A.
History of Literary Theory and Criticism (Until 1930)
1. Plato. Republic
(Book X).
2. Phaedrus.
3. Aristotle. Poetics.
4. Horace. The Art of Poetry.
5. Longinus. On the Sublime.
6. Plotinus. On the Intellectual Beauty.
7. Dante. Letter
to Can Grande della Scala.
8. Sidney. An Apology for Poetry.
9. Pope. Essay
on Criticism.
10. Hume. On
the Standard of Taste.
11. Kant. The
Critique of Judgement.
12. Schiller. On Naive and Sentimental Poetry.
13. Hegel. Introduction to Aesthetics.
14. Marx. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
15. Baudelaire. The Painter of Modern Life.
16. Arnold. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.
17. Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.
18. Freud. The Unconscious.
19. Eliot. Tradition and the Individual Talent.
20. Woolf. A Room of
One’s Own.
B.
Contemporary Literary Theory and Criticism
i.
Poststructural Theory and Criticism
1. Foucault. What is an Author?
2. Barthes. S/Z.
3. Derrida. Plato’s Pharmacy.
4. Kristeva. The Semiotic and the Symbolic.
5. Deleuze & Guattari. The Rhizome.
ii.
Postcolonial Theory and Criticism
6. Fanon. On
National Culture.
7. Said. Introduction
to Orientalism.
8. Bhabha. Of Mimicry and Men: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse.
9. Ngugi. The
Language of African Literature.
10. Spivak. Can the Subaltern Speak?
iii.
Feminist Theory and Criticism
11. Showalter. *A Literature of
Their Own. (Ch. 1, 4, 10)
12. Chodorow. The Reproduction
of Mothering.
13. Carby. *Reconstructing
Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist.
14. Butler. Imitation and Gender Insubordination.
15. Castillo. *Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary
Practice.
iv.
Marxist Theory and Criticism
16. Bakhtin. *Discourse in the Novel.
17. Benjamin. Theses on the Philosophy of History.
18. Lukács. *The
Historical Novel. (Ch. 1)
19. Williams. Marxism and
Literature. (Part I)
20. Jameson. *Postmodernism
or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. (Ch. 1)
II.
Genre: The Novel
A.
Primary Texts
1. Apuleius. The Golden
Ass.
2. Anonymous. Lazarillo de
Tormes.
3. Cervantes. Don Quixote
(Part One).
4. Behn. Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave.
5. Defoe. Robinson Crusoe.
6. Austen. Pride and
Prejudice.
7. Scott. The Heart of Mid-Lothian.
8. Shelley. Frankenstein.
9. Stendhal. Le rouge et
le noir.
10. Balzac. Sarrasine.
11. Brontë, C. Jane Eyre.
12. Thackeray. Vanity Fair.
13. Brontë, E. Wuthering
Heights.
14. Stowe. Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.
15. Flaubert. Madame Bovary.
16. Wilson. Our Nig, or
Sketches from the Life of a Free Black.
17. Eliot. The Mill
on the Floss.
18. Galdós. Doña Perfecta.
19. Zola. Germinal.
20. Chopin. The
Awakening.
21. Hopkins. Contending
Forces.
22. Kipling. Kim.
23. Conrad. Heart of
Darkness.
24. Johnson. The
Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.
25. Proust. Du coté de
chez Swann.
26. Woolf. To the
Lighthouse.
27. Larsen. Quicksand.
28. Faulkner. Absalom!
Absalom!
29. Hurston. Their Eyes
Were Watching God.
30. Wright. Native Son.
31. Ellison. *Invisible
Man.
32. Garro. *Los
recuerdos del porvenir.
33. Rhys. *Wide Sargasso Sea.
34. García Márquez. *Cien
años de soledad.
35. Coover. *The Public
Burning.
36. Calvino. *If on a
Winter’s Night a Traveler.
37. Rushdie. *Midnight’s
Children.
38. Morrison. *Beloved.
39. Garcia. *Dreaming in
Cuban.
40. Smith. *White
Teeth.
B.
Secondary Readings
1. Bakhtin. *Discourse in the Novel.
2. Lukács. *The
Historical Novel. (Ch. 1)
3. Auerbach. Mimesis.
(Ch. 14, 18, 20)
4. Showalter. *A Literature
of Their Own. (Ch. 1, 4, 10)
5. Spivak. Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of
Imperialism.
6. McHale. *Postmodernist
Fiction. (Part 1)
7. Carby. *Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of
the Afro-American Woman Novelist.
8. Stepto. From
Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative.
9. Said. Culture and Imperialism. (Ch. 1.3, 2.2)
10. Brink. The Novel:
From Cervantes to Calvino. (Ch. 1, 6, 11, 15)
III.
Period: 1945-2000
A.
Primary Texts
i.
Narrative Prose
1. Ellison. *Invisible
Man.
2. Lamming. *In the Castle
of My Skin.
3. Nabokov. Pale Fire.
4. Garro. *Los recuerdos del porvenir.
5. Duras. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein.
6. Pynchon. The Crying of
Lot 49.
7. Rhys. *Wide Sargasso Sea.
8. García Márquez. *Cien años de soledad.
9. Coover. *The Public
Burning.
10. Doctorow. Ragtime.
11. Calvino. *If on a
Winter’s Night a Traveler.
12. Rushdie. *Midnight’s
Children.
13. Marshall. *Praisesong for
the Widow.
14. Menchú. Me llamo
Rigoberta Menchú.
15. Morrison. *Beloved.
16. Chamoiseau. *Texaco.
17. Garcia. *Dreaming in
Cuban.
18. Antoni. *Divina
Trace.
19. Warner. Indigo, or
Mapping the Waters.
20. Smith. *White
Teeth.
ii.
Drama
21. Beckett. Waiting for
Godot.
22. Marqués. *La carreta.
23. Aidoo. The Dilemma
of a Ghost.
24. Césaire. *Une Tempête.
25. Stoppard. The Real
Inspector Hound.
26. Kennedy. Funny-house of a
Negro.
27. Walcott. Pantomime.
28. Churchill. Cloud Nine.
29. Hwang. M. Butterfly.
30. Prida. Coser y
cantar: A One-Act Bilingual Fantasy for Two Women.
iii.
Poetry
31. Césaire. *Cahier d’un
retour au pays natal.
32. Ginsberg. Howl.
33. Rich. Snapshots
of a Daughter-in-law.
34. Lowell. For the Union Dead.
35. Ashbery. Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror.
36. Pietri. Puerto Rican Obituary.
37. Brathwaite. *X/Self.
38. Dove. Thomas and Beulah.
39. Walcott. *Omeros.
40. Allen. Women Do
This Every Day.
B.
Secondary Readings
1. Walcott. What the Twilight Says: An Overture.
2. Jameson. Third World Literature in an Era of Multinational
Capitalism.
3. *Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism. (Ch. 1)
4. McHale. *Postmodernist
Fiction. (Part 1)
5. Hutcheon. The Poetics of
Postmodernism.
6. Brennan. The National Longing for Form.
7. Appiah. Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in
Postcolonial?
8. Boyce Davies. *Black Women,
Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject.
9. Lye. M. Butterfly and the Rhetoric of Antiessentialism:
Minority Discourse in an International Frame.
10. Castillo. *Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary
Practice.
IV.
The Other America: Constructing a Caribbean Tradition
Writing in the Caribbean is always an act
of definition. In a region whose boundaries are fluid, every new text
participates in
constructing a literary and cultural
tradition. What constitutes the Caribbean? Who is a Caribbean writer? What type
of text
(novel, short story, poem, play, essay,
or some sort of hybrid) should be included in the tradition? By looking at a
wide-ranging
set of writers and texts, from a variety
of islands and diasporic locations, as well as a number of recent critical
works which try
to answer some of these questions, I hope
to show that this act of definition itself is constitutive of Caribbean
literature.
i.
English-speaking Caribbean
1. Lamming. *In the Castle
of My Skin. (1953)
2. The Pleasures of Exile. (1960)
3. Naipaul. Miguel
Street. (1959)
4. A Way in the World. (1994)
5. Harris. The
Palace of the Peacock. (1960)
6. Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea. (1966)
7. Walcott. Dream on
Monkey Mountain. (1970)
8. *Omeros. (1990)
9. Marshall. The Chosen
Place, the Timeless People. (1968)
10. Praisesong for the Widow. (1983)
11. Collymore. The Man Who Loved
Attending Funerals and Other Stories. (1942-1971)
12. Brathwaite. *X/Self.
(1987)
13. Nourbese Philip. Harriet’s
Daughter. (1988)
14. Antoni. *Divina
Trace. (1991)
15. Kincaid. Autobiography
of My Mother. (1995)
16. Melville, P. The Ventriloquist’s
Tale. (1997)
ii.
French-speaking Caribbean
17. Césaire. *Cahier d’un
retour au pays natal. (1947)
18. *Une Tempête. (1968)
19. Roumain. Gouverneurs de
la Rosée. (1947)
20. Alexis. Général
compère soleil. (1955)
21. Chauvet. Amour.
(1968)
22. Schwartz-Bart. Pluie et Vent sur
Télumée Miracle. (1972)
23. Glissant. Caribbean
Discourse. (1981)
24. Condé. La vie
scélérate. (1987)
25. Traversée de la
mangrove. (1989)
26. Chamoiseau. Solibo Magnifique.
(1988)
27. *Texaco. (1992)
28. Danticat. The Farming of
Bones. (1998)
iii.
Spanish-speaking Caribbean
29. Martí. Nuestra América. (1891)
30. Carpentier. El reino de este
mundo. (1949)
31. Los pasos perdidos. (1953)
32. Marqués. *La carreta.
(1953)
33. F. Retamar. Caliban: Notes Towards a Discussion of Our America.
(1970)
34. Sánchez. La guaracha del
Macho Camacho. (1976)
35. Lydia Vega. Encancaranublado y
otros cuentos de naufragio. (1982)
36. Benitez-Rojo. The Repeating Island.
(1989)
37. Garcia. *Dreaming in
Cuban. (1992)
38. Alvarez. In the Time of
the Butterflies. (1995)
39. Ferré. The House
on the Lagoon. (1995)
40. Montero. Tú, la
oscuridad. (1995)
D.
Secondary Readings
1. Brathwaite. The History of
the Voice. (1979)
2. Omerod. An
Introduction to the French Caribbean Novel. (1985)
3. Saldívar. The
Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History.
(1991)
4. Gikandi. Writing in
Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature. (1992)
5. Rohlehr. The Shape of
that Hurt and Other Essays. (1980-1992)
6. Cooper. Noises in
the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture.
(1993)
7. Boyce Davies. *Black Women, Writing
and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. (1994)
8. Edmonson. Making Men:
Gender, Literary Authority and Women’s Writing in Caribbean Narrative.
(1999)
9. Dash. The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a
New World Context. (1999)
(List for Rafe Dalleo. Approved Fall
2001)