ENG 4020
Approaches to Modern Criticism · 3 credits · Fall 2026
Requirements
Prerequisite: ENG/CMP/LTT 2800 or 2850, or departmental permission
About this course
What makes literature valuable? What makes some works better and more deserving of attention than others? Can there be objective standards of greatness? Is one either right or wrong, for example, for liking or disliking Shakespeare? Why do English professors spend so much time analyzing texts? Does interpretation sometimes ruin our ability to enjoy literature? How can we tell when aninterpretation is valid or groundless? Is there a reason why, until recently, most of the works in literary anthologies were written by white European men? Do our standards, in other words, favor one ethnic group, one class, one gender, one sexual orientation, or any other single demographic over another? This coursewill consider attempts to answer these questions by some of the most important schools of criticism from the modern era, such as formalism, deconstruction, psychoanalytic criticism, feminism, Critical Race Theory, queer theory, new historicism, disability studies, and computational criticism.
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