Hafta 1
Introduction to the course
Hafta 2
A. The Transition from Oral to Chirographic Culture: From Rhapsodic Performance to the Written Text. B. Medieval Exegesis. Here, we will examine how a shift from an oral to a chirographic culture fundamentally changed the dynamics of time, memory and identity formation. We will also examine early attempts at managing literary texts and at establishing rules for interpretation—from Alexandrian hermeneutics to the philology of the Renaissance. * Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word (pages 31-75)
Hafta 3
The Renaissance of Secular and Biblical Philology * Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Epic and Novel,”from The Dialogic Imagination.
Hafta 4
A. Classical Poetics Some key terms in aesthetics and literary theory will be introduced here. We will also look into the 18th century emergence of the public sphere, the (relative) autonomisation of art and literature, and the impact of such developments on our current understanding of literature and its role in society.
Hafta 5
The Auflkärung, the Problem of Taste, and the Emergence of the Public Sphere and Literary Criticism. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: an Introduction. Introduction and chapter 1 *Williams, Raymond “Culture,” from Marxism and Literature.
Hafta 6
Aesthetics and Literary Theory in the name of Bildung: Romanticism and German Idealism part 1 It is particularly at the end of the eighteenth century that a terminological repertoire was consolidated in aesthetic and cultural inquiry– a repertoire that, to this day, informs our current notions about literature and culture. To examine the late eighteenth century, in other words, is to examine the origins of our current theoretical presuppositions. Accordingly, the central aesthetic categories of the late -eighteenth century will be addressed.
Hafta 7
Aesthetics and Literary Theory in the name of Bildung: Romanticism and German Idealism part 2 *Jusdanis, Belated Modernity. Pages 89-104 (pages 122-129 and 161-165 are optional)
Hafta 8
Aesthetics and Literary Theory in the name of Bildung: Romanticism and German Idealism part 3
Hafta 9
Week 9 Review for Midterm exam and Midterm exam
Hafta 10
In light of the historical considerations addressed in the first part of this course, major currents in literary and cultural theory will be critically examined and summoned to answer the following questions: -What are their methodological and historical presuppositions? -Which problems do they claim or presume to solve? -Do they have an avowed or unavowed social function within the socio-historical configuration within which they operate and from which they derive? * Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: an Introduction. Selected passages
Hafta 11
The Specificity of the Literary Object: Russian Formalism and Semiotics * Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Technique.”
Hafta 12
Structuralism and Neo-Structuralism. * Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: an Introduction. Chapter 3
Hafta 13
The Theory of the Novel: Bakhtine, Goldman, Lukács. * Goldman, Lucien. Towards a sociology of the Novel. Selected passages
Hafta 14
Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Reception Aesthetics * Jauss, Hans-Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Selected passages.