ML2207 Critical and Comparative Approaches
2018-9 Term 1
Convenor: Dr Danielle Sands
Assessment
Formative Piece (0%),
Essay 1: 30%, 1500- 2000 words
Essay 2: 70 %, 2000-2500 words
Overview
This course provides an account of some of the major trends and currents in twentieth-century Western literary and critical theory. By reading literary and theoretical texts alongside each other, students will ask questions such as:
- How do race and gender influence practices of reading and writing?
- How is meaning constructed?
- How does our understanding of what it means to be human change over time?
A key aspect of the course will be an appreciation of theory as a fundamentally ‘intertextual’ process and dynamic practice which informs all of our reading. Texts studied may include works by Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, and Simone de Beauvoir.
Key Primary Bibliography
Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (3rd edition, Manchester University Press, 2009)