This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module will introduce students to a wide range of theoretical positions with the aim of enriching their understanding and appreciation of literature and critical practice. We will begin with the thinking of Nietzsche and Freud, before examining that of Saussure, Benjamin, Lévi-Strauss, Genette, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva, Cixous, and Irigaray. As well as encouraging a critical engagement with the claims of the theories themselves the module will examine a number of representative theoretical readings of literary works. Students will learn to evaluate these various thinkers and use their ideas, as appropriate, in their own writing.
Total contact hours: 20
This module is compulsory for students studying on the MAs in Critical Theory, French and Comparative Literature, and Modern French Studies, including those versions of the programmes with a term in Paris.
Essay (5000 words) - 100%
Foucault, Michel, (1995) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, tr. Alan Sheridan (London: Vintage Books);
Freud, Sigmund, 'The Uncanny', tr. Alix Strachey, in Freud: Psychological Writings and Letters, ed. Sander L. Gilman (New York: Continuum, 1995);
Lacan, Jacques, 'The Seminar on The Purloined Letter', tr. Jeffrey Mehlman, in John P. Muller, William J. Richardson (eds), The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading;
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte, (2004) The Yellow Wallpaper, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition, ed. by Catherine J. Golden (London: Routledge), pp. 131-156;
Saussure, Ferdinand de, (1983) 'Nature of the Linguistic Sign'; 'Linguistic Value', in Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court).
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students will be able to demonstrate in depth understanding of major trends in literary theory and criticism, with special reference to thinkers such as Freud; Saussure; Genette; Foucault; Lacan; Derrida; Kristeva; Cixous; Irigaray;
Students will be able to exhibit honed skills in literary, theoretical and philosophical debate;
Students will be able to pursue in depth issues within areas of their own literary/theoretical interests;
Students will be able to evaluate the extent to which the literary and the theoretical intersect;
Students will be able to consider literary theory not as a disembodied set of ideas but as a force within institutions and/or reading communities
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