Week 14 — 28 April

Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language

Focus on "Practice" (195-234)

Williams, Organization (206-234)

Week 13 — 21 April

Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language

Focus on "The Semiotic and the Symbolic" (21-106)

Williams, Reproduction (181-205)

Week 12 — 14 April

Bakhtin / Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship

Focus on chapters four through six (54-126), eight and nine (145-174)

Williams, Forms (148-180)

Recommended (handout): Leon Trotsky, "The Formalist School," Literature and Revolution (1924)

Week 11 — 7 April

Matejka & Pomorska, Readings in Russian Poetics

Tomasevskij, Literature and Biography (47-55)

Ejxenbaum, Literary Environment (56-65)

Tynjanov, On Literary Evolution (66-78)

Propp, Fairy Tale Transformations (94-114)

Baxtin, Discourse Typology in Prose (176-196)

Williams, Identifications (119-147)

Note: Final project abstracts should be ready for presentation in class tonight.

Week 10 — 31 March

Matejka & Pomorska, Readings in Russian Poetics

Brik, Contributions to the Study of Verse Language (117-125)

Tynjanov, Rhythm as the Constructive Factor of Verse (126-)

Tynjanov, The Meaning of the Word in Verse (136-147)

Williams, Means of Production (87-118)

Week 9 — 24 March > CLASS VISIT BY JOSHUA CLOVER

Jakobson, Language in Literature

Baudelaire's 'Les Chats' (180-197)

Shakespeare's Verbal Art... (198-215)

Yeats's 'Sorrow of Love' through the Years (216-244)

On the Verbal Art of William Blake... (479-503)

Williams, Formations (57-86)

Week 8 — 17 March

Jakobson, Language in Literature

On a Generation That Squandered Its Poets (273-300)

On Realism in Art (19-27)

Futurism (28-33)

Dada (34-40)

The Dominant (41-46)

Problems in the Study of Language and Literature (47-49)

Language in Operation (50-61)

Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbance (95-114)

Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry (121-144)

What Is Poetry (368-378)

Williams, The Sociology of Culture

Towards a Sociology of Culture (9-32)

Institutions (33-56)

>>SPRING BREAK<<

Week 7 — February 25

Lemon & Reis, Russian Formalism

Bourdieu, "The Market for Symbolic Goods" (141-173)

Week 6 — February 18

Gadamer, Truth & Method: "Play as the clue to ontological explanation" (101-133); "The elevation of the historicity of understanding...." (265-306); "The ontological shift of hermeneutics guided by language" (381-491)

Bourdieu, "The Emergence of a Dualist Structure" (113-140)

Week 5 — February 11

Freud, "The Dream-Work," chapter VI, sections A-D, H-I (311-385, 497-546); click here for reading guide

Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" (h.o.; summary here) and "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious" (h.o. 138-168)

Bourdieu, "The Conquest of Autonomy" (47-112)
Recommended: Lacan, two seminars on "The Dream of Irma's Injection" (h.o.)

Week 4 — February 4

Freud, "The Method of Interpreting Dreams: An Analysis of a Specimen Dream," Interpretation of Dreams 128-54

Saussure, Course in General Linguistics 1-22, 65-100, 102-134 [88pp]

Bourdieu, "The Author's Point of View," Rules of Art 214-277

Week 3 — 28 January

Saussure, Course in General Linguistics 1-22, 65-100, 102-134 [88pp]

Bourdieu, "Questions of Method," Rules of Art 177-213 [36pp]

Brooks, "Aesthetics and Ideology: What Happened to Poetics" (handout)

Perloff, "In Defense of Poetry" link here

Week 2 — 21 January

Todorov, Introduction to Poetics

Bourdieu, "The Field of Cultural Production" (handout)

Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics" (in Language in Literature)
Presentations on Todorov by Justin Andrews, Jason Morse, Rachel Lee, Mike Roberson, and Sarah Ruddy.

Week 1 — 14 January

Aristotle, Poetics