The course will focus on the following topics: 

The nature of literary evaluation and critical discussion. 

The place of universal criteria in literary criticism. 

Is literary experience autonomous? 

The relation between literary value and (a) social reality:  the problem of Commitment, Black literature, Dalit literature, etc., (b)  psychological  reality,  the  problem  of  the   unconscious (Freudian and Jungian).

The theory of the forms/genres of literature. 

Structuralism and stylistics. 

Texts/References :

R.  Wellek,  and  A.  Warren,  Theory  of  Literature,   Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1963. 

W.  Wimsatt and C. Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History, OUP & IBH, New Delhi, 1957. 

T. Engleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford, Blackwell, 1983. 

K. Elam, Semiotics of Theatre & Drama, Methuen, N.Y., 1980. 

T.S.  Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism,  Faber, London, 1933. 

D.  Lodge, (Ed.), Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism,  Longman, London, 1972. 

D. Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism & Theory. Longman, London, 1988. 

I.A.  Richards,  Principles of Literary  Criticism,  Routledge  & Kegan Paul, London, 1924. 

M. Rader,  (Ed.),  A Modern Book of  Aesthetics,  Fourth  Edition, Holt, Reinhart &  Winston, New York, 1973. 

D. Craig, (Ed.), Marxists on Literature, An Anthology, Penguin, Harmondsworth,  1975. 

N. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton University Press, N.Y., 1957.