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Subject's code : 24413061
1. Introduction
This Unit wants to outline basic concepts in the field of literary theory and criticism. Its nature is mainly theoretical due to the introduction to general concepts and ideas that must be essential knowledge to any student of literary studies, but its focus is practical since theoretical information will be accompanied by activities. This is an introductory but fundamental Unit to which we will return throughout the course to review information.
The Unit has been designed so that at the end of its study students will be able to:
Introduction
This Unit focuses on a basic introduction to postcolonial literary criticism, defining and outlining its terms to be applied to literary and cultural analysis. It will deal with the concepts of ethnicity, diaspora, hybridity, geographical movement and colonization in order to familiarize with current cultural issues in the literature in English and in contemporary English-speaking societies. The aim of this Unit is to present the impact of social, cultural and historical issues on literature, issues which are extrinsic but immanent within the literary text. The Unit wants to place students outside the text in order to make them comprehend how these outside important cultural issues are closely imbricated in literary and cultural texts.
Unit 3 introduces students to the tenets of poststructuralist thought and postmodern criticism to be applied to the analysis of literary and critical texts. These critical schools have reflected some of the most radical changes in Western thought in relation to philosophy and culture, so a clear and basic introduction to these changes are essential for students to contextualize contemporary literary and cultural criticism and analysis. Among some of the new paradigms we can find: the death of the author, the pervasiveness of textuality, history as text, reality as discourse and language, the impossibility of fixed meaning, or the breaking of main Western metanarratives. If Unit 2 is intended to present connections between external societal issues and the structures and nature of literary texts, Unit 3 aims at presenting the text in connecition to ideology, discourse, authorial ambiguity, irony, or deconstruction. All these elements open the text to multiple meanings and interpretations.
Specific Learning Outcomes
Unit 4 introduces students to the basic tenet of Gender Studies and Feminist literary criticism as well as practicing literary analysis of short stories. The revolution of the feminist movement throughout the twentieth century has created a new field of studies at universities and a new perspective towards gender identity and sexual difference in society. The way we constitute ourselves as male or female and elaborate our behavior and identity as feminine or masculine has been the topic of extensive theory and cultural discourse from the 1970s to our times in English- speaking societies. Main theoreticians on gender identity are North-American (and French) and a whole corpus of feminist literary criticism (the way gender is represented and reinstated in literature, the way gender identity interacts with writing and creativity, etc.) has been developed. Students will learn to read texts focusing on gender issues, taking into consideration stereotypes of gender identities and their possible transformations. Students will analyse the specific narrative elements of the short-story and will be introduced to main concepts and thinkers of gender and literature. Unit 4 exposes how the factor of gender, which seems to be the most intimate part of subjectivity, is also part of our social identity that is constructed through cultural discourses.