AKN-312.40
AN-312.40, ANN-312.40
Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism (Romantika és kortárs kritika) in spring 2004
Timár Andrea, Mon 17:00–18:30, EC 023, host: DES (R338)
description & set texts
The course aims to survey recent critical approaches to Romanticism through the analysis of influential theoretical essays on well-known Romantic works. The course will therefore focus on ``applied literary theory''.

Reading list: 1.-2. New Criticism vs. Deconstruction J. Hillis Miller: ``On Edge: The Crossways of Contemporary Criticism'' vs. M. H Abrams: ``Constructing and Deconstructing'', in: Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer, Cornell U.P., 1986. [a debate on Wordsworth's ``A Slumber did my spirit Seal''] Suggested reading: Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction, Ithaca, NY, Cornell U.P. 1982. 3. Paul de Man's Romanticism Paul de Man, ``Autobiography as Defacement'', in: The Rhetoric of Romanticism, Columbia U.P., 1984, 67-83. Paul de Man, ``Time and History in Wordsworth'', in: Diacritics, 17:4 (Winter, 1987), 4-17.: 4. New Historicism Marjorie Levinson: ``Introduction'', ``Insight and oversight: reading ``Tintern Abbey'', in: Wordsworth's Great Period Poems, Cambridge U.P.,1986, 1-57 Suggested reading: Jerome McGann, ``Introduction'', in: Romantic Ideology, The University of Chicago Press, 1983 5. Cultural Materialism, Marxism and Post-Colonial Theory Heather Glen, ``Blake's 'London': The Language of Experience'', in: Vision and Disenchantment, Cambridge U.P., 1983, 208-219 John Brenkman, ``The Concrete Utopia of Poetry: Blake's 'A Poison Tree''', in Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, ed. Chaviva Hosek and Patricia Parker, Ithaca, NY, Cornell U.P., 1986, 182-193 Alan Richardson, ``Blake, Children's Literature, and Colonialism'', in: Literature, Education and Romanticism: reading as social practice, 1780-1832, Cambridge U.P., 1994, xiii-xv; 153-166 [Blake: ``The Black Boy''] 6-7. Psychoanalytic Approaches (Freud, Lacan, Kristeva) Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, ``The Letter as a Cutting Edge'', in Yale French Studies 55/56, 1977, 208-227. [On Coleridge's definition of Imagination] Anne Williams, ``An I for an Eye: 'Spectral Persecution' in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'', PMLA 108, 1993, 1114-1127. Suggested reading: see handouts. 8. Feminism Anne K. Mellor: ``Introduction, Romanticism, Gender and Genre''; ``Writing the Self/Self Writing: William Wordsworth's Prelude/Dorothy Wordsworth' Journals'' in Romanticism and Gender, London, Routledge, 1993, 1-11; 145-169. (Optional: Geraldine Friedman, ``The Erotics of Interpretation in Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn': Pursuing the Feminine'', in Studies in Romanticism, vol 32 (Summer 1993), 225-243.) 9. Ethical Criticism Adam Zachary Newton, ``Opening Story'', in Narrative Ethics, Harvard U.P. 1995, 3-33. [On The Rime of the Ancient Mariner] Suggested readings: Robert Eaglestone, Ethical Criticism, Reading after Levinas, Edinburgh U.P., 1997; Emanuel Levinas, Teljesség és Végtelen, ford. Tarnay László, Pécs, Jelenkor, 1999 10. Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies Geoffrey Hartman: ``The Unremarkable Poet'' in: The Unremarkable Wordsworth, The University of Minnesota Press, 1987, 207-219. [On ``Westminster Bridge'' and the ``Blind Beggar''] Cathy Caruth: An Interview with Geoffrey Hartman, in Studies in Romanticism, vol. 35 (Winter, 1996), 631-652. Suggested reading: Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Standard Edition 18, 20-39 11. Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism David Aram Kaiser, ``Modernity, subjectivity, liberalism, and nationalism'' [on the politics of Romanticism], ``The symbol and the aesthetic sphere'' [on Coleridge's definition of the Symbol] in Romanticism, Aesthetics and Nationalism, Cambridge U.P, 1999, 11-38. Suggested reading: Paul de Man, ``Kant and Schiller'', in Aesthetic Ideology, University of Minnesota Press, 1996; 12. Rethinking the Aesthetic Isobel Armstrong, ``Textual Harassment: The Ideology of Close Reading, or How Close is Close?'' in The Radical Aesthetic, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, 85-102. [discusses Wordsworth's ``Tintern Abbey''] Note: 1. Photocopies are available. 2. You will find many reference books in the SEAS Library under the heading ``Literary Theory''. Always consider the name of the editor(s), writer(s): belonging to one school or other, they are never ``objective''. Ex: Terry Eagleton's introduction (entitled Literary Theory) is a very good one, but you have to take into account that Eagleton himself is a Marxist critic.

requirements & assessment