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Topics in Literary Theory

Objectives

skills and competences to be developed by students):
(1) To familiarize the students with texts, questions and fundamental concepts in Literary Theory, from a thematic and monograph perspective, so that they become acquainted with standards for autonomous research;
(2) to broaden and sophisticate their critical and philosophical vocabulary, as well as their critical skills;
(3) to ensure that they understand not only the conceptual issues at stake at each point in the discussion, but also the conceptual and historical affinities between different topics;
(4) to ensure that they can translate what they have learned into clear, coherent, thorough and relevant writing.

General characterization

Code

722091106

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

Humberto Carlos Catita Palma Brito

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 280

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

N/A

Bibliography

  • De Man, Paul. O Ponto de Vista da Cegueira. Trad. M. Tamen, Braga, Coimbra e Lisboa: Cotovia & Angelus Novus, 1999. _, The Rhetoric of Romanticism, NY: Columbia University Press, 1984, 67-82.
Feijó, António M. Uma Admiração Pastoril Pelo Diabo, Lisboa: INCM, 2015
  • Baudelaire, C. A Invenção da Modernidade. Trad. P. Tamen. Lisboa, Relógio D’Água, 2006.
Pessoa, Fernando. Crítica. Ensaios, Artigos e Entrevistas. Cabral Martins (ed.), Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 1999; _, Teoria da Heteronímia. F. Cabral Martins e R. Zenith (eds.), Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2012.
  • Pippin, R. Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, Wiley-Blackwell, 1999
Rorty, R. Contingência, Ironia e Solidariedade, Lisboa: Editorial Presença, 1994
  • Tagg, J. Walker Evans's Resistance to Meaning. Narrative, Jan., 2003, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 3-77.
Wittgenstein, L. Culture and Value. G.H von Wright (ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Wordsworth, W. Poemas Escolhidos. Trad. Daniel Jonas. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim,

Teaching method

The pedagogical model for this course combines a traditional approach (the lecture) with additional teaching and learning methods and resources, seeking to encourage active student engagement. The overall objective is to foster in students a critical understanding of the topics addressed in class and a capacity for theoretical and argumentative autonomy, drawing on the vocabularies and methodologies of literary theory. Each class includes an expository component based on specific texts—typically foundational essays on each topic (primary readings)—as well as a set of supplementary examples, which are adapted according to the specific learning needs of each cohort and context. (Wherever appropriate and necessary, these additional materials aim to connect closely with the students’ frames of reference, endeavoring to re-describe those references in ways that guide them toward a progressive understanding of more complex or historically and conceptually broader themes and contents.) The expository dimension continually strives to build a shared vocabulary by means of constant questioning and the creation of a safe dialogical environment between the instructor and the students, as well as a safe space for debate for students among themselves, focusing on issues and problems that arise both directly and indirectly from the syllabus. Every session begins with a brief review (10–15 minutes) of the previously presented and discussed questions, along with a description of the conclusions reached in prior classes. A synoptic overview of the issues to be addressed then follows, advancing organically — whenever possible from student responses to the instructor’s questions or from brief presentations (for example, reading summaries) requested of them individually or in groups — to the expository part of each class, which is open to student participation at all times. Each class is thus designed to become a lively, intellectually stimulating environment through which students not only learn ‘contents,’ but, more importantly, learn to integrate what they obtain from Literary Theory into their other academic pursuits and into their critical perspectives on the extra-academic world.

Evaluation method

Continuous assessment - Assessment of student’s participation(20%), Written Essay (80%)

Subject matter

1. The appeal of the common and of modernity: ‘lyrical documentary’ and the investigation of the present as an artistic attitude; the epistemological structure of this attitude.
2. Romanticism and anti-self-consciousness; the projection of the 'self' in the landscape: from Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge) to Democratic Forest (Eggleston). The interiorization of the landscape and the loss of nature.

3. The representation of the present (Baudelaire).
3. The common with singularity: transcendence and the production of an estrangement of the common (Pessoa, Shklovsky, Schlegel, Kierkegaard, Adorno).
4. Style as a literary physiognomy (Buffon, Schlegel, Wittgenstein) vs. the desideratum of non-subjectivity (Flaubert, Pessoa, Eliot, Evans).
4.1 Autobiography as de-facement (de Man).
5. The idea of melancholic realism (Tagg).
5. Problematization from examples from the Portuguese literary tradition (Cesário Verde, Alberto Caeiro, Raul Brandão, Alexandre O'Neill, Adília Lopes, et. al.