L605 25334 KATES (#6)
Critical & Interpretive Theory

2:30p – 3:45p TR

TOPIC: LITERATURE, HISTORY, MARXISM

This course undertakes a survey of Marxist literary criticism
written in English in the 20th century. Along with providing an
overview of some of the major developments in criticism and theory
during this period (including the New Criticism, poststructuralism,
and cultural studies) this course investigates two sorts of
questions that today appear more pressing than ever: 1) what is
history and does it have a privileged relation to literature (or
literature to it)?; and 2) what is the standing of criticism itself
(including the profession of English): is its own discourse a
species of knowledge, speculation, a work of interpretation, a
social-political intervention, or some combination of these?
	
The course begins with some of the writings of William Empson,
Edmund Wilson, and Kenneth Burke—critics, writing between the wars,
who took up various positions within and toward the then regnant New
Criticism. It ends by examining a swath of relatively
recent “Marxist/post-Marxist” initiatives, notably in
postcolonialist and cultural studies. The pivotal point in our
trajectory comes when we take a rather close look at the reception
of poststructuralism (specifically Louis Althusser’s remodeling
Marx) by British literary critics and historians. This development—
one of two which will require a foray into a non-English source,
albeit in translation (we will also read some Antonio Gramsci)—
sparked a great deal of controversy at the time. From it, cultural
studies, and, to a somewhat lesser degree postcolonialism, emerged
in their current forms in a British context.
	
In addition to reading the assigned texts themselves in the most
careful possible fashion, this course requires a number of short
papers. These essays, possibly precirculated, will be exercises in
textual exegesis—clear and concise statements of the central points
of an essay’s argument and conclusions—with the additional
requirement to take into account the style of the critical work, its
choice of voice, and the sort of audience it projects for its
reception. Effective exegesis, I should mention, is a more difficult
skill to master than it may sound, and a useful one, I believe, for
those who, in addition to literary interpretations and historical
data, in their own work intend to present any sort of “theoretical”
material (philosophical, scientific, sociological, aesthetic, and so
on).