Syllabus for Proseminar in Poetics and the Origins of Literary Theory, G40.2001


Same as English “Rhetoric and Deconstruction”


G40.2001 (G41.2964)
Professor Anselm Haverkamp
T 3:30-5:30

This course serves as requirement for the Advanced Certificate in Poetics and Theory. It consists of four parts:

  1. Archeology of ancient critical terminology (Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, Longinus);
  2. Reception of classical poetics and rhetoric in the processing of modern aesthetic (Puttenham to Kant);
  3. Re- and deconstruction of aesthetics in 20th century philosophy and criticism (Empson to Agamben;
  4. Historical structures and periodization of aesthetic theory (Curtius to Foucault).

  1. Aristotle, Poetics; Horace, De arte poetica; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria; Longinus, On the Sublime.
  2. Puttenham, The Art of English Poesie; Descartes, Meditations; Vico, New Science; Baumgarten, Aesthetica, part II; Kant, Critique of Judgement.
  3. Chapters from Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity; Richards, Philosophy of Rhetoric; Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language," "Shifters and Verbal Categories," both in: On Language; Weber, Return to Freud; de Man, The Resistance to Theory; Agamben, The End of the Poem, Guillory, Cultural Capital.
  4. Chapters from Curtius, European Literature and Middle Ages; Blumenberg, Metaphorology; Ong, Ramus and Method; Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge.