LONDONS GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

CLITG001: MODERN LITERARY THEORY FOUR-WEEK SEMINAR MARXIST LITERARY THEORY Course tutor: Ernest Schonfield Many of the most important theorists of literature and culture are Marxists. This seminar will analyse in chronological order four decisive moments in the development of Marxist literary theory, in order to show the multiple possibilities and faultlines which exist within this field. Session 1 will focus on the Realism debate of the 1930s: the polemic against modernism by Georg Lukcs and responses to it by Bloch, Brecht and Benjamin. Session 2 will focus on the post-war critique of the culture industry as theorised by Adorno and Horkeimer in the highly influential Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). Session 3 will explore the crossfertilization between Marxist literary theory and psychoanalysis in the 1980s, looking at the works of Jameson and iek. Session 4 will examine the comparative forms of analysis developed by Franco Moretti, who is currently one of the leading theorists of the novel. Session 1: The Realism Debate Set Texts: Ernst Bloch, Discussing Expressionism Georg Lukcs, Realism in the Balance Bertolt Brecht, Against Georg Lukcs Walter Benjamin, Conversations with Brecht; all texts reproduced in Theodor Adorno et al, Aesthetics and Politics, afterword by Fredric Jameson [1977] (London: Verso, 2007), pp. 16-99 Session 2: The Culture Industry Set Texts: Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. by John Cumming (London: Verso, 1997). pp. 120-67 Session 3: Marxism and Psychoanalysis: Slavoj iek, Fredric Jameson Set Texts: Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: narrative as a socially symbolic act [1981] (London: Routledge, 2002), Chapter 1: On Interpretation, pp. 1-88 Slavoj iek, The Sublime Object of Ideology [1989] (London: Verso, 2008); esp. Preface and Chapter 1, How Did Marx Invent the Symptom?, pp. 1-55 Session 4: Marxism and the Novel as World System: Franco Moretti Set Texts: Franco Moretti, The Long Goodbye: Ulysses and the End of Liberal Capitalism in Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms [1983] (London: Verso, 2005), pp. 182-208 Franco Moretti, Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garca Mrquez, trans. by Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 1996), Part 2: Ulysses and the Twentieth Century, pp. 123-239 Franco Moretti, The Novel: History and Theory, New Left Review 52 (2008), 111-124

CLITGOO1, Schonfield

Further Reading For Session 1: The Realism Debate Hermann Broch, Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age, trans. by John Hargraves (New York: Counterpoint, 2002) Georg Lukcs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. by Anna Bostock (London: Merlin, 1971) Georg Lukcs, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, trans. by John and Necke Mander (London: Merlin, 1963) Fredric Jameson, Brecht and Method (London: Verso, 1998) Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, trans. by John Willett (London: Methuen, 1974)

For Session 2: The Culture Industry Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry: selected essays on mass culture (London: Routledge, 2001) Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. by Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1997) Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Towards A New Manifesto, New Left Review 65 (2010), 32-61 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. by Harry Zohn (London: Pimlico, 1999) Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), chapter on Adorno Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986) Lorenz Jger, Adorno: A Political Biography, trans. by Stewart Spencer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004) Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (London: Macmillan, 1978) For Session 3: Marxism and Psychoanalysis: Slavoj iek, Fredric Jameson Malcolm Bowie, Lacan (London: Fontana, 1991) Fredric Jameson, Jameson on Jameson: conversations on cultural marxism, ed. by Ian Buchanan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007) Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection (London: Routledge, 2001) Slavoj iek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 2008)

For Session 4: Marxism and the Novel as World System: Franco Moretti Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 (London: Verso, 1998) Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees (London: Verso, 2005) Franco Moretti, Serious Century, in Franco Moretti (ed.), The Novel, Vol. 1: History, Geography and Culture (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 364-400

CLITGOO1, Schonfield