Course Description:
Structured thematically yet also roughly chronologically, the course provides a broad overview of significant intellectual movements and developments in literary theory to give students familiarity with core terminology, concepts, themes, theorists, and debates in the field.

Beginning with early provocations that we might identify along an intellectual thread of ‘literary criticism’ with Gorgias and Plato, the course introduces central themes from traditional literary criticism such as canon, periods, context, allusion, ethics, and aethetics. The first half of the course focuses on how movements such as formalism, structuralism, and deconstruction respond to these questions. The second half of the course considers future directions for literary theory from the launching off points of critiques such as postcolonialism, queer theory, and ecocriticism.