Weeks and Topics

• Introduction: Dichtung und Wahrheit
• I. The Two Beginnings
• II. The Art of Interpretation
• III. Social Contexts and Historical Awareness
• IV. The Structuralist Revolution
• V. The Russian Formalists
• VI. Language and the Unconscious
• VII. Post-Structuralism
• VII. Destruktion / Deconstruction
• IX. Against the Signifier
• X. From Gender Performance to the Chthulucene
• XI. Postcolonialism
• XII. (Thanksgiving Break)
• XIII. Beyond North-Atlantic Universals
• XIV Final Paper Workshop

Introduction: Dichtung und Wahrheit

• Martin Heidegger, “…Poetically Man Dwelts…” (1951)

In class

• Friederich Hölderin,“In lovely blue..”
• Sammuel Beckett, “What is the word” / “Comment dire”

I. The Two Beginnings

• Plato, Ion
• Grace Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato.   Intro & Chapter 1
• Aristotle, Poetics.   Sec. I-XIV

II. The Art of Interpretation

• Dante, “Il Convivio”   Book II, Chap.1
• Dante, “Letter XIII to Can Grande della Scala about allegory”
• Christine de Pizan, “The Book of the City of Ladies”   Selections

III. Social Contexts and Historical Awareness

• Madame de Staël, Literature Considered in its Relation to Social Institutions(1801)
• Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary history as a challenge to literary theory” (1967)

IV. The Structuralist Revolution

• Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1906 - 1911).   Intro: 1-5, I: 1.
• Gilles Deleuze, “A quoi reconnait-on le structuralisme?” (Spanish Translation)

V. The Russian Formalists

• Viktor Shlovsky, “Art as Device”
• Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum, “The theory of the ‘Formal Method’” (1926)
• Tzvetan Todorov, “Some Approaches to Russian Formalism” (1971)

VI. Language and the Unconscious

• Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
• Freud, “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914)
• Lacan, “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud” (1957)

VII. Post-Structuralism

• Barthes, “The Death of the Author” and “From Work to Text”
• Michael Foucault, “What Is an Author?”
• Emile Benveniste, “Of Subjectivity in Language”

VII. Destruktion / Deconstruction

• Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology   Selection
• Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”

Interesting Aside

• “The CIA Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left”

IX. Against the Signifier

• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1975)   Chapters 1-3
• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987)   “Introduction: Rhizome”

X. From Gender Performance to the Chthulucene

• Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)   Preface, Chap. 3
• Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” (1983)

XI. Postcolonialism

• Franz Fanon, selections.
• Homi K. Bhabha, selections.

XII. (Thanksgiving Break)

Independent research.

XIII. Beyond North-Atlantic Universals

• Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “North Atlantic Universals: Analytical Fictions, 1492-1945”
• Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic Modernity and Double-Consciousness.   Preface, Chaps. 1 and 2.

XIV Final Paper Workshop