ENGLISH 671: “Literary Theory and Criticism” Fall 2007
Suzanne Bunkers, Ph.D., Professor of English, MSU-Mankato
suzanne.bunkers@mnsu.edu 207G AH 389-5503 (voicemail)
Week 1 8/27-30
Bonnycastle Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4
Week 2 9/3-7
Bonnycastle Chapter 5 “Historical Criticism and New Criticism”
Key Concepts: Formalism (New Criticism)
Week 3 9/10-14
Bonnycastle Ch. 6 "Structuralism" (i) and Ch. 7 "Structuralism" (ii)
Key concepts: Saussure; Roland Barthes and structuralist criticism; Structuralism: a few more words
Weeks 4 & 5 Psychological and & Psychoanalytic Theories Meet 9/17-21; 9/24-28
Bonnycastle Ch. 9 "Vico and the Four Stages of Mental Life" and Ch. 10 "Myths and Demystification"
Key Concepts: Psychoanalytic Theory: basic premises; Lacanian theory
Key Concepts: Archetypal Theory; Joseph Campbell's Myth of the Hero; Northrop Frye's The Anatomy of Criticism; Annis Pratt's Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction
Week 6 10/1-5 Feminist Criticism(s); Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
Bonnycastle, Ch. 14 “Feminism, Gender Issues, and Literature”
Key Concepts: Feminist Theories; Overview of second-wave feminist theories
Bloomsbury and Mrs. Dalloway; Woolf's writing: themes, style, etc.; Woolf's essay, "Modern Fiction"; Woolf's essay, "A Room of One's Own"
Week 7 10/8-12 Queer Theory
Key Concepts: Queer Theories; Judith Butler: Gender Trouble; "Transgressing, Queering"
Week 8 10/15-19
Week 9 10/22-26 Marxist Criticism
Bonnycastle Ch. 15, “Marxist Criticism”
Key concepts: Marxist Criticism; Marxist Theory: dialectical materialism, etc.; Granville Hicks: The Great Tradition
Week 10 10/29-11/2 New Historicism; Willa Cather’s My Antonia
Bonnycastle Ch. 12, “New Historicism” and Ch. 16, “Postcolonial Criticism and Multiculturalism”
Key Concepts: New Historicism; Cultural Poetics; Postcolonialism; Postcolonial Studies
Week 11 11/5-9 Reader-Response Criticism
Bonnycastle Ch. 11, “Structuralism (iii); Narratology”; Ch. 13, “Reader-Response Criticism”
Key Concepts: Reader Response Theory; Narratology
Week 12 11/12-16 New Historicism, Narratology; August Wilson’s play, “The Piano Lesson”
Weeks 13 & 14 11/19-21, Nov. 26-30 Poststructuralism/Postmodernism
Bonnycastle, Ch. 8, “Deconstruction
Week 15 12/3-7 Conclusions
Bonnycastle Ch. 17, “Resituating Authority” and Epilogue, “Postmodernism: Problems and Solutions”
Week 16 12/11-15 Final Exam Week; Seminar Paper Due
****Note: Syllabus is subject to revision as necessary.****