Organizers: Massimo Salgaro and Simone Rebora (University of Verona, Italy)

Duration: The Training School will consist of eight online meetings, for a total of 20 hours of attendance plus 75 hours of personal study. 

Objectives: To acquire fundamental knowledge of literary theory, literary history, theoretical aesthetics, and skills in text analysis and close reading.

Content: An introduction to main concepts central to aesthetics, literary theory, and comparative literature (e.g., hermeneutics, narratology). An overview of the history of reader response research, the empirical study of literature, and cognitive poetics.

Methodology: Participants are required to read a predetermined list of relevant theoretical literature, which will be discussed during the training school. Also, we will apply some of the theories and methodologies of text analysis and close reading explained in these research articles to canonical literary texts provided by the instructors.

Participants: Mandatory to all ELIT ESRs and open to additional PhD students (free access)

Meetings: 

  1. Welcome: Where am I landed? Academic islands, interdisciplinarity and the empirical study of literature
    Lecturer: Massimo Salgaro
    Date:
    01.12.2020 (17:00 – 19:00 CET)
  2. The history of Empirical Studies of Literature from 1800 to the present
    Lecturer: Gerhard Lauer
    Date:
    03.12.2020 (17:00 – 19:00 CET)
  3. Literary theory and literary criticism. In theory and in practice
    Lecturer: Massimo Salgaro
    Date:
    07.12.2020 (17:00 – 19:00 CET)
  4. The history of empathy
    Lecturer: Andrea Pinotti
    Date:
    11.12.2020 [postponed to 29.01.2021] (17:00 – 19:00 CET)
  5. The role of fiction in refining social skills
    Lecturer: Emanuele Castano
    Date:
    17.12.2020 (17:00 – 19:00 CET)
  6. Reader-response theory
    Lecturer: Patricia Canning Paul Sopcak
    Date: 12.01.2021 (17:00 – 19:00 CET) 04.02.2021 (16:00 – 18:00 CET)
  7. Methods and tools for distant reading
    Lecturer: Simone Rebora
    Date:
    14.01.2021 (10:00 – 12:00 and 14:00 – 16:00 CET)
  8. Presentations: Apply the most suitable literary theory to your favourite text
    Presenters: The ELIT ESRs
    Date:
    19.01.2021 (10:00 – 12:00 and 14:00 – 16:00 CET)

Reading list:

  1. a) Shklovsky, Victor. 2004 [1917]. “Art as Technique.” In Literary Theory, an Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, 15-21. Maiden MA: Blackwell.
    b) Moretti, Franco. 2000. “Conjectures on world literature.” The Left Review 1.  https://newleftreview.org/issues/II1/articles/franco-moretti-conjectures-on-world-literature.
  2. Musil, Robert. 2006 [1928]. “The blackbird.” In Id. Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, 98-112. New York: Archipelago Books.
  3. Pinotti, Andrea, and Massimo Salgaro. 2019. “Empathy or Empathies? Uncertainties in the Interdisciplinary Discussion.” Gestalt Theory 41 (2): 141-58. https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2019-0015.
  4. Kidd, David C., and Emanuele Castano. 2013. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342 (6156): 377-80. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1239918.
  5. a) Smith, Joel. 2016. Experiencing Phenomenology. An Introduction, 1-29. London: Routledge.
    b) Zahavi, Dan. 2018. Phenomenology: The basics, 44-55. London: Routledge.
  6. Underwood, Ted. 2017. “A Genealogy of Distant Reading.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 (2). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/2/000317/000317.html.
  7. Introduction:
    a) Bertens, Hans. 2013. Literary Theory: The Basics. New York: Routledge
    Fundamental texts:
    b) Lodge, David, and Nigel Wood, eds. 2000. Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. 2. ed. Harlow: Longman [u.a.], pp. 188-205. 
    c) Rice, Philip, and Patricia Waugh, eds. 2001. Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. 4th ed. London : New York: Arnold ; Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, pp. 103-145, 226-251, 360-394,
    d) Newton, K. M., ed. 1997. Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader. 2. ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 1-18, 45-69, 83-157, 187-209. 
    e) Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan, eds. 2004. Literary Theory. An anthology. 2. ed. Oxford et al.:  Blackwell, pp. 72-75. 
    f) Le Guin, Ursula K., 1989.  “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”. Dancing at the Edge of the World. New York: Grove Press, pp. 165-70. 
    g) McHugh, Susan, 2009. “Animal Farm’s Lessons for Literary (and) Animal Studies.” Humanimalia 1:1. www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue01/mchugh.html.

Note: numbering of texts in the list indicates for which lecture they have to be read. Lecture 0 (Welcome: Where am I landed?) does not require any readings.

Registration form [to be filled in by additional PhD students who intend to participate – deadline 30 November 2020]

Info: simone.rebora@univr.it