Introduction to literary studies

Timetable

http://wa.amu.edu.pl/timetables/lato_2022_2023/teachers/index.html

Module aim (aims)

To familiarize students with basic terminology in literary criticism and research. 

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

This is entry-level course. Students need to attend a lecture in English, and write brief-essay assignments of about one page per week. 

Syllabus

Week 1: Types of verse 1

 

 

 

Week 2: Types of verse 2

 

 

 

Week 3: Schemes in poetry 1

 

 

 

Week 4: Schemes in poetry 2

 

 

 

Week 5: Tropes in poetry 1: survey of figurative language

 

 

 

Week 6: Tropes in poetry 2: survey of figurative language

 

 

 

Week 8: Tropes in prose: plot, action, character

 

 

 

Week 9: Tropes in prose: setting, narrative voice

 

 

 

Week 10: Classical genre system

 

 

 

Week 11: Modern genres

 

 

 

Week 12: Hermeneutics  

 

 

 

Week 13: Theories of interpretation

 

 

 

Week 14: Theories of interpretation

 

 

 

Week 15:Final test

Reading list

Ernst Robert Curtius European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tran. W.R. Trask (Princeton, 

New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1973). 

John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. 

(1976) 

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Cambridge University Press, 1957. 

Literary Criticism and Theory: The Greeks to the Present, ed. R. Con Davis and L. Finke (New York 

and London: Longman, 1989), pp. 632-647. 

Mikhail Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel. Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel,” in The Dialogic 

Imagination: Four Essays, ed. M. Holquist, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin: 

University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 3-40. 

Aristotle, Poetics, in Literary Criticism and Theory: The Greeks to the Present, ed. R. Con Davis and 

1. Finke (New York and London: Longman, 1989), pp. 60-83 (esp. chapters 6-17, pp. 64-73).