ENGLISH 234: Fact and Fiction

Course Description

From the renaissance antiquarian to the contemporary book historian, the relation of facts to fictions has occupied and troubled literary scholars. Does historicism necessarily confine us to period specialty, or might a reexamination of the theoretical and material grounds of literary-historical method provide sound alternatives for experimentation? We will read key theoretical texts from Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Burkhardt, Foucault, Jameson, Hartman, Dinshaw, and others alongside works from Shakespeare, Holinshed, Browne, Camden.