video
Paul Fry: Introduction to Theory of Literature, Lecture 1
by Paul H. Fry
The opening lecture of Yale's survey of twentieth-century literary theory: Fry takes the course title apart word by word (what theory has to do with philosophy, what literature is and does, what an 'introduction' even is), then traces theory's roots to Marx, Nietzsche and Freud and the 'hermeneutics of suspicion'. Dense, dry-witted, and the best free on-ramp to why critics fight about how to read.
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