Lecture Textual Analysis

Spring semester 2010

Prof. Elisabeth Bronfen

Tuesdays 14.00-15.45

venue t.b.a.

(1.) 23 February – Mapping Literary and Cultural Theory

-- why do we do theory, what is a theoretical reading

-- what is at stake

-- what are the concepts, concerns and issues involved in literary theories

-- how have literary theories emerged, evolved, transformed

(2.) 9 March – Voices of Literature, Voices in Literature

-- who speaks and why do they speak

-- direct and indirect characterization through speech

-- the characters voices, the narrator’s voice

-- what is the mood, tone, pitch of a text

(3.) 23 March – Question of Genres

-- anxiety of influence, desire of influence

-- genre cross-over

-- text and its cultural afterlife

-- genre memory

-- Easter Break --

(4.) 13 April – Dramatis Personae

-- constellations of dramatic characters

-- semantic encoding

-- spatial/temporal location

-- psychological and ideological argument

(5.) 27 April – Shakespeare in Theory

-- presenting a critical debate, the shifts and transformations of the discussion

-- transferring theory to text, transferring text to theory

(6.) 11 May – Cinematic Adaptations

-- how to read film

-- how film combines poetry, narrative and drama

-- how film adapts, appropriates, re-encodes literature

(7.) 25 May – Final Exam