ENG3C10 Literary Criticism and Theory: Part 2 (5 credits)
1. Structuralism: An Overview
Major theorists: Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude- Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Gerrard Genette
Key concepts: Structure, Sign, Signifier, Signified, Semiology, Semiotics, Langue and Parole,
Mythemes, Structuralist Narratology.
Text for Detailed Study: Roland Barthes: “Structuralist Activity”
2. Post-Structuralism/ Deconstruction: An Overview
Major theorists: Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, The Yale School.
Key concepts: Deconstruction of Sign, Decentering, Logocentrism, Aporia, Supplement, The Death
of the Author, Knowledge, Power, Discourse.
Text for Detailed Study: Jacques Derrida: “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Social
Sciences”
3. Psychoanalysis: An Overview
Major theorists: Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan.
Key concepts: Id, Ego, Superego, Dream Mechanism, Oedipus Complex, Unconscious, Mirror Stage,
Imaginary, Symbolic and Real, Ego Formation and Constructions of Selfhood, Jouissance,
Unconscious is structured like a Language.
Text for Detailed Study:
Jacques Lacan: “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I”
4. Feminism: An Overview
Major theorists: Virginia Woolf, Kate Millet, Elaine Showalter, Helene Cixous, Adrienne Rich.
Key concepts: Gynocriticism, Eccriture Feminine, Womanism, The Language Problem in Feminism,
Marxist Feminism, French Feminism, Lesbian Feminism, Black Feminism, Dalit Feminism, Postfeminism.
Text for Detailed Study: Elaine Showalter: “Towards a Feminist Poetics”
5. Cultural Materialism/ New Historicism: An Overview
Major theorists: Raymond Williams, Jonathan Dollimore, Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose.
Key concepts: Neo-Marxism, Culture: New Definitions, Thin and Thick Descriptions, Textuality and
Historicity, Texts, Contexts and Co-texts, Rereading the Renaissance and Shakespeare, The Politics
of Representation and Power.
Text for Detailed Study:
Louis Montrose: “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture”
6. Postcolonialism: An Overview
Major theorists: Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, HomiBhabha, GayatriSpivak, Benedict Anderson.
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Key concepts: Crtique of Eurocentrism and Universalism, Decolonization, National Consciousness,
Critiquing Nationalism, Postnationalism, Imagined Communities, Orientalism, Strategic
Essentialism, Subaltern Studies, Hybridity, Ambivalence, Mimicry.
Text for Detailed Study: Edward Said: “Jane Austen and Empire”
7. Ecocriticism: An Overview
Major theorists: Jonathan Bate, CheryllGlotfelty, Laurence Coupe, Patrick DMurphy, William
Rueckert.
Key concepts: Anthropocentrism, Shallow Ecology vs Deep Ecology, The Crisis of Humanism,
Nature/Culture, Green Studies, Environmental Imagination, Ecofeminism.
Text for Detailed Study: Cheryll Glotfelty: “Introduction: Literary Studies in an age of
Environmental Crisis” (From The Ecocriticism Reader)
8.Critiquing Theory: An Overview
Text for Detailed Study: Graham Good: “Presentism: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism,
Postcolonialism”
- Teacher: Dr Reenu George Faculty