Course details

Name: ENGL - 300

Title: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO ENGLISH

Section: 01

Semester: Fall - 2024

Credits: 3

Description:
Course format: Fully ONLINE.

This course will help you learn about the various interpretive frameworks ("theories") that have been, and still are, used by scholars of literature, to understand and engage with, the field of Literary Studies. What the various "schools" of literary theory provide, are, in effect, metacognitive approaches to the content that we, as students and lovers of literature, were taught over a century ago to "appreciate" via the tools of is known as, "practical criticism." Thus, both "literary criticism" (of the 'practical' variety), and "literary theory"-- compose what is understood as "Theoretical Approaches" to Literature.

In the context of this course, emphasis will be given to "theory" as a mode of meta-analysis necessary to recognize the grounds of our appreciation for, and understanding of, the cultural texts which comprise "literature." As literary critic and theorist Patricia Waugh explains, the contrast between "literary criticism" and "literary theory" is :

...literary criticism tends to emphasize the the experience of close reading and evaluation and explication of individual works, [whereas] literary theory insists that assumptions underlying reading practices must be made explicit, and that no reading is ever innocent or objective or purely descriptive....

(Patricia Waugh, Literary Theory and Criticism; OUP: 2006, p. 2)

All texts will be made available on Canvas through Perusall.

Last updated on 2024-03-22 By Lykidis Alexios (lykidisa)

Schedule: Thursday From 5:30 pm To 8:00 pm

Graduation requirements:

Teaching Faculty: Afzal-Khan Fawzia (khanf)

Is course canceled: No