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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