Autumn 2020: syllabus


                            AJ34120: Literary Value and Literary Canon


                                    Michael Kaylor, Tomáš Kačer


                                       Fridays, 8 a.m., G33


As its title suggests, this course will provide an occasion for students to engage issues of
literary value – historical, contemporary, and personal. This engagement will be facilitated by a
running comparison between established canonical works and the students’ research materials (an
author’s oeuvre or a particular piece – both types will be treated as "case studies"). The
questions that will be considered include: What intrinsic qualities establish literary value over
time? Beyond extrinsic issues and the demands of the literary marketplace, what establishes a work
as canonical? From Aristotle to Harold Bloom, from Horace to Jack Stillinger, this course and its
readings will challenge accepted notions as well as foster an appreciation for scholarly
traditions.


Case studies to work with in the seminar:

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600)

• John Keats, The Eve of St Agnes (1819)

• Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

• Each student’s research material


I Classics of Literary Taxonomy – Friday 21 October 2022, 8 a.m.

• Aristotle’s Poetics

• Horace’s Ars Poetica

• Longinus’s On the Sublime

Lesson aims: Discussion about seminar aims, brief presentations of students’ projects.

Task: Each student should prepare to present and discuss relevance of the literary canon and the
tradition of literary scholarship to their material.


II Values and canonicity Friday 4 November 2022, 8 a.m.

• Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence (1973)

• Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon (1995)

Lesson aims:  Discussion about the aesthetic approach to literature; the task of a literary
historian and scholar in contemporary academia.

Task: Each student should prepare to present and discuss literary values and how they do (or, do
not) apply to their material. Discuss alternative approaches to literature, especially in the
context of your research.


III Research methods Friday 25 November 2022, 8 a.m.

• Jack Stillinger’s Multiple Authorship and the Myth of the Solitary Genius (1991)

• Brian Vickers’s Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels (1995)

Lesson aims:  Discussion about contemporary research methods and trends in literary scholarship.

Task: Each student should prepare to present and discuss various methodological approaches to their
material and address challenges they present.


IV Credit conference Friday 16 December 2022, 8 a.m.

During this conference students will give ten to fifteen-minute papers related to both the issues
dealt with in the seminar and the topic of their thesis.