Roll Number / Register Number - I Sem MA (E&CL)

LEC 5102 Criticism

This course aims to provide a clear understanding of the fundamental concepts of criticism along with a comprehensive knowledge of the history of critical transactions. Representative samples of various schools of criticism from Classical Age right up to the beginning of the Modern Age are given as focal texts in this course. These select samples comprise texts that are important not only in the field of literary criticism but also in the domain of cultural/aesthetic studies and Humanities in general.  (The course instructor will select texts from each module)

Module I

1.       Plato                                        From Republic/ Ion / Phaedrus

2.       Aristotle                                From Poetics 

3.       Horace                                    From Ars Poetica

4.       Boccaccio                              From Genealogy of the Gentile Gods

5.       Longinus                                From On the Sublime 

6.       David Hume                          “Of the Standard of Taste“ 

7.       Immanuel Kant                   “Of the Distinct Objects of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime“ 

Module II

1.       Philip Sidney                        From An Apology for Poetry 

2.       Samuel Johnson                 From Preface to Shakespeare 

3.       John Dryden                         From Preface to Fables

4.       William Wordsworth       From Preface to Lyrical Ballads 

5.       ST Coleridge                         From Biographia Literaria

6.       Ralph Waldo Emerson      “The Poet“ 

7.       Friedrich Nietzsche            From The Birth of Tragedy

Module III

1.       Matthew Arnold                 From Culture and Anarchy/ “The Study of Poetry“ 

2.       Walter Pater                        From Studies in the History of Renaissance

3.       Henry James                         “The Art of Fiction“ 

4.       Virginia Woolf                      From A Room of One’s Own 

5.       Edgar Allen Poe                   The Philosophy of Composition 

6.       T.S. Eliot                                 “Tradition and Individual Talent“ 

7.       Zigmund Freud                    From Interpretation of Dreams

Module IV

1.       Cleanth Brooks                    “The Language of Paradox“

2.       Northrop Frye                      “Archetypes of Literature“

3.       William Empson                  “Seven Types of Ambiguity“

4.       Wimsatt and Beardlsey    “The Affective Fallacy“ / Intentional Fallacy“

5.       Lionel Trilling                       “Freud and Literature“

6.       Victor Shlovsky                    “Art as Technique“

7.       Roman Jackobson              “Metaphor and Metonymy“

A.      Course schedule

Week	A (1 Hour)	B (1 Hour)
1	Introduction
2	Plato (1801, 1811, 1821, 1831)	Boccaccio (1803, 1813, 1823, 1833)
3	Aristotle
4	Discussion  - Test	Hume (1804, 1814, 1824, 1834)
5	Horace (1802, 1812, 1822, 1832)	Kant (1805, 1815, 1825, 1835)
6	Longinus
7	Mid term
8	Sidney (1806, 1816, 1826, 1836)	Dryden (1807, 1817, 1827, 1837)
9	Johnson
10	Discussion  - Test	Emerson (1809, 1819, 1829)
11	Seminar Presentations (5 Min)	Seminar Presentations (5 Min)
12	Wordsworth
13	Coleridge (1808, 1818, 1828, 1838)	Nietzsche (1810, 1820, 1830)
14	Seminar Presentations (5 Min)	Seminar Presentations (5 Min)
15	Review / Make up

B.      Assessment:

CA: 40% (Unit tests, Seminars, Midterm);

ESA: 60% (Written Examination)

C.      Attendance:

As per university norms, 75% attendance is mandatory in class.

D.      Requirements:

In-class peer assessment, and team / pair work