CL 306.02 Literary Theory and Criticism II, Spring 2016
Instructor: Naz Bulamur
E-mail: naz.bulamur@boun.edu.tr
Office: TB 524
Office Hours (please make an appointment): Tuesday 10:00-12:00, Friday 13:00-15:00
The objective of this course is to introduce students to literary theory from the end of nineteenth
century to the present. The course packet is available at the library copy center. Check the schedule
regularly and do the readings before coming to class.
Grading:
Class Participation
Quizzes
Midterm:
Final Exam
15 %
15 % (No make-up for quizzes)
35 %
35 % (You cannot take the final if you miss the
midterm exam without a legitimate and
officially documented excuse.)
Schedule of Readings:
Please note that class content and course policies are subject to modification. I might take out some
texts and/or assign a few additional ones. I will notify you of any changes in class.
Week 1
Feb. 8-12
Introduction and New Criticism: Matthew Arnold from “Sweetness and Light”
T.S. Eliot “The Modern Mind” + “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
Week 2
Feb. 15-19
Structuralism: Jonathan Culler, “The Linguistic Foundation” + Ferdinand de Saussure,
“Nature of the Linguistic Sign” + Roman Jakobson, from Linguistics and Poetics
Week 3
Feb. 22-26
Poststructuralism: Jacques Lacan, “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious”
Jacques Derrida, “Differance”
Week 4
Feb. 29
March 4
Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author” and Michel Foucault “What is an Author?”
Jean-François Lyotard, "Defining the Postmodern"
Week 5
March 7-11
Jean Baudrillard from Simulations, Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet from Dialogues
Week 6
MIDTERM
March 14-18
Week 7
Gender Studies: Héléne Cixous from “Sorties,” and Judith Butler, from Gender
March 21-25 Trouble
Week 8
Butler cont., Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence"
Mar. 28-Apr. 1
Week 9
Apr. 4-8
Marxism: Karl Marx from Capital and “The Communist Manifesto”
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
Week 10
Apr. 11-15
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Georg Lukacs, from The Theory of the Novel
Week 11
Apr. 18-22
Spring Break
Week 12
Apr. 25-29
Postcolonial Studies: Edward Said from Orientalism, and Homi Bhabha from The
Location of Culture
Week 13
May 2-6
bell hooks “Postmodern Blackness” and Gayatri Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak”
Week 14
May 9-13
Review
Suggested Secondary Source:
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
Raman Selden, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory