ENGL 370 Literary Criticism
Topics vary. Specific topics may satisfy different Core Program requirements.
Trauma and Literature
How is trauma narrated? Can literature convey intense personal and collective suffering? Is our understanding of pain cultural? This course considers psychoanalytic ideas of historical and personal trauma reflected in literary works of the modern period. Our study will be interdisciplinary, considering how powerful concepts in the hermeneutic of psychoanalysis (repression; repetition compulsion; abjection; misrecognition; lack; affect etc.) have been generated by literary works, as well as challenged and absorbed into them. Insofar as traumatic experience produces a subjective breach, we will think about how certain forms and styles of literature are more or less suited to reflect the rupture.
We will read formative texts of psychoanalysis (Freud; Lacan; Kristeva; Foucault and others) and trauma theory (Caruth; Silverman; Fanon; Nandy). Our survey of literary works includes texts by Jean Rhys, Toni Morrison, Han Kang, Teju Cole, among others. Core Requirement: Global Connections.
Major Requirement Met: Group III/IV
Prerequisite
One 100- or 200-level English course, or junior or senior standing