Theory into Practice

Prof. Maria-Ana Tupan

Theory into Practice An Elective Course for 3rd Year Students (First Semester) The present course, with its combined theories and critical practice, is an attempt to funnel students into the proper agenda for contemporary literary studies. Our approach to central issues of the theoretical matrix into which any interpretation is inescapably embedded cuts across several trends of literary theory, ranging from New Criticism to postmodernist context-bound cultural narratives. Changes in epistemological premises and corresponding critical practices are thus foregrounded. Filtered through various theoretical grids (which postmodernism usually re-mixes, revises and diversifies), a number of canonical texts will reveal the multi-layered structure of a literary work. The introductory lectures are tracking the gradual extension of literary studies from history to critical literary history, outstretched to a theoretical grounding of criticism and from here to an aesthetic and philosophical contextualisation of the literary canon. Here is Peter Zima's introductory statement in his latest book, The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory (The Athlone Press, 1999): "The main argument underlying this book, which is a short introduction to the problems, theories, and concepts of contemporary literary criticism, can be summed up in a few words: modern theories of literature can only be understood adequately if they are considered within the philosophical and aesthetic context in which they originated and evolved. As long as they are isolated from this context and viewed in purely literary terms, as co-existing and competing approaches to literature, their specific character and their fundamental aims are obscured." The trouble with theory readers is that they are limited to listing the various trends or schools instead of providing an explanatory narrative of their being such ones or in such a number. It is precisely the "philosophical and aesthetic context" of present-day, theorised and critical, literary history the present course is looking into. Aims: Students are supposed to develop critical skills closer to contemporary approaches to texts, which no longer regard them as static linguistic structures and closed signifying units. Manner: The course will be partly conducted as an interactive workshop, with students getting home or class assignments such as: Reconstruct the generational matrix of X (a fictional text) from the writer's diary. How does the changing cultural context modify the representation of characters in contemporary cinematic versions of classical texts ? How does postmodernist critical vocabulary modify the reception or response to texts of the past ? Does author X profit by being revaluated by the application of present critical grids ? Evaluate a number of present criticisms of text X, and say whether the grids are appropriate or outstretched. Construct a case study in critical performance: apply different grids on the same text to see what comes through. Reconstruct the probable cultural matrix of text X. etc. Reference: Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer, Criticism and Culture. The Role of Critique in Modern Literary Theory. Longman, 1991. Zygmunt Bauman: Culture as Praxis, SASE Publications 1999 Mikko Lehtonen: The Cultural Analysis of Texts, Sage 2000 K. M. Newton: Theory into Practice. A Reader in Modern Literary Critcism, Macmillan, 1992. Edited and introduced by K.M. Newton, Macmillan 1992. Peter Barry: Beginning Theory

Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory. Edited by Antony Easthope and John C. Thompson, Harvester Wheatsheaf 1991 Literary Theory. A Case Study in Critical Performance. Edited by Julian Wolfreys and William Baker, Macmillan 1996 William K. Ferrel: Literature and Film as Modern Mythology. Praeger Pub.,2000 Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle: Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Prentice Hall Europe 1999 (Second Edition) Dan Sperber: Explaining Culture, Blackwell Publishers, 1996 Sue Hackman and Barbara Marshall: Re-Reading Literature. New Critical Approaches to the Study of English, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990 Francis Mulhern: Culture/Metaculture, The New Critical Idiom, Routledge, 2000 Steven Connor: Postmodernist Culture. An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary Peter Widdowson: Literature , “The New Critical Idiom”, Routledge 1989 Maria-Ana Tupan: Sensul sincronismului, Cartea Româneascã 2004 Idem: A Discourse Analyst's Charles Dickens, Semne 1999 Idem: The New Literary History, E.U.B., 2006. Idem: Genre and Postmodernism (Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2008) Idem. Modernismul si psihologia. Încercare de epistemologie literara. Modernism and Psychology. An Inquiry into the Epistemology of Literary Modernism (Bucuresti: Editura Academiei Române, 2009) Idem. Literary Discourses of the New Physics. With an Introduction by Marin Cilea (Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2010) Maria-Ana Tupan & Marin Cilea, Teoria si practica literaturii la început de mileniu. Editura Contemporanul, 2010. Maria-Ana Tupan & Marin Cilea, Relativism-Relativity. An Interdisciplinary Perspective on a Modern Concept. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.