Prof.

Maria-Ana Tupan

Theory into Practice

An Elective Course for 3rd Year Students
(First Semester)
The present course, with its combined theories and critical practice, is an attempt to
funnel students into the proper agenda for contemporary literary studies. Our approach to central
issues of the theoretical matrix into which any interpretation is inescapably embedded cuts across
several trends of literary theory, ranging from New Criticism to postmodernist context-bound
cultural narratives. Changes in epistemological premises and corresponding critical practices are
thus foregrounded. Filtered through various theoretical
grids (which postmodernism usually re-mixes, revises and diversifies), a number of canonical
texts will reveal the multi-layered structure of a literary work.
The introductory lectures are tracking the gradual extension of literary studies from
history to critical literary history, outstretched to a theoretical grounding of criticism and from
here to an aesthetic and philosophical contextualisation of the literary canon. Here is Peter Zima's
introductory statement in his latest book, The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory (The
Athlone Press, 1999):
"The main argument underlying this book, which is a short introduction to the problems,
theories, and concepts of contemporary literary criticism, can be summed up in a few words:
modern theories of literature can only be understood adequately if they are considered within the
philosophical and aesthetic context in which they originated and evolved. As long as they are
isolated from this context and viewed in purely literary terms, as co-existing and competing
approaches to literature, their specific character and their fundamental aims are obscured."
The trouble with theory readers is that they are limited to listing the various trends or
schools instead of providing an explanatory narrative of their being such ones or in such a
number. It is precisely the "philosophical and aesthetic context" of present-day, theorised and
critical, literary history the present course is looking into.
Aims: Students are supposed to develop critical skills closer to contemporary approaches
to texts, which no longer regard them as static linguistic structures and closed signifying units.
Manner: The course will be partly conducted as an interactive workshop, with students
getting home or class assignments such as:
Reconstruct the generational matrix of X (a fictional text) from the writer's diary. How
does the changing cultural context modify the representation of characters in contemporary
cinematic versions of classical texts ? How does postmodernist critical vocabulary modify the
reception or response to texts of the past ? Does author X profit by being revaluated by the
application of present critical grids ? Evaluate a number of present criticisms of text X, and say
whether the grids are appropriate or outstretched. Construct a case study in critical performance:
apply different grids on the same text to see what comes through. Reconstruct the probable
cultural matrix of text X. etc.
Reference:
Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer, Criticism and Culture. The Role of Critique in Modern
Literary Theory. Longman, 1991.
Zygmunt Bauman: Culture as Praxis, SASE Publications 1999
Mikko Lehtonen: The Cultural Analysis of Texts, Sage 2000
K. M. Newton: Theory into Practice. A Reader in Modern Literary Critcism, Macmillan, 1992.
Edited and introduced by K.M. Newton, Macmillan 1992.
Peter Barry: Beginning Theory

Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory. Edited by Antony Easthope and John C. Thompson,
Harvester Wheatsheaf 1991
Literary Theory. A Case Study in Critical Performance. Edited by Julian Wolfreys and William
Baker, Macmillan 1996
William K. Ferrel: Literature and Film as Modern Mythology. Praeger Pub.,2000
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle: Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Prentice
Hall Europe 1999 (Second Edition)
Dan Sperber: Explaining Culture, Blackwell Publishers, 1996
Sue Hackman and Barbara Marshall: Re-Reading Literature. New Critical Approaches to the Study
of English, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990
Francis Mulhern: Culture/Metaculture, The New Critical Idiom, Routledge, 2000
Steven Connor: Postmodernist Culture. An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary
Peter Widdowson: Literature , The New Critical Idiom, Routledge 1989
Maria-Ana Tupan: Sensul sincronismului, Cartea Romneasc 2004
Idem: A Discourse Analyst's Charles Dickens, Semne 1999
Idem: The New Literary History, E.U.B., 2006.
Idem: Genre and Postmodernism (Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2008)
Idem. Modernismul si psihologia. ncercare de epistemologie literara. Modernism and Psychology.
An Inquiry into the Epistemology of Literary Modernism (Bucuresti: Editura Academiei Romne,
2009)
Idem. Literary Discourses of the New Physics. With an Introduction by Marin Cilea (Bucuresti:
Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2010)
Maria-Ana Tupan & Marin Cilea, Teoria si practica literaturii la nceput de mileniu. Editura
Contemporanul, 2010.
Maria-Ana Tupan & Marin Cilea, Relativism-Relativity. An Interdisciplinary Perspective on a
Modern Concept. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.