ENG 5079 Spring 2023 Maurette

This course is an introduction to the field of literary and cultural studies. We will be dealing with the three most basic unities of literary and cultural analysis: its production, the product, and its reception. We will juxtapose works of fiction and criticism as well as look at peculiar hybrids of fiction and theory. Some of the main questions that we will be asking are: What is an author, and why is it problematic to postulate its mere existence? Where do writers get inspiration from? How do they produce literature? Are style and method fundamental aspects of an ars poetica? And what constitutes a literary text? Can a film be a text? Can texts be translated, and if so how? What is fiction, and is literature exclusively fictional? After a text is produced it reaches fortuitous and manifold hands. What do we look for when we read? Is reading interpreting? How do we read? Throughout the semester we will engage in dialogue with pre-modern as well as modern and contemporary texts written in a wide variety of languages and belonging to a number of different genres. Our readings will include: Homer, Auerbach, Borges, Sontag, Plato, Preciado, Morrison, Kristeva, Freud, Barthes, Marx, and many more.