This course offers you an introduction to the study of literature by looking at the development of literature as a subject of teaching and learning. We will begin by tracing the formation of related concepts in Western history leading up to the establishment of literature as an academic discipline. The course will then survey influential theoretical approaches to literature in the 20th century and will examine their accounts of what literature is and what its place and role are (or should be) in culture and society. Mapping important debates carried on in these accounts, we will ask how they define and explain basic activities, roles and effects that form part of literature, such as the activities of reading and writing, the roles of writers and readers, the network of publication, and the products of writing (work, text, script) and their meaning. A range of selected literary texts will allow us to critically explore the insights and interests of different approaches. At the end of the course, students will be able to orient themselves within the field of literature with the help of a basic vocabulary of critical terminology and to situate their own interests in relation to relevant theoretical concerns.

a range of selected literary texts to critically explore the insights and interests of different approaches.

influential theoretical approaches to literature in the 20th century