Syllabus

Course policies, syllabus, assignments, grading.
Introduction to Literary Criticism

Aristotle, Poetics
Longinus, On the Sublime
Plato, The Republic, Book X.
Plot summary of Euripides’ Medea (http://www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/bates018.html)
Film screening: Pasolini, Medea

Introduction to Dante, Sidney and Pope. Read:
Dante Aligihieri, Letter to Cangrande della Scala
Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry
Pope, An Essay on Criticism

Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare..
ST Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, excerpt (cancelled reading!)
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful, excerpt (online http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/) Read:
- Of the Sublime
- Sympathy
- Imitation
- Of the Effects of Tragedy
Introduction to Romanticism. Percy B. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
Film screening: Rowing with the Wind

Introduction to Late 19th Century Criticism
Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
Walter Pater, Conclusion to The Renaissance (http://www.subir.com/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html)
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, excerpt
Freud, The Theme of the Three Caskets
Grimm, J & W., Little Red Riding Hood, (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html#grimm)

About Bakhtin and the Carnevalesque
Mikail Bakhtin, Introduction to Rabelais and His World, p. 1-24
Film screening: Restoration
Introduction to Feminist and Marxist Criticism
Simone de Beauvoir, Of Women in Five Authors
Williams, Marxism and Literature, excerpt
NB! Reading summary NOT required for this class meeting.

Michael Worton & Judith Still, Introduction to Intertextuality: Theory and Practices
Kolodny, Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism.
Reread: Grimm, J & W., Little Red Riding Hood, (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html#grimm)
Film screening: Louis Buñuel, Un chien andalou
Student presentations I

Greenblatt, Introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance
Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa
Student presentations II
Final Paper due
NB!! No written reading response required. Focus on finishing your papers instead! Please be prepared to participate in class discussion of assigned reading as ususal.

Course Policies

Reading summaries: For each class, prepare and bring to class a summary of your understanding of the readings assigned for that day. Since our readings for each meeting are quite extensive, your summary will need to be at least 700 -1000 words. Be prepared to explain and discuss your understanding of the texts in class. You should also turn in a typed/printed copy to the instructor.
Final Research Paper: 15-20 p. More details on separate assignment sheet.
Oral presentation: An oral presentation of the research you have conducted for your final paper. 15-20 min. More details on separate assignment sheet.

ACADEMIC HONESTY:
A student who plagiarizes part or all of a written assignment will receive an F for the assignment and further disciplinary proceedings at the instructor’s discretion. Plagiarism occurs when a student claims credit for work s/he has not done personally, and includes submitting assignments produced by another student or writer, or putting sentences or ideas originally expressed by someone else into a paper without noting their source. At the graduate level, you ought to have mastered the ability to properly distinguish in writing between your own and other writers’ ideas using quotations, paraphrase, and in-text citation of source materials.