ENG 206 – Professor Frank (Lit Theory Req.)
Two central questions—what is literature? and how do people critique it?—frame this course, guiding our study of some basic theories of the relationships peculiar to a literary work, its author, its audience members, and the worlds in which these entities meet. Reading and writing assignments are designed to meet two interrelated goals: to explore literary ways of knowing by practicing different methods of literary analysis (including romanticism, formalism, structuralism, and post-structuralism), and to situate these theoretical developments amid major social developments of the past two centuries (including marxist, feminist, anti-racist, and postcolonial struggles). By the end of the semester, students should be able to explain how and why no reading or writing can ever be free of theory. 3.000 Credit hours This course is a prerequisite for the Methods in Literary and Cultural Criticism course required for the English major and minor. It also serves as an elective for the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities major.
