Course Description: The purpose of this course is to provide an overview to the major schools and problems characterizing twentieth-century Western theory.

It will stress a reading of representative texts from each movement, with available background/historical texts specified and left on reserve in the library. The focus of classroom discussion will be the outline of the philosophical premises of each movement, and then how they could be applied to real literary texts.

By the end of the semester, the students will be familiar with the broad outlines and the historical development of modern criticism, and have experience with assumptions central to today's literary and cultural studies.

Assignments

1-2pp. paper at the end of each section (as indicated), specifying how to operationalize the theories (specifying data/methods/goals; handout model will be provided) = 30 % of grade

two tests = 2 x 35 % = 70 % of grade

Ordered Books:

Hazard Adams, ed. Critical Theory Since Plato. San Diego: Harcourt-Brace, 1971 [ISBN 0-15-516142-3] [= I on syllabus]

-or Revised Edition, NY: Harcourt-Brace, 1992 [ISBN 0-15-516143-1][= IR on syllabus]

**either edition will do; supplements available at copy place and on reserve.

Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds. Critical Theory Since 1965. Tallahassee: U. Presses of Florida/Florida State UP, 1986 [ISBN 0-8130-0844-1] [= II on syllabus]

*Essays not in these volumes on reserve.

*Reference list appended to syllabus, with call #'s of "Background" books from syllabus.