Competence"
Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach"
Week 14, Nov. 21
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences"
Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric"
Stanley Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum”
Week 15, Nov. 28
--Second Paper Due--
Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, "Against Theory"
Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”
Week 16, Dec. 5
FINAL EXAM