1. Literary Theory and Methodology Session Five: The Ethics of Reading

2. Agenda Appetizer: Oscar Wilde, ”Preface” What is ethics? Ethical criticism and narrative Ethical reading: from liberal humanism to structuralism and poststructuralism Examples

3. Appetizer: Oscar Wilde, ”Preface” John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold: literature as saviour Oscar Wilde and aesthticism or art for art’s sake

4. What is ethics? Ethics = moral philosophy Universalism, relativism, pluralism –Good / bad –Right / wrong –Virtuous / sinful

5. Ethical criticism and narrative Why narrative? Story / plot: patterns of cause and effect Character / characterization: motivation Point of view: comments, judgements, evaluation. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction → The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1988)

6. Ethical criticism Liberal humanism The author (and the text) –Complex experience of life –Moral intensity, moral intelligence –Spiritual health

7. Ethical criticism The tradition of liberal humanism (universalism) –Characters = real human beings –Motivations, actions, consequences –Thought and speech: inner and outer –Evaluations and discussion

8. Ethics of reading / ethical criticism Feminism Postcolonialist theory Gay, lesbian and queer theory Green reading / ecocriticism Poststructuralism and deconstruction –The openness of the text –The signifier rather than the signified

9. The ethics of reading / ethical criticism Formalism and aestheticism Structuralism: –Sign systems rather than authors –Characterization rather than character The new criticism: the poem as an object

10. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus The title The epigraph The frame structure

11. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus The dangers of excessive ambition Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me? John Milton, Paradise Lost

12. James Joyce, ”The Dead” How does Gabriel go wrong in imagining an identity for Gretta?

13. Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body ”It’s the clichés that cause all the trouble” The narrator-protagonist’s invention of Louise Louise’s invention of herself

14. Nadine Gordimer, ”The Moment Before the Gun Went Off”