Introduction to Theory of Literature

Paul Fry

Lecture 1 – Introduction
In this first lecture, Professor Paul Fry explores the course’s title in three parts. [1] The relationship between
theory and philosophy, the question of what literature is and does, and what constitutes an introduction are
interrogated. [2] The professor then situates the emergence of literary theory in the history of modern criticism
and, [3] through an analysis of major thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, provides antecedents for
twentieth-century theoretical developments.

Prof. Fry begins the lecture by making a few remarks about the title of the course, because it has some
big words in it: “theory”, “literature”, but also “introduction”.

On “theory”. Aside from the ethimological troubles with the word theory, the main trouble with this word
is that sometimes it means “practice”, but at other historical periods it means something very different
form “practice”. And that´s the sense of theory that prof. Fry would like to work with. Because there is,
indeed, a difference between “theory” and “methodology”: even if it´s fair enough to say that
methodology is applied theory, there is a great danger in supposing that every aspect of theory has an
immediate application. Theory is very often a purely speculative undertaking [tarea, proyecto]; it´s an
hypothesis about something the exact nature of which, one needn´t necessarily have in view, and at
this level of abstraction there isn´t all that much incentive to apply thinking of that kind. But on the other
hand, theory does exist for the most part to be applied.
Very frequently courses of this kind have a text (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, for instance),
and then once in a while the disquisition of the lecture will pause, the text will be produced, and
whatever [sense of] theory has recently been talked about will be applied to the text, so that we´ll get
a post-colonial reading of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. The text of this course is a story for
toddlers [niños] called “Tony the Tow Truck”. The meaning of this exercise is a question of reminding
us that reading – reading anything – is a complex and potentially almost unlimited activity; and that is
a good thing that theory teaches us.
Theory resembles philosophy in this: it asks fundamental questions and at times builds
systems; theory has certain ambition to a totalization of what can be thought that resembles philosophy.
But theory differs from philosophy in that it involves a certain skepticism. There seems to be a
variety of doubts about the foundations of what we can think, about the basis of our opinions that
pervades theory. Not all the theory that we will be reading this semester is sceptical, but we will come
to terms with the fact that much of what we´re going to be reading this semester is undermined by this
persisting scepticism.

On “literature”. Theory of literature shares with other kind of theory the need for definition. The most
fascinating question theory asks is, what is literature? How do we know it when we see it? There are a
variety of enticing definitions that we´re going to read. There are also definitions which insists that
somehow there is an epistemological difference between literature and other kind of utterance.
Whereas most utterance purport to be saying something true about the actual state of things in the
world, literary utterance is under no such obligation; making it up as opposed to referring (7:40).