Objectives and competences
To familiarize students with major British and American novels of the past two centuries
To familiarize students with the major literary-critical schools of the 20th century
To expose students to the varieties of interpretive constructs available in reading fiction, especially the novel
To expand critical terminology
To practice using the approaches and terminology in constructing critiques of British and American novels
Content (Syllabus outline)
• History and function of criticism
• Tradition of the English and American Novel: The Great Tradition, Modernism, Anti-modernism, Postmodernism
• Critical approaches to the novel (Formalism, Structuralism, Psychoanalytical criticism, New Criticism, Marxist criticism, Cultural Materialism, Reader Response approaches, Feminist Literary Criticism, Postcolonial critical approaches, New Historicism, Text Deconstruction)
• Using critical approaches in writing about the novel.
Readings
Bronner, S. E. 2017. Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford.
The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, Ed. R. C. Murfin & S. M. Ray, Bedford, 2003.
Hawthorn, Jeremy. Studying the Novel: An Introduction. London: Arnold, 1997.
Selected British and American novels, for example:
Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism), Bedford,
St. Martins, 2006.
James, Henry, The Turn of the Screw (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism), Bedford St. Martins, 2004.
Wharton, Edith, The House of Mirth (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) Bedford St. Martins, 1994.
Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) Bedford St. Martins, 1996.
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) Bedford St. Martins, 2000.
Austen, Jane, Emma (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) Bedford St. Martins, 2002.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 2nd Norton Critical Edition, 1994.
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. Bloom's Modern Critical Editions. 2007.
Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms. Scribner Classics. 2014.
Woolf, Virginia, Flush. Oxford World's Classics. 2009.
