English 2360 -- Intro to Literary Studies
WEcome to the course. The main purpose of the site is to provide you with .pdfs of all the readings in the course. You are, of course, welcome to purchase the texts or print them out, but if you find yourself digitally adept, feel free to simply use the .pdfs. A brief word of caution on that, however, is that there are times when a web address for the .pdf moves or is removed.
Also contained on the site are the various assignments you will have during the course, discussions of the periods we are covering, and other material. These will be stable, but many find it best to print them out.
Go a Little Gaga?
A Road Map that Might Help?
My current favorite text on literary theory, free and at least one edition behind.
The Intentional Fallacy
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"Just because it comes 'from the horse's mouth' does not mean that the horse is telling the truth, or that the horse knows the truth, or indeed that what the horse has to say about the 'words on the page' is necessarily more interesting or illuminating than what anyone else might have to say" (22).
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"'Conscious intention', in this respect, can always be considered as subject to the unconscious workings of the mind" (22).
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"Rather than say that the author is in control of the language that he or she uses, we might consider the idea that language is as much in control of the author [...] the system and rules of language inevitably dictate the possibilities of what someone can say" (22).
The Death of the Author
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"But rather than solving the problem of interpretative authority, 'The Death of the Author' in certain respects simply transfers it. Barthes ends his essay by declaring that 'the death of the author' coincides with teh 'birth of the reader'" (23).
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"...the critique of the notion of the Author (to which Barthes wittily gives a capital 'A,' thus highlighting the putatively god-like attributes of this figure) is just as valid as a critique of the notion of the reader (who, in effect, simply acquires in Barthes's account a capital 'R' instead)" (23).
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"Never fully present or fully absent, a figure of fantasy and elusiveness, the author only ever haunts" (23).