Contents
PART 1 (Matuska Ágnes)
What is English Studies?
1. What is a university? A proseminary
2. Paradigms and paradigm shifts
3. What is English Studies? English as a university subject
4. Ideology, criticism, history
5. Registers of culture
6. Canon formation and alternative reading practices
PART 2 (Kiss Attila)
Fields of English Studies. Language, Literature, Culture, and Critical Approaches
1. Preliminary Problems: Definitions, Scientific Expectations
2. Ontological Problems: the Way Literature Exists
3. Methodological Problems: the Way We Understand Texts
1/ Meaning and Context
2/ Interpretation
4. The Theory of Genres
1. Genres and Their Historical Changes
2. Genre-generating Factors and Historical Changes
5. Poetry and Figurative Language
Exercise in Interpretation / 1
6. Narrative Fiction
Exercise in Interpretation / 2
7. Drama
Exercise in Interpretation / 3
Self Test
8. Literature, Culture, and the Reading Subject:
An Overview of Major Trends in Literary and Cultural Theory
I PRELIMINARIES
1. Textual scholarship and the canon
2. Traditional approaches
a/ Historical-Biographical approaches
b/ Moral-Philosophical approaches
II FORMAL CRITICAL TRENDS:
FROM THE AUTHORIAL INTENTION TO THE CLOSE
READING OF THE TEXT (1ST SHIFT)
a/ New Criticism
b/ Russian formalism
c/ Structuralism
d/ Phenomenology
III CONTEXTUAL APROACHES:
FROM TEXT TO CONTEXT
1/ Reader-Oriented Criticism:
from the text to the act of reading (2ND SHIFT)
a/ Reader-Response Criticism
b/ Reception Theory
2/ Poststructuralism:
from the act of reading to the reader
as socially positioned subject (3RD SHIFT)
a/ The Semiotics of the Sign and the Subject
b/ Psychoanalysis
c/ Deconstruction
d/ New Historicism
e/ Feminist criticism
Self Test
9. Critical Literature Consulted and Recommended
10. Appendix
1. Key to Self Tests
2. Text for the Interpretation of Drama