Literary Theory Lectures Online

Literary Theory: Yale Video Course

Paul H Fry

Yale

These lectures can be viewed via youtube here or by clicking on the individual lecture titles below.

“This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?”

Course Index

1. Introduction to Literary Theory
2. Introduction to Literary Theory (cont.)
3. Ways In and Out of the Hermeneutic Circle
4. Configurative Reading
5. The Idea of the Autonomous Artwork
6. The New Criticism and Other Western Formalisms
7. Russian Formalism
8. Semiotics and Structuralism
9. Linguistics and Literature
10. Deconstruction I
11. Deconstruction II
12. Freud and Fiction
13. Jacques Lacan in Theory
14. The Postmodern Psyche
15. The Social Permeability of Reader and Text
16. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
17. The Political Unconscious
18. The New Historicism
19. The Classical Feminist Tradition
20. African-American Criticism
21. Post-Colonial Criticism
22. Queer Theory and Gender Performativity
23. The Institutional Construction of Literary Study
24. Neo-Pragmatism
25. Reflections

Course information and documents can be found here.