English 364 M. Linley   
Fall 2001 

      HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF LITERARY CRITICISM

     The advent of writing and the invention of technologies for reproducing and disseminating written words and visual images are inseparable from the history of what we now call literary criticism.  This course will survey the textual transmission of cultural values from the time of Plato to the present.  We will consider such issues as conflicts between oral and written discourses, the cultural impact of the printing press, changing conceptions of authorship, processes of canonization, the rise of aesthetics, and developments in mass communications and information technologies.  Although our course of study will be roughly chronological, we will also engage supplementary materials, in both print and digital forms, to help contextualize our readings throughout.

 Required Texts: 

Kaplan & Anderson, eds.            Criticism: Major Statements, 4^th ed.            St. Martin’s Press

*Linley, Margaret, ed.                  History of Literary Criticism Reader            Bookstore

*This reader will include works by Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Judith Butler, Jean Baudrillard, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, among others.