I. Literary Criticism & Theory (a total of 12 authors from the following list)
The following 12 entries are required reading, except in the instances (#'s 3, 4, and 6) in which you can choose one or the other of two authors.
1. Plato: Cratylus, Ion, Phaedrus, Republic, Symposium 2. Aristotle: Metaphysics, On Interpretation, Poetics, Rhetoric 3. Longinus: On the Sublime 4. Augustine: City of God, On Christian Doctrine 5. Descartes: Discourse on Method, The Meditations 6. Hegel: The Phenomenology |
7. Nietzsche: Birth of Tragedy, Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche contra Wagner, Zarathustra 8. Marx: The 18th Brumaire, Capital v. 1, The German Ideology, Grundrisse 9. Freud: “Dora,” Introductory Lectures, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Three Lectures on the Theory of Sexuality, “The Uncanny,” “Wolfman” 10. Heidegger: On Nietzsche 11. Wellek: The History of Criticism, v 1- 4* 12. Saussure: Course on General Linguistics |
* Please note: Because Wellek’s History of Criticism is out of print and the library has only
one copy, for this year’s exam, you may substitute The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism for
Wellek’s history if you wish. If you so choose, please read the “Introduction” and 10
entries up to 1900, including those from Augustine to Giraldi. There should be no overlap between the 10
selections chosen and other authors / titles on your list. II. Comparative Problematic*
Please choose one of the following problematics. As an initial entry into a problematic, the readings for the problematic will be directed by your major advisor and 2nd Year Examination Committee. Those readings will be chosen so as to productively engage selected, required readings from Categories I and III. There is no historical limitation to the configurations of the problematic but readings are limited to a total of 300 pages.
1. Axiomatics of critical "-isms": the resistance to/of theory, and the pragmatics of reading
2. The being of language - the being of literature - the being of the world and representational thinking: will problematize the status of linguistics and philology, the status of relationships, the various possibilities of "utterance" in Western languages, and Western thought on identity and difference.
3. The comparative–a problematization of the comparative as conceptual and literary-critical framework.
4. The fading of literature and the rise of the image in the time of techno-science (Related: 10 & 12)
5. Gender roles in defining literary modes and movements: how literature of a particular era or in a particular mode has been molded definitively as the result of gender roles or sexual identity
6. Gender and sexuality: a problematization of the categories and of their relation to the written/literary word
7. The ideology of the aesthetic: how aesthetics implicates an ideology (See also #9.)
8. Aesthetic ideology as a “shield” for the traditional structure of representation is “thrown out of balance” by (the phenomenon, the theory of) the sublime as the thought of the limits of (sensuous, aesthetic) (re)presentation
9. 'Interdisciplinarity' in comparative literary studies (suggested pairings: [i] literature and philosophy, [ii] literature and history, [iii] literature and culture): a) the role of the alleged oppositions and/or contiguities between literature and other 'disciplines,' epistemological fields, or areas of study, in the generation and/or constitution of the literary; and (b) the advantages, difficulties and/or limitations arising from such 'interdisciplinary' approaches to the study of literature. (It is strongly recommended that [i] you limit your investigation to ONE of the suggested 'pairings', and that [ii] you further narrow and specify your field of inquiry [WITHIN your chosen binary].)
10. Image and Text, Image or Text, Image in opposition to Text–the interactions and divergences of visual and verbal re-presentation
11. Literature in the production (and displacement) of cultural representations of Europe or 'the west': this may of course entail (a) a consideration of literature's critique and/or endorsement of the axiomatics of imperialism and the displacement of those axiomatics by postcolonial [literary] discourses, or (b) an inquiry into the 'category' of postcoloniality. But it need not be limited to these questions.
12. Literature and multi-media–with the beginnings of print culture, literature has intersected with other media, especially newspaper, radio and TV in various ways: will problematize the ways literature, from the time of the Industrial Revolution, has been laced with references to the media and concretely shaped by other media. (See 4 & 10.)
* We might use as a working definition, Louis Althusser's notion of that which is the object of the inquiry of a problematic: the theoretical framework or system determining the significance of a particular concept, the questions posed, central propositions and omissions of that framework or system.
II. Comparative Problematic, continued
13. Literary time and space, including prose and poetry: will problematize temporality and spatiality via, but not limited to, phenomenology, rhetoric, structure, and the "jetty" and "infrastructures" of deconstruction 14. The 'modern' in literature, or, the (vexed) question of ‘literary evolution’: (a) the ways in which 'literary modernity' has been (and indeed, CAN be) conceptualized, or 'theorized' and (b) the advantages, limits, and/or (im)possibility of these critical and theoretical formulations of how ruptures or breaks occur, or are registered in Literature. 15. Nature, ecology, disease, literature (constructions of the natural--and naturalizing constructions). 16. The ‘socius’ (lit. “companion”) of literature and culture–a historical problematizing of the categories of literature and culture in relation to their ‘companionate’ (?) social contexts. 17. Tracing characters, forming types, and playing with both brings together writing and mimesis at the limits of Western (Platonic, Aristotelian) tradition of “representational thinking.” Both writing and mimesis are necessary to the “proper” functioning of a representational structure such as the soul, the city, the poem (they are problemata in the sense of “guards”), but at the same time they constitute a threat to its integrity (problemata in the sense of “obstacles”). 18. The traditional three-partite division of human “activity” (theoria, praxis, and poiesis) and problematizing the status of language and literature |
III. Literary Texts
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The first 8 authors/categories are required reading. Please make 2 additional choices from among #'s 9-18 and 2 further literary choices from your favorite works of literature. 1. Homer (the Iliad or Odyssey) |
Choose selections of no more than 300 pages from 2 of the following authors: 9. Montaigne |
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Choose any 2 additional literary works that you wish. | |